A piece of my past, chapter #1 of 4

I wrote this a few years ago, it's way too long to post the whole thing in one piece on a blog, so I'm going to post it in chapters on days like today when I can think of nothing pressing to write about.

So here is the first installment:

It’s my last dart for this round. I looked down my arm, over the flights of the dart. Lean forward, envision your target. Triple twentys now. That’s it. Aim, exhale, release. Damn. I hit a single one instead. I sit back down and drink some beer.

Karen and Tony have been our friends for a while now. She is tall, willowy, and very Nordic. She is wearing her customary tight fitting peg leg jeans and loose, baggy sweatshirt. It’s as if she wants to only show off her figure from the waist down. She’s actually my boss, and a pretty cool one. I’m going to have a hangover at work tomorrow, but she will too. Our collective misery will enjoy the company.

Karen is married to Tony. Tony has a glorious blond mullet, and a muscular build. He could be a rock star, but instead he works for a local city, maintaining storm drains. He’s a good guy, quick to laugh.

Gretchen is not too tall, a little heavy built. She has long blond hair and a warm, genuine smile. She’s pretty in a “girl-next-door” sort of way. Her speech and mannerisms make some people think she is a little slow upstairs, but if you take the time to get to know her you realize she is actually reasonably bright. I know her well, we’ve been married for a year and a half.

She’s actually just legally stoned on Phenobarbital, this is what makes her seem slow. It’s one of the medications she takes to control her grand mal epilepsy. She’s had the seizures since childhood, and they have grown slowly worse over the years. We were together for five years before we married, so I’ve had some time to watch.

Like the time she visited me at college, and dropped like a rock in the cafeteria, losing a tray full of the deep fried crap they fed us students. The campus cops grilled me good on that one. They were quite convinced she was drunk or high on something more illicit. Assholes. They were washouts from the State Patrol, and suffered from little man complex.

Or the times in the shower - for some reason the repetitive noise of the water could bring it on. It was a bitch of a place to go down; she took her fair share of bruises from those times. There was nothing to do at that point but dry her off and put her in bed.

There was even a time during intimacy. I had been away for a couple of weeks without seeing her, and we were both pretty worked up – both mentally and physically. Unfortunately, stress or mental excitement could trigger the seizures too. One moment we were doing our thing, the next she was gone, eyes rolled back, twitching violently, making that odd half gasp noise she made repeatedly during bad seizures. I put my hand through the wallboard in frustration on that one, mad not at my sweet Gretchen but at this condition that she came to loathe.

And there was me. Young, sometimes impulsive. I had a blond mullet similar to Tony’s, but could not match his exquisite build. I had put away a lot of beer in my time, and it showed. Not excessively, but I had a soft, somewhat overweight look that was not going to pass as muscle of any sort. I liked to play hard. I drank with some regularity, but I was young enough to work through the hangover the next day. I loved being with Gretchen, I loved her with all my heart. I liked to live the fun life. Hell, I was a mid-twenty-something, full of vigor and ready to party.

The four of us were the members of a dart team that played in a recreational league. We represented the Irish Rose Tavern. We were decent shooters on our best days, a drunken wipe out on our worst. Usually we saved the heaviest drinking for after the match, so we were actually in contention for a playoff spot in our league. I don’t remember the score that night, although we managed a win. I know we enjoyed each other’s company for a while after, and the drinks flowed.

We finally made our way home close to midnight, through a cold, wet Seattle January rain. We made it into bed, and curled up together for warmth. For some reason, neither of us could sleep, so we cuddled and talked for a while about nothing in particular. Talk gave way other things, with the rain pattering down outside. Afterwards we fell asleep in each others embrace. It was the last time we would be together.