What is the date you began writing this memoir and the date when you completed the memoir? I knew I wanted to write a book from a very young age. In fact, I opted against going to college so that I could hitchhike around the country gaining life experience and stories to write about, because you can’t write a book living a normal life. It has to be filled with depravity, right? I had always been a good storyteller, so of course I would be able to write an amazing book. Well, the thing I didn’t realize at the time, was that writing a book is time consuming, and I liked sitting around smoking pot. Also, telling a story and writing a story are two completely different skills.
I did the majority of my hitchhiking in the early 2000’s. It wasn’t until around 2008 that I began writing short stories of my escapades, and even then, they intermittent and not well thought out. It didn’t really get serious about writing until 2015. That’s when I really began putting pen to paper and thinking about structure and which stories to write about. It took me two and a half years to complete my first draft. 180,000 words handwritten. Don’t do this, use a computer.
I was so excited holding the large stack of paper in my hand. I had written a book. But when I began reading it from the beginning, I was appalled. Embarrassed really. I had let people read some of my early work thinking it was good, and upon rereading, I realized how horrible it was. Throughout the course of writing, I had developed my skills ten-fold and found my own style. The beginning of my book was just words on paper. It was not good. It was not going to work. No, it had to be rewritten.
I was serious about writing a better draft. I cut stories, reworked paragraphs, rewrote sentences; sometimes spending as much as 20 to 30 minutes before I finally figured out how I wanted it to sound. Nine months later, I had my second draft. 170,000 words, handwritten. Idiot.
I became aware that my memoir was too long. Who was I, Don Quixote? I also knew that it could be better, so in January of 2021, I sat down at my computer and began typing. In reality, I bought that dragon speaking software and spoke my story onto the computer. I put in time. Six hours a days, 5-6 days a week, but in less than 3 months I had my book. 150,000 words. It was ready, and it only took me 6 years. Watch out James Patterson.
Where did you do most of your writing for this memoir? And please describe in detail. I wrote most of my memoir in prison. Hence me writing it by hand. I would wake up, eat some oatmeal with peanut butter on it, drink a cup of coffee, and try not to fart while sitting on my top bunk with 80 other people crammed into a 70x30ft room. Has to be the worst writing environment ever, but I was relentless. While everyone around me was bitching about their baby’s momma and trying to hustle one another. I told myself I was going to use my time wisely and made the best of my situation. It was very uncomfortable though. My mattress was only two inches thick and my ass would constantly fall asleep while I leaned against my used pillow which had an unknown amount of drool soaked into it. Routinely, the guards would come in to count us and I’d have to abandon whatever sentence I was working on so I could jump down to my feet. Sometimes I’m surprised I got anything done.
Getting out of prison was the best feeling ever. The sense of freedom was so overwhelming that I had to run into a bathroom stall at the airport and just cry for a minute. Happy tears. Scared tears. I told many people how when I got out of prison, I was going to accomplish more within the first 2 years of my new life than I accomplished in all of my twenties, and I really feel I’ve made good on that promise. Among countless minor goals, I have already gotten my CDL, become a crew lead at my work, bought a brand new car, published a book, and purchased my very own condo. And that is where I wrote the final draft of my book. Sitting at my desk in my office, in complete silence and solitude. It felt so amazing. People always say that life isn’t easy. Hell, Ive said it a hundred times. But the thing I realize now, is that life IS easy, if you make good choices.
Out of all the specific memories you write about in this memoir, which ONE MEMORY was the most emotional for you to write about? And can you share that specific excerpt with us here. The excerpt can be as short or as long as you prefer, and please provide page numbers as reference. The most difficult portion of my book to write about was definitely my girlfriend’s suicide. The thing I’ve found about writing, is that you become so deeply immersed in the story. You aren’t just reciting a story that you’ve told before and saying a bunch of words. You are reliving it. Focusing on every little detail. Thinking about all of the different players emotions, not just your own. An example would be, I lost my toe in a lawnmower accident when I was 5 years old and nearly died. I have literally told this story a thousand times over and have never even contemplated crying about it, but when I wrote this story in my book, I found myself bawling my eyes out with the thoughts that my parents must have had as they rushed there little boy who was gushing blood all over them to the hospital.
