I will try to cover my employment with the US Postal Service, as well as my attempts at “higher education”. I worked as a floor clerk, a letter sorting machine operator, and finally as a maintenance mechanic/electronic technician for a total of ten years, beginning in 1975, when I took a summer job with the US Postal Service during my summer break between my sophomore and junior years. This was the same office that my father worked out of, and it certainly was not my dream job. I was supposed to quit work when fall term for my junior year began, but instead I continued full time swing shift work, while going to school full time during the day. Add to that time management challenge was trying to manage my alcoholism and drug addiction, and a mentally ill significant other, and it was pretty easy to see that this story was not to have a happy conclusion.
I ended up dropping out of college my senior year, with few credits left to secure to get a degree, and even fewer units of personal desire to do so. School had the potential to become all-consuming, and I probably needed sobriety to have any hope in the first place. So the best decision for a practicing alcoholic/addict is to keep the job I already had, and give up on the degree for a while. That was the second major life goal that I literally smoked and pissed away, after resigning from the ROTC my sophomore year. .
I met some really interesting characters while working at the main office of the US Postal Service. Some were incredibly damaged human beings, while there were a few diamonds who found a way to sparkle. Larry was a Vietnam veteran from the Marine Corps, and he would tell stories derived from the front lines of the war. He was involved in the fragging of an American Lieutenant, and that story disgusts me to this day. Greg worked in the maintenance department, and he would funnel stories and literature to me about the right-wing American patriot movement, its militias, and their plans to take over the country with the help of the US military when the right American president is elected (actually, a president a lot like Donald Trump). Paul and I spent a lot of time together after work, drinking and video gaming until all hours of the morning after work. But he had a dark side as well, and I suspected him of being the arsonist who set fire to his disabled Uncle’s home, which resulted in his uncle’s death. But I met some good people, as well, including David Valdivia, who I still am in contact with, mainly with him being my late father’s and my insurance agent. He left his postal career before the idea that he could do nothing else imprisoned him.
I was eventually promoted onto the maintenance team, where I started as a maintenance mechanic in 1980. What I had hoped to become was an electronic technician trainee. I did work on some older mechanical or electrical-mechanical mail sorting gear for a couple of years, which was quite boring. Because I was the new low guy on the totem pole, I was last in line for all promotions, no matter how qualified, or unqualified, I was for any new or more favorable positions that opened up.
About one year before the start of the maintenance position, I again I applied at the University of Portland Engineering Department for readmission, but they were still unimpressed with me because of my meteoric fall from academic grace 3 years earlier. I went from a being a scholarship student, with a strong B+ average in college, with advanced math placement, to a student who no longer showed up in class. I apparently did not show the right initial interest, because I was told to attend a community college for a year, to prove that I was really interested in going to school. So I attended Portland Community College, Sylvania Campus, for the 1979-1980 school year, to see if I still “had it in me”, getting straight A’s in the most difficult science and math courses offered. I also took some philosophy and religion based courses, knowing that they would help me with the University of Portland readmission project that I was undertaking. So now I get word that I am readmitted to U of P, at about the same time that my new maintenance position begins. Will this new marriage work?
Since I was a new hire into the Maintenance Department, headed by John Zimpleman, I was relegated to performing the least favorable duties that the Main Post Office had to offer. I was usually blowing dust off of equipment, tightening conveyor belts, replacing motors, resetting photocells, adjusting timing on the parcel sorting machine, or other sundry and mundane tasks that my precedents had dutifully performed prior to my “advancement” into their ranks. Right after I started, I was referred to the Employee Assistance Program, which was run internally to the US Postal Service. My attendance had been fairly poor up to this point while I was a clerk, so this was a carryover from those days, too. Larry and Mike tried to befriend me, and tried to get me to admit that drinking and/or drugging had something to do with the poor attendance, but I stood unaffected by their suggestions. I had to go to 5 AA meeting to meet the requirements of the EAP, which I did, but I had a quart of beer stashed under my car seat for immediate consumption after each meeting, so the “message” fell on carbonated ears.
