School wasn't the only part of my life that was falling apart. In 1993 I was still delivering pizza (different place), with no real goal in life. That same summer, I went home to ask my parents for some life advice and discovered my mother had moved out. My sister was the one who told me. It was, I believe, the only time I ever drank any of my father's alcohol. After I was convinced she was not pulling my leg, I went right to my dad's liquor cabinet and poured myself a tall glass of Kentucky Gentleman. I finished that glass and was working on a second when my boss at Pizza Hut called and asked if I could come in and run the kitchen that night. I did, although I vaguely remember my manager asking me "stop crying so much in front of customers" as the room (and my world) spun wildly out of control.
A few weeks later, I rekindled a relationship with Susan, another girl I had gone to school with. I first met Susan at a 7th grade Halloween party (she later told me I was the "best breakdancer and coolest skateboarder there"). Although we never dated seriously during high school, we had plenty of common friends and hung out together frequently. While I had been pissing money away at community college, she had been attending college an hour away. Shortly after reconnecting, she told me she had a spare bedroom at her place that was available for rent. With literally nothing going on in my life, I took her up on her offer, and the two of us moved in together the day before my 20th birthday.
My relationship with Susan was different than any relationship I'd ever had before. There was physical attraction, sure, but it was also like hanging out with my best friend every day. I think maybe both of us were waiting for the fun to wear off, but it never did. (Spoiler: still hasn't.) We ate together, partied together, went on little road trips together... just had fun together every single day. The same year my parents got divorced, Susan's father passed away. We turned to each other for support.
We (along with a third roommate) spent the fall of '93 and the spring of '94 working and going to school. I had graduated from pizza to Long John Silver's while Susan worked part time at a local print shop. In early '94, Susan's mom got a life insurance settlement and gave Susan a debit card connected to her bank account "for emergencies." Buying CDs from pawn shops, a pair of bicycles from Walmart at three in the morning, and regular midnight runs to roadside restaurants were just some of the things we declared as "emergencies." Frankly, the bank account was so full that these paltry purchases were never even noticed.
We had a great time living together and working and partying for six months straight until we realized in the spring of '94 that both of us were about to flunk out of school. This was compounded by the fact that I had walked into journalism class and was blindsided that my professor was replacing me as the editor of the yearbook. I believe the words "unreliable" and "procrastination" were mentioned.
So, as the story goes, I went home after a long night of frying fish and hush puppies that night and told Susan we needed to decide what we were going to do with our futures. I pulled out a quarter and said if it were to land on heads, we would cut back on the partying, put our noses to the grindstone, and salvage what we could of the semester.
"And what if it's tails?" she asked.
I didn't really have an answer. "I've always wanted to see the Grand Canyon," I replied.
The quarter came up tails. The next morning at 8 a.m. we climbed into her car and headed out west with a map in the glove compartment, two suitcases in the trunk, and a debit card linked to her mother's bank account. No cell phones or GPS units back then. I don't even think we told anybody we had left. The only other thing we had was a cheap camera we bought at a convenient store.
Turns out, the Grand Canyon is pretty easy to find. While we were there, I climbed over a security fence on the edge of the canyon and got kicked out by a park ranger. After that, we decided we wanted to see Carlsbad Caverns too, so then we went there. At some point, we went to go try and find Area 51. We stopped at every roadside attraction we passed, including Meteor Crater, Bedrock City USA, Cadillac Ranch, and even went out of our way to see Highway 666. At one point I got stopped by a cop for "disrespecting" a tree. Then I remembered I had a great aunt who lived in Tucson, so we looked her up and stayed a night or two with her. While we were in Arizona, the debit card mysteriously stopped working. Susan called her mom and the conversation was brief.
"Come home."
We spent the next night in Albuquerque, New Mexico at some shit hole motel that was painted pink and made up to look like a castle. The next morning we picked up a newspaper and the headline read "Kurt Cobain Found Dead." So was our fun.
And that's how I spent my last official spring break.
At some point in my life -- potentially in a sitcom -- I had heard that students could withdraw from school without penalty if their roommate passed away. When we got back to Oklahoma, I called the office and tried it, even adding a fake sniffle or two to the conversation. When they asked me what my roommate's name was, I froze, and then hung up. Hadn't really thought that one through. Instead, I paid for an entire semester's worth of WF ("withdrew while failing") grades on my official transcript.
With no jobs and no school, there wasn't much of a reason for us to stay in that podunk college town. We ditched our other roommate and moved back to the city. Like I said, I kept waiting for things to stop being fun, and they never did. I quickly realized that I was never never going to have as much fun with another person as I was having with Susan, and I wanted it to last forever. A few weeks later, the "Easter Bunny" left behind a puzzle that, when solved, spelled out "W-I-L-L Y-O-U M-A-R-R-Y M-E". She said yes, and the fun hasn't stopped.