I can hardly even talk about my girlfriend’s suicide, so writing it was beyond painful. Having to conjure back all those memories. Every time I got to that part in my next draft, it would take me multiple days to plow through it. Here is an excerpt of that story from my book.
I’d recently lost my license after getting a DWI on a snowmachine in the middle of the lake. For those of you who don’t know, a snowmachine is just a snowmobile, except people in Alaska don’t call snowmachines snowmobiles. We call them snowmachines.
Anyways, I was hitchhiking home from work when a maroon Ford Ranger swerved across two lanes of traffic to pick me up. Opening the door, I found a native girl all dolled up in a black dress with tears running off her baby-fat cheeks.
“Why is such a beautiful woman crying?” I asked, trying to cheer her up. She smiled through watery eyes but didn’t tell me.
“You want to go drink some beers with me?” she asked.
There were four of them in a bag by my feet and we stopped to drink them at a nearby park down the street from my house, but the moment we landed on a park bench, she received a phone call that took priority, and turning away from me, she spent the next fifteen minutes speaking in hushed tones.
I’m not sure what kind of tragedy had occurred in her life, but knowing she was struggling with troubling circumstances, I began rubbing her shoulders and back to relieve some of her tension. This led me to rub her thighs, which ultimately led her to hang up and ask me, “Will you take me back to your place and fuck me to sleep?”
Well, being the nice guy that I am, and not wanting to disappoint. I did just that. Thoroughly. All the way into the next morning.
This is how we met, but we were never supposed to be boyfriend and girlfriend. We’d spend nights together multiple times a week, but our relationship was one built on sex and money. I used her for money, and she used me for sex. She was 13 years older than me, wealthy, and I was her arm candy. Her little calendar boy as she called me. She would wine and dine me at the finest restaurants, and in return, I would fuck her like a champion.
The parameters of our relationship seemed simple enough, but that didn’t guarantee a healthy atmosphere. We fought all the time. Well, she fought all the time. Brought on partly because she was an alcoholic, and partly because deep inside, she really liked me, and it maddened her that I slept with other women. It came out when she drank.
There was an incident one night at my place. I lived on the third floor of a six-story apartment building. Upscale, gated entrance, elevators. It was near midnight. We were drunk in bed having sex. Good sex. Her on top, riding me cowgirl, but when she bore down, her hand caught something under my pillow. A little silk pair of red panties. An unknown present left for me by the last girl I had over. SHIT!
“What the fuck!” she barked. “What the fuck is this? Whose panties are these? Whose fucking panties are these?” She pushed them in my face. I didn’t know what to say. I was every bit as surprised as she was. So I didn’t say anything. “You mother fucker,” she whacked my face. “Get out of me. Get your fucking dick out of me. Did you even use a condom?”
A senseless question. She knew I didn’t. I never did. “Look Lydia, you know how this works. I never promised you a commitment ring.”
More obscenities. She ran away from me out of the room, and opening my front door, yelled at the top of her lungs, “Fuck you. I hate you, Mr. Justin Sturn. You’re a fucking whore and I’m leaving.”
At this point, I would have gladly seen her leave, except she was still butt naked as she fled down the hall. “Get back here,” I yelled after her, in the muzzled voice of a father not wanting to make a scene in public. Then more demanding once she didn’t obey. “Lydia, get back here, right now.”
“What the hell is going on out here?” Came the chubby blonde from next door, that I would end up boning a couple of weeks later due to this very incident.
“I’m sorry. My friend is drunk and angry, and she just ran out of my apartment naked.”
Overhearing the commotion and coming to her senses, Lydia burst through the fire stairwell door and conspicuously stormed her nude body past me and my aghast neighbor.
“You see? I’m really sorry. It won’t happen again,” I exasperatedly assured. Hoping that she wouldn’t call the police.
But even with all these chaotic moments, the sex was so good that after a couple of weeks of abstaining, we’d always find our way back to the bedroom.