Well, after I worked for less than a month on graveyard shift I KNEW THAT I NEEDED TO DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT. So, once again I combined work and school, and this time I knew that I was going to succeed, since Donelle was no longer in the picture, at least at this point (she was to return in the latter part of 1981), and I thus would be able to retain my focus, and not collapse into the confusing quagmire that I fell into after from trying to maintain a marriage with a troubled person, work and go to school at the same time, like I attempted 3-6 years previously.
From 1981-1983 I attended the University of Portland while working graveyard shift at the US Postal Service. I did not have time to drink alcohol excessively, except for on weekends. For the first year, I had great grades, perfect attendance, and a lot of hope for myself until I hit the last semester of my junior year. During the same period, Donelle came back into my life, after I found her hitchhiking along a busy road near my parents’ home. She had been released from Dammasch State Hospital, and placed in an apartment complex on Roethe Rd. near my parent’s old home near Rex Putnam High School. She was on Social Security Disability, and was receiving outpatient care as needed for her mental illness. I did not immediately resume my marriage with Donelle, however, and we were still legally separated since the original commitment to Dammasch.
Eventually, after several weeks of contact with Donelle, I was encouraged enough by her progress to want to resume our marriage. On the night before I was to move back in with her, my friend Paul, from the letter sorting machine gig, and I went out and really tied one on. While in a bar near his home in northeast Portland, we came upon two female co-workers from the LSM’s, Candy and Lorna. Candy was six foot tall, attractive, but outweighed me by forty pounds. Lorna was a redhead, of reasonable dimensions, but very plain looking. Paul had partied with both of them in the past, so he knew them quite well. I had no idea what was about to ensue, however.
In a near blackout state, I accompanied Paul, and the two women, over to Paul’s house, where we continued drinking, smoking pot, and playing some video games. I was ready to go to sleep, when Paul took off into the kitchen with the two women. When he returned, I asked him if I could sleep on his bean bag chair. With a big grin he proclaimed
“Why hell yes, you can. But first, you get to pick which woman you are sleeping with tonight!”
“Umm, Paul, I am not really prepared for this one. Uh, uh, uh, Candy, would you like to stay and talk with me until I fall asleep?”
The truth be known is that I had no desire for either woman. They were not appealing to me in the least, yet I selected Candy out of some sort of need to protect the woman’s feelings. Candy was quite pleased to join with me in Paul’s living room, where the bean bag chair was located. Lorna accompanied Paul into his bedroom, and they closed the door behind them. I was still quite drunk, yet I felt a little self-conscious. We could hear laughter and raucous activity coming from Paul’s room, and we figured out what must be going on. Somehow, without me remembering exactly how, my pants disappeared off of my body, as well as all of Candy’s clothes.
I awoke the next day, naked, and laying beside Candy, who was still asleep. I got up, wrote a note apologizing to Candy, and stated that I had made a mistake, and to please accept my forgiveness for having sex with her while drunk (while sober, I NEVER WOULD HAVE CONSIDERED SUCH A PARTNER FOR LOVEMAKING). I felt diminished somehow, for having sex with her. For the next two months, she chased after me at work, called me at home, and eventually gave up, when I never returned her calls, and continued to spurn her. Some disparaging writing ended up on the walls of the bathroom stalls in the Post Office women’s bathrooms about me and my penis, which brought huge laughs to the janitorial core, and, eventually, to the maintenance core, who shared the same locker room. The joke was that Candy might be better suited to maintaining the Postal Service’s equipment, where blowing the dust off of equipment was a nightly endeavor. Ouch, emotionally, for both of us. I felt quite embarrassed, and it took way too long to live that one down. I also felt bad, because even though I did not technically cheat on my wife, I was feeling like I had.
My self-destruct cycle resumed, and I restarted my active party mode, with my attendance at work tanking. My attitude at even being there was in the dumps, as well. I moved Donelle into the apartment in Milwaukie, and I joined her there, much to the disappointment of my parents, who continued to warn me about the potential for another horrible outcome. She, of course, had that breakdown, resulting in the rape by Dan Dietz alluded to earlier.
