about me, part two

Continuing from where I left off:

My memories of this town. . .

I first came here in the mid 1980's to attend The University. Yeah, I know, my family could have bought my way into almost any college on the planet. I know this because they tried but I wasn't interested.

I wasn't interested in other schools because an angel had already told me where I was going to college. Ah, sweet heavenly Farrah. Like The Great One (and every other heterosexual male of my generation), I too spent many hours holding up her poster with one hand.

When I learned that she had attended The University my mind was made up. My hormone addled adolescent brain reasoned that since Texas was such a big place surely there were countless others as hot as Farrah just waiting to be plucked like ripe grapes from a vine. Due to my fabulous good looks and insane wealth I had no doubt they would all want to bang me.

Boy, was I ever right.

Those were some crazy times. Ecstacy and all it's variants while technically illegal, existed in that gray area just on the other side of the law. They were all readily for sale in the parking lot of every club in town. Well okay, maybe not every club, only by the ones where the cool and the hip mingled with the hyper-sexed and the androgenous. I was three out of four. If you need a fucking clue let me just say nobody mistook me for a member of one of those lame-ass British techno-pop bands.

The Renaissance Market across from campus had not yet been officially sanctioned by the city and had not yet earned so distinguished a name. It was just a place where the homeless panhandled and the hippies peddled beaded jewelry, "tobacco pipes" and other trinkets to stoners, students, and tourists. When the sun set it became one of the best open air drug markets in the city.

It had drive-thru service for Chris'sakes. And drive-thru I did, many times. Pull up, roll down the window. Some homeless looking guy would approach and you would hand him a twenty in exchange for a small vial of blow or grass or small squares of paper. You could purchase powerful hallicinogens with the convenience of not having to get out of the car. Part of the rush was never knowing what you were getting: good shit, crap, something dangerous, or possibly deadly. The whole Russian Roulettish aspect just added to the thrill of our invincible young lives.

They were my carefree days of coeds and cocaine. It seems as though both were always readily available for my consumption.

Part of me wishes I could go back.

Part of me looks back with this weird mix of pride and embarrassment at my behavior in those days. The embarrassment waxes as my pride wanes.

Maybe this therapy crap is starting to have an impact.

Ah, who am I kidding. Tonight I'll probably wander from my downtown loft condo into the yuppie bars of the Warehouse District where the affluent and attractive mix, mingle and mate while hopped up on mojitos and low carb light beer.

I won't go home alone. I just won't. I'm not bragging. It's just how it is in my world. It's how it's always been in my world. I'm a Barrington.