Apart from how much time we spent together, we lived very concealed lives. She could have been married for all I knew. I didn’t ask about her undertakings and she didn’t question mine. We lived in the present, and when we weren’t fighting, we were completely homogenous. I enjoyed being with her. I enjoyed drinking with her. We were like-minded and she was apt to do whatever I wanted. Go hiking? Sure. Infiltrate abandoned buildings? Sure. Have sex in this parking lot? Sure. Lay around all morning drinking? Of course. But it was in these days that I began to recognize just how severe her alcoholism was.
She’d come over to my house and I’d remove her clothing to find abhorrent bruises across her body. Unspeakable bruising that covered the entirety of her legs, knees, hips, back, and shoulders.
“My God Lydia, what happened?” I’d console, caressing my hands over the frightful sites as she’d lay wincing in bed. I was sure she had a man on the side that was beating her, and her torture was enough to bring tears to my eyes. “Who did this to you, Lydia? Tell me who did this to you. I will fucking kill him,” I’d insist, physically and emotionally enraged.
But she never would tell. Her lips were locked with a key I did not own.
It eventually came to light that there was no abuser at all. She was the perpetrator. Her symptoms were self-induced through blackout states of drunkenness where she would inevitably fall. Horrendous collapses on ice and stairwells. Incognizant of how they occurred, other than she got drunk and woke up with them, she would remain embarrassingly taciturn.
I confided her affliction to a friend of mine and began learning about Natives and their notorious nature towards alcoholism. The deficiency in their DNA. The missing enzyme that helps them break down and process the corrosive liquid. After my enlightening lesson, I began paying more attention and witnessing the spirits’ adverse effects. I suddenly had the answer to my mysterious missing beer reports.
More and more often I’d been waking up to an empty refrigerator, and after recounting the night, I’d swear to myself that there was most of a twelve-pack left when we went to bed, but alas, in the morning, it would be gone. Then, upon cleaning up a couple of days later, I’d find crushed empty beer cans in the most random places. Under the couch cushions, in the plant pots, inside the vanity under the bathroom sink. She would deny drinking the beer. Protesting that we’d run out that evening, but she was the culprit all along. You see, while I was passed out, she would stay up drinking, all night. Then she’d get horny and arouse me with a hand in my boxers. “Fuck me,” would be the first sound I’d hear, only to open my eyes and find her face within inches of mine. It would scare the shit out of me, and if I didn’t do as directed, there would be hell to pay.
I never asked her to stop drinking. That wasn’t how we operated, but I did begin carrying less alcohol in the house, because if there was an overabundance, she would stay drunk for days at a time. Caught in a perpetual cycle of blacking out, waking up to grab a beer, only to black out again, and then wake up enough to grab another beer. It was a sad sight.
Even as unmistakably dysfunctional as our relationship was, after two years, I made the mistake of moving in with her. My lease was up and I needed a place to stay. With her having taken a new job on the North Slope where she’d be working two weeks, on two weeks off, I thought we could peacefully coexist, but her pH balance became more acidic the moment I settled in. This was substantiated by a lack of trust. Being gone two weeks at a time, and leaving me unsupervised, she was in constant grief over whether I was bringing women back to her bed. She had made her concern openly clear one night in a drunken argument.
Oddly, I wasn’t bringing women back to the house, and promised I never would. But when she would come home and faithlessly search my phone to find she was the lone woman I’d been texting. Disbelief became the prime motivator to drink herself into a stupor and hate me.
We’d been living together for three months when we planned a trip to go hunting up north. It had been a mild winter. There was hardly any snow on the ground. Only trace patches, frozen by the shadows of gullies and large trees, but it was still the middle of December, and cold.
Following a long day of trekking through the woods in search of grouse and ptarmigan, we ended up getting disoriented and lost. A thick fog had rolled in, cutting off our sight of the surrounding mountains and obscuring any landmark of use. Visibility was down to fifty feet and an indistinguishable thick forest lay in a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree direction. We were in a bad spot. The sun was dropping fast and getting caught out there was not an option.
Luckily, we happened upon our own footsteps. Little did we know we’d been walking in circles for miles, and not wanting to abandon the only familiar sight we’d seen in the last couple of hours. We perilously backtracked our own footprints, making it back to the truck just before dusk, hungry and exhausted.