While living across the street from Donelle’s apartment on Harrison in Milwaukie, after her breakdown, my father came to live with me for about three months. He had been kicked out of his house by my mother, after she found out about his ongoing affair with the company nurse. I was not too impressed with my life and my family, having an insane wife, and my parents marriage in a state of collapse, and now my own father spending time in my own apartment, when he wasn’t sleeping at his girlfriends’ home. My new normal was anything but normal, yet I seemed to have few choices. Dad eventually had to end his relationship with the nurse, and moved back to his own home. I had warned him that I would not be too friendly with him if he left my mother, so it would be best if he could work things out with her. Donelle was kicked out of her apartment across the street, for being too disruptive during her breakdown. Her neighbors did not appreciate her talking loudly to herself at all hours of the day and night, as well as her bizarre behavior. I took her in, but it was really difficult for me, as well. Her middle of the night screams and crying and carrying on were too much for me, as well. I was finally able to force her to go back to her psychiatrist, and get on the latest medications for schizophrenia, which helped her immensely.
We decided to move to Cedar Hills Apartments, the same apartment complex that Randy Olson was living in. I quit going to school once again, this time leaving the Electronic Engineering/Computer Engineering degree on the garbage pile, with just one year to completion. My addictions resumed in earnest, with my introduction to Gary Graham, a local cocaine dealer and serious party monster and new friend. Donelle was becoming too burdensome, demanding to go out almost every night to “party” and listen to live rock and roll music, and she eventually collapsed into yet another “nervous breakdown” by early 1983, so I was between a “rock” and a hard place. I finally attempted to “kick her out” of our apartment, which she initially agreed to go, to hang out with her new “rock and roll” friends. I was already finished with enabling and supporting her mental illness, and I was extracting myself from years of guilt and shame around my relationship with her and her illness.
One day, when she came back to the apartment after a night of partying with her new friends, I insisted that she get all of her clothes, and leave my unit for good. She balked, and a yelling match ensued. I opened the door, and pushed her out of the door, after she started pushing at me. She called the police, and we were both arrested for Class C felonious assault. Randy picked me up within two hours of incarceration, but Donelle had no one to bail her out, so she sat in the jail overnight. We both had to appear in court the next week, and the charges against both of us were dropped, but she was advised to not step foot into my apartment again without permission.
I met Cindy Dahl, a letter sorting machine clerk, in 1983. I was invited out to Lung Fungs near 82nd avenue, and another letter sorting machine clerk introduced us one night. This was during the period of time during the final nervous breakdown that I could tolerate of Donelle’s. It is a funny thing, I had no intention of going to bed with Cindy, but that night, we hit it off so well that she came home with me that evening, and we had a wildly great time together. We slept in the same bed, and bedroom, that I shared with my estranged wife, who was now going out on her own, and not coming back some evenings. I never asked where she was, because I did not want to face one of my Toxic masculine internal stories that I told myself, that if my wife ever cheated on me, I would kill her. Well, Donelle walked through the door that very next morning, while we were still in bed, and grabbed some clean panties out of the top drawer of her dresser, smiled, said hello, and left. That old toxic need to punish a cheating wife just miraculously disappeared, when I saw that we both appeared happier by our final separation from each other.
My relationship with Cindy did not last long, however She tried to get me to hook up with both her and her very attractive female roommate, but I was too insecure to even consider threesomes and the complex possibilities of interrelationship. After getting an assignment to travel to Norman, Oklahoma for three weeks more of training, Cindy told me that she was getting her breasts enhanced during the period of time that I was gone. She was warm to me before I left, but when I came back, she wanted nothing to do with me, and I did not even get a chance to look at, let alone feel, her new chest ornaments.
All I Can Do Is Cry, by Savoy Brown
I had learned a lot about computer and electronic engineering up to this point, and my new education placed me well ahead of most of my peers, and caused some concern among some co-workers who thought that I might try to parlay this education into a pogo stick to jump over their place on the seniority roster. Shortly after joining ranks with the maintenance department, I was sent to Normal Oklahoma for training on troubleshooting and repairing some of their letter sorting equipment. This was the first time that I had ever flown on an airplane, and it was my first great adventure by myself away from home. I stayed in the University of Oklahoma’s student dormitory, which was shared with the USPS during the summer months for all students. My roommate was Bill Y of New York City, who also was a maintenance mechanic/electrician from that area. He happened to be a black man, and he is the first black person I ever had any relationship with, other than through basketball adventures throughout Portland that I used to engage in. Bill was damaged goods, being a veteran of Vietnam, and still suffering from some very concerning aggressive tendencies and attitudes. But, somehow, he held himself together.
