The Badger
After having my chemical consumption held partially in check for year by my mother and grandmother, I was more than ready to bust loose when the opportunity came. That was a long time ago, I was 24, but I know it involved having my drivers license reinstated. Additionally I conned the women into buying me an old car. It wasn’t too long before they’d had enough of me and vice-versa. So I did what any good addict would do in that situation. I moved in with my other grandmother.
Granny and I got along famously, at least in spells. She like to drink wine so I’d buy her a bottle and me a 12-pack and we’d be set for the evening. I was working at a movie rental place and was discovering a love for films about that time. Most nights I brought home a couple of movies and we’d get drunk and watch them.
Eventually, as in four or five months, I got tired of working at the movie place. It was across the bay and my old car just wasn’t in any shape to make that trip on a daily basis. I recall having to buy used tires ever week or so to keep from again having to change a tire on the edge of the expressway. No fun. So I got another job as an assistant manager at a hamburger shithook. That lasted all of two or three weeks and I quit those fuckers.
Rudy was in the process of getting divorced so he and I were hanging out together at his place getting fucked up everyday. One night during that time I ran into a woman I’d met at the movie place some months earlier. I knew she liked me. She was good looking and older and from Memphis. Loved the Allman Brothers and getting fucked up. She was also married to a dentist. Nevertheless in a very short time I was living with her, while she was married, because her husband hated her as bad as I’d grow to and stayed in another home they owned.
Before too long she’d decided she was in love with my unemployed-young-ass and divorced the dentist with the quickness. We set about the business of drinking and drugging up her alimony with all the zeal you’d expect if you knew either of us. I was literally in hog heaven. For a while
For the first month or so after her divorce we almost never left her place except to reload on booze and smokes and food. She loved to cook and made me three big meals everyday. When we weren’t fucking we were sitting out in her hot tub, which was a cold tub at that time because it was summer, and getting blitzed every single day. I thought I’d hit the big-time.
Finally one afternoon we decided we needed to get out and have some seafood and go bar hoping. So we she spent an ungodly amount of time getting gussied up. When she claimed to be ready I jumped through the shower. I didn’t realize there was a problem until I started trying to pull my Levi’s up over my fat ass. Couldn’t be did. I don’t know how many pounds I’d packed on in that month or so, but I’d put on a solid three inches around the waste.
She had an Iroc Z-28 and I got around to driving the wheels off that fucker. Wrecked it once. Got one DUI. Unfortunately she was grossly misinformed about my sex appeal and sexual prowess. She wouldn’t let me out of her sight. No job. No boy’s night out. None of that. Just all the booze I could drink, all the food I could eat, and all the pussy, and much more, that I wanted. At some point I began calling her “The Badger” because she was small, beautiful, and fierce. Actually she was more horny than anything but “The Badger” stuck like glue.
It didn’t take too long for me to get puking sick of her. It was at that time and in her that I saw, for the first time, just how ugly addiction gets, and fast, once one makes it into their 30s. She was just pitiful when she was fucked up and she was as determined to get fucked up as I was. All we did was eat, drink, and fuck. That’s great for awhile. But a relationship based only on that always failed me. YMMV.
Through some strange divine providence I managed to contract the chicken pox almost exactly one year after our fuck-affair had begun. Before too long on the day after I started having a fever I was as sick as I’d ever been, or have been since. That shit damn near killed me. I had those blister things all over my body, even in my mouth, ears, and nose. It was sort of like some Biblical curse or something and I knew I deserved it. In short order I ran home to mama and had she and grandmom not given me round the clock nursing for the better part of two weeks, I very well may have died. Mom knew a doctor that called me in antibiotics, and Zovrax, and some sort of pain pills. It was awful.
The silver lining, though, was that the horny badger, without me around to service her motor, went out and replaced me pronto with a local rock musician. I don’t think anybody was ever so glad to be cuckolded as I was. I collected my shit, moved in with Mom, and for the first time in my life decided I was going to walk away from addiction after eight years of heavy substance abuse.