On our way home, I picked up a bag of fried chicken. Lydia picked up a six-pack of Pete’s wicked ale. And entering the house in a fit of famished fatigue, we lazily kicked off all our snow gear onto the living room floor to eat and relax in the warmth.
Lydia managed the human resources department at her work. Some changes were taking place in regard to payroll, and she was scheduled to make an announcement the following week at a company-wide assembly. With public speaking not being her strong suit, she was nervous about the event. And wanting her to do well, I offered to write a speech for her. She exploited my help by sitting back slamming her six-pack while I did all the work. But in less than an hour, the writing was complete, her six-pack was finished, and we were headed for bed.
Sex wasn’t on the table that evening. Instead, we snuggled in spoon position with my arm wrapped around her side, but as we lay in comfort, the tip of my nose began to itch, which caused me to remove my arm in order to scratch it. As soon as I replaced my arm, my nose started to itch again, causing me to move my arm once more. This happened three times in a row, and not wanting to further disturb her with my movement, I laid my arm by my side to wait for future scratching. That’s when she went crazy.
“You bastard,” she jumped up, tearing the covers off her. “Get off me then, get away from me.”
“What? What’s wrong?”
“You’re trying to make space between us.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“You, you don’t love me.”
What the fuck? What the fuck was wrong with her? Everything was fine, and now this? She wasn’t even drunk. I mean, she did suck down a six-pack in an hour on an empty stomach, but that was nothing for her. I didn’t get it. “You’re being fucking stupid right now.”
My comment made her lunge, and jumping on my chest, she began pounding me like a gorilla. Two fists stamping down in unison, pummeling my face. I didn’t even react. I just laid there, taking blow after blow.
I’d never hit her, but I’d always suspected that her ex-husband did. My suspicions were confirmed when she stopped her assault mid-swing. With fists still raised in the air, she stared down at me. Baffled that I wasn’t restraining her or striking in return. I could tell this was a new experience, and that caused her fight to end.
“You asshole,” I lectured. “How could you do that to me? I did nothing wrong. And after I just helped you write that speech.”
She knew she was in the wrong, but as her eyes turned the color of agony and regret, she whispered out an, “I hate you,” before getting up and turning away.
“You know what? Fuck you. I’m so tired of you. You are stupid, and ugly, and I’ve had enough of this shit.”
As childish as my insults were, they had hurt her. She knew I didn’t think she was beautiful. I never told her, “You’re so beautiful.” A few simple words never uttered on my behalf. A few simple words she would have given anything to hear.
She left the bedroom, and the next thing I heard her say was, “I’m going to take your shotgun and go shoot myself on the corner, in my truck.”
Holy shit! My shotgun was lying in the living room next to all our snow gear. And it was still loaded. “No you’re not,” I yelled, getting up to grab the gun, but she slammed the door in my face. And when I tried to open it, she held onto the knob, barricading it from the other side. Playing tug-of-war for a minute and nearly tearing down the door in the process, I gave up and let go.
“I’m tired Lydia,” I yelled through the door. “I’m going to bed. Do whatever you want to do.”
I wasn’t worried as I crawled back under the blankets. She wasn’t going to do it. It was just a threat, but as I was laying in dark silence she opened the door. Just a crack. To peek inside. To see if my threat was true. The next thing I heard was the front door shut.
I got up and looked out the window to see her carrying my shotgun to the truck. Opening the door, she looked back and saw me. I put the flat of my hand up against the glass.
“This one’s going to make the papers Justin Sturn,” she yelled, slamming the door and driving away.
I laid back down in bed wide awake. I was worried. Not because she said she was going to kill herself. Of course she wouldn’t, but rather because I didn’t want her driving around drunk with my loaded shotgun. Not knowing what to do, I went to call her, but my phone had seemingly disappeared. She must have taken it on her way out. Then I heard a siren.
“Goddammit Lydia. What are the chances that that’s not directed towards you? Now I have to go out there and handle business.”