One Saturday evening, six of us Post Office Maintenance Trainees drove a substantial distance from Norman to a bar in Oklahoma City. There were five African-Americans, including my roommate Bill, and Jermaine, from New Jersey (who had a huge bag of weed that he just grabbed into and freely distributed to all who liked to partake) and me, the one pale faced party warrior. I loved being with these guys, and I have never experienced more camaraderie and mutual respect than running with this group of men. There was a bonding that I just did not understand, but I later learned one of the fundamental tenets of their group energy.
When we arrived, the parking lot was nearly full. It was a huge club, with all sorts of action going on outside, and, I was to see, inside as well. We found a decent parking spot, and all walked up to the door together. Bill led the way, and the greeter held us all up, because of me. They did not allow “white people” into their place. Bill explained to the man that I was part of their team, and I was not a “white person”. The door man told Bill that he would have to register me with the club, and so I was signed into the club, with the other five people with me signing the same paper, vouching for me. I was told that I was not to dance with any of the black girls, and to keep with my group so as to keep the peace. The place had several hundred black people partying and carrying on, and I got more than my share of searching, and many times, dirty looks. Somehow I kept my cool, and paranoia would not have helped me that evening. I settled in eventually, and enjoyed a couple of strong drinks. Bill went outside, to share a joint with Jermaine, while the rest of us hung out to one side of the dance floor.
Suddenly, Bill came back in, with Jermaine in tow, and started waving his gun around in the air. He started yelling very loudly, proclaiming
“I don’t want anyone to get hurt here!”
and authoritatively stated that someone had blocked our car in, and unless they moved their car immediately, someone was going to get hurt. My other three friends surrounded me, and we all started walking to the door, with the express intention of leaving without anybody slowing us down. A parting of the crowd, like Moses with the Red Sea, occurred, and we made it outside, awaiting the offending driver to move his vehicle. Two tough looking dudes came outside, with a following entourage of onlookers, and moved the car, all the while with Bill still waving his firearm in the air.
The offending car was moved, we all piled into the rental car, and Bill assumed the driver seat, laying the gun in his lap. We tore out of the parking lot like a bat out of hell, and we all watched to make sure that we were not followed. Bill later expressed one of his fundamental values, which was that we have to be willing to lay our lives on the line for our friends, and make whatever sacrifice that is necessary to protect each other from danger. I began to really understand why I had never felt so safe and protected while with this group of men. This was the civilian equivalent of a small military squad in a war zone, which, apparently, Bill still felt that he was in. I have never felt this way with any other group of people in my life. It was exhilarating, fun, bonding, challenging, hair raising, and enlightening to run with this group for three solid weeks. I was someone I had never been before, respected, accepted, and honored as being a part of a family, where we were accountable for each others’ success and safety. I was accepted into the field of human energy where I was unconditionally accepted as a brother, and a friend.
Well, I returned back to the everyday, boring world that I had left from after the training. I still worked graveyard shift, and I continued to drink heavily every morning after work until around noon. And my life entered full collapse mode with myself, and with my employer. My employer was fed up with my poor attendance at work, and I had already lapsed into the severe depression and anxiety, and alcohol and pot were just not getting the job done. It was suggested that I try the Physicians and Surgeons Hospital Care Unit for alcoholic recovery by our EAP (employee assistance program). After weighing my options, which I really did not have any, I accepted alcoholic recovery as a good option, and checked into the unit in April of 1984. The first two days, I basically spent in bed, while they detoxed me from any physical addiction symptoms through the use of the drug Librium. That first day I was, basically, unconscious, by the request of the attending physician.
I spent thirty days in the unit. I met many other people who were also attempting recovery. My roommate was Tom Cravens, a man who had spent more than his share of time in trouble with the law, and with his drinking. He became like a big brother to me while I was there. Tom told me about his relationship with Steven Kessler and the 1968 Oregon State Prison riot. That information seemed inconsequential at the time, but Kessler’s life wreckage would subsequently impact my life directly, in 1986-1987. I befriended an ex-Hell’s Angel’s motorcycle gang member by the name of Scott. Herm Gilliam (now deceased) of the 1977 Portland Trailblazer championship team was there. So I was not alone in recovery, and it eventually became a unique, healing experience. I almost came to regard the group therapy, talking sessions, and attempts at personal inventory to be like taking a vacation from life. My personal inventories were pretty weak, and appeared to be only people pleasing efforts, which was the best that I could do at the time. My favorite past time was smoking cigarettes, and I was up to four packs a day of smoking Player menthol 100’s, probably the most toxic kind of cigarette on the market.
Claire was my personal counselor, and she also happened to be a Four Square Church minister, so I sure got a lot of Christian slanted recovery information, as well. I was not too big on Christianity when I got in there. Claire was an attractive woman, and that alone helped to keep my attention focused on the good messages that she was trying to communicate to the groups, and to me as an individual. I was not very fertile ground, with fairly shallow soil at the time. I had spent about a month in intensive study of Christianity in December of 1980, spurred by the course work of a University of Portland Theology class that I was required to attend. which somehow had kept me sober for close to a month, as well. But as has been already mentioned in another section, I met three drug worshiping rich brothers in January of 1981 whose access to the alternative “higher powers” of highest quality drugs captivated me, and that first adult Christian leaning quickly dissolved.
Yes-Changes
The last three days I was at the Care Unit, I started to feel the stress of impending release. It was easy stay clean and sober in the hospital, but the thought of carrying a new attitude towards sobriety that had not yet really taken root into the real world was quite threatening. We were set up with phone numbers of fellow graduates, and the internal counselors, just in case we were to need any support. We had a family meeting the night before release, where the patients all had their family members attend, so they could get a little crash course in how to live with the recovering alcoholic. My parents attended, and I learned something about my father that was pretty disturbing. My father had internalized my struggle so much, that he thought that he needed to stop alcohol, that somehow I was in the Care Unit because of his drinking. It took the therapist a long time to explain to my father that the drinking problem was my own, and not his. My therapist noted to me later that she saw that my father showed characteristics of a man attempting to live his life through his son, which was why my addictions and alcoholism impacted him so severely.
I was discharged back to my home that I shared with Randy Olson, I was regularly attending Hinson Baptist Church at the encouragement of another Care Unit graduate. I started attending AA meetings yet again at the Alano Club on Lovejoy, as a direct result of my attendance at the Care Unit. Since I live only 500 yards from the Alano Club, I did not have too many excuses for not attending meetings, but I found a few, anyway. Randy continued his beer drinking behavior undeterred by my sobriety, which suited me just fine.
Alas, I had to return back to work, which I loathed, but went ahead and gave it my best shot. After repeatedly being denied an opportunity to take the same training that my peers in the electronic tech core were receiving, I applied directly to the training facility in Norman Oklahoma to challenge one of the preliminary courses in computer logic that the technicians were required to pass in order to move forward. My local employer decided I needed some training in maintaining the manual letter sorting machine, so they sent me back to Norman in May of 1984, which is a significant date because I also had just one month of sobriety at this point, having just “graduated” from the Care Unit.
The national US Postal Service Training Center was located, adjacent to the University of Oklahoma campus, and we had full access to their campus and sports facilities, which was awesome. I passed the regular training with flying colors, and on the last day was my test scheduled for the class challenge. I breezed through the written portion of the test, on computer logic and electronic design, by scoring 70 out of 70 correct. The practical portion of the exam I was quite concerned about, as it referred to equipment that I had no training or background on. I only needed to answer one question out of the last 6 correctly to successfully challenge this course, and I could not do it. It was right there that I decided that when I got home to Portland, I was going to get drunk. I called my friend Craig, and requested that he meet me at the airport to pick me up. I WAS BUYING!! As Spirit would have it, my Care Unit counselor Claire Z got onto our airplane on our layover in Denver, and she rode the trip back to Portland on my plane. I avoided her like she had the plague, and I never let her know that I was on the airplane. The problem here is that I had already said YES to relapse, NO to sobriety, and to talk with Claire would have helped me stay sober, which was not what I wanted.
Looking at my history, I saw that I often resisted its healing Mystery
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