Slipping some clothes on, I quickly headed outside. I could see her truck pinned down by two cop cars a couple hundred feet ahead, and I trotted down the street with glee, knowing that this would be her third DWI which would constitute some jail time. Maybe enough jail time to wake her up. Get her to chill out on the drinking for a while. As I ran closer, a cop was standing in the middle of the street with his hand up.
“You can’t come down here right now.”
“Look, that’s my girlfriend in that truck,” I informed. “She’s got a loaded shotgun.”
“I know. She just committed suicide.”
* * *
His words hit me like a sledgehammer to the throat and I dropped to my knees.
“NOOO!” I cried out. “No, she wouldn’t.”
Wait… he’s lying, I tried to tell myself, but my brain knew better. He’s a cop. An authority. He wouldn’t make that up, and his words, “just committed suicide,” sunk deeper into my soul.
I looked at the truck and could see it. The splattered windows. “Nooo! Please no. Lydia?” I ran in a full sprint to save her but was intercepted by the other cop. Tears were streaming.
“No. Why? Lydia why? Why did you do it? Why didn’t I stop her? I could have stopped her. I could have gotten the gun. I didn’t think she would do it. That bastard cop. How could he just tell me like that? Oh, Lydia. My poor, poor Lydia. All you wanted was for me to love you, and I couldn’t show it. It’s my fault.”
It was one in the morning, but I stood there, jacketless, impervious to the cold, staring at her truck. She was in there. Dead. I tried not to think of what she looked like, and was all too glad that the cop had stopped me from viewing.
I couldn’t find my phone, but the officer let me use his to call my father. I hadn’t spoken to him in months.
Ring…Ring…Ring… Answering machine.
“Dad, please pick up the phone. I really need you right now. I really need you to pick up the phone.”
“Hello?”
“Dad, my girlfriend just killed herself.”
“Where are you at?”
Our conversation was limited on the way home. I couldn’t stop thinking of the past. The day she was thrown in the drunk tank. How her face lit up when I came to her rescue. Her smile. Like I was her knight in shining armor. Like everything would be all right. “Are you mad at me?”
I wasn’t.
The day I took a hack saw and cut the barrel off my shotgun. Lydia was short. Small arms. She never would’ve been able to reach the trigger if I hadn’t done that.
The day she randomly confessed to having eaten an entire bottle of pills.
The day she tried jumping out of the truck while going sixty mph. I had to grab her by the hair to pull her back in.
Why hadn’t I seen the signs?
There was a bottle of Jack Daniels in my father’s cabinet, but he wouldn’t let me have any. Instead, he sent me to bed sober with a few positive affirmations.
I was exhausted but couldn’t sleep. For hours I lay there in contemplation, regret, and sorrow, but I awoke early from the most vivid dream.
It had been daylight. I was standing at the intersection where Lydia had shot herself, except her truck was parked on the opposite side of the road. Slowly, I approached the truck and opened the door, surprised to find her sitting in the driver’s seat.
“What are you doing here?”
“What do you mean?” she asked, staring at me with a puzzled expression.
“I mean, you’re dead. You killed yourself right over there.”
She turned to look where I’d pointed, then turned back, her eyes staring directly into mine. A confusion, of how I could be so silly. She shook her head slowly. “No, it’s all right. Come on, get in.”
I got in and was instantly transported to my dad’s house. I was standing in his living room alone when there was a knock at the door. I answered it, and there was Lydia. Standing there. She stepped inside wrapping me up in a big hug, and that was it. That was my dream. It was as though she had picked me up, taken me home, and said her goodbyes.
I’ve never been much of a spiritual man, but at that moment, I knew for certain that there was some sort of afterlife.
“That’s the real reason I’m moving to Boulder,” I told Randy. “I just had to get out of there.”
There was a long silence before he spoke. “You sure know how to kill a good time kid. Thank you for telling me, but I’m sorry, I’m going to bail out on you and go to bed. Good night.”
I didn’t tell Randy how debilitating Lydia’s death had been for me. How I had agonized for months over it being my fault. The fateful night I passed out in my car and woke up with my Ruger laying cocked in my lap. Just how close I’d been to taking my own life. How nobody seemed to understand, and how even less wanted me around.
But tomorrow would be a new day. I’d be in Boulder before nightfall, and there, I could start my new life.