We drove around to a few places that afternoon. The first was a real dive, but the second was quite nice. It was a walkup over a garage, in a residential neighborhood about a half mile from Towson High. It was an older neighborhood, with a detached garage, and the owners of the property had made an apartment for an uncle over the garage. He had moved into a nursing home, and the apartment was available. It was about a thousand square feet footprint, but taking into account the kneewalls for the 12/12 roof, actually was about only 800 square feet. It had a small kitchenette and dining area, a small living room, and a small bedroom with a three-quarters bath. It even had a stackable laundry. I didn’t think twice about it. I wrote a check for the first and last month’s rent, along with a security deposit.
I was responsible for electric, but they handled water, sewer and taxes. They would call Ma Bell and have phone service restored. I would move in on Monday afternoon.
As I expected, none of this sat all that well back at the Buckman residence that night. Mom refused to allow it, but I would let Dad handle that. Hamilton was torn between his delight that I was leaving and his demand to be allowed to do this also. I ignored it all, and scrounged up some boxes to move stuff in. Dad would take off work Monday afternoon early, and help me pack and move. What I didn’t tell anybody, even Dad, was that I would come back at lunch on Tuesday, while everybody else was gone, and pack up the stuff in our room that was actually mine but that Hamilton had claimed was his. In particular, I wanted my collection of Analog: Science Fiction and Science Fact magazines, which would become quite valuable in future years. He couldn’t begin to claim them, since my name was on the subscription. I knew he would scream, but I really didn’t care. The little asshole shitcanned it all when I went off to college, along with anything else I left behind.
I moved in Monday afternoon, and promptly made a list of crap to buy at Woolworth’s. That was the original ‘five and dime’ store, and back in ’71 nobody east of the Mississippi had ever heard of Wal-Mart. I bought cleaning supplies and a set of sheets for the regular size bed. It was a bit lumpy, but it was better than a couch, while having to lock away my brother at nights. I cleaned that little apartment until I was exhausted, and then went to bed without even bothering to make it.
Ever since I came back I had wondered if I was going to have to relive my life in every excruciating detail, as well as put up with parents who treated somebody old enough to be their parent as a child. Turns out I didn’t have to. I don’t know who won. The battle sucked.
Chapter 17: Independence
Well, it sounded like a good idea at the time…
After all, isn’t a swinging bachelor pad the dream of every high school kid in America? Wild parties every night! Nobody to tell you NO! You can drink and do drugs and get laid whenever you want! Right?
Well, maybe yes and maybe no. The getting is one thing, the keeping is another. For one thing, somebody has to pay for this. I was figuring that I could live in the apartment and be independent for about $6k a year. Figure another grand or two for additional living expenses — wine, women, and song. I had roughly $50k in the brokerage account. At 10 % appreciation a year, which was the average market growth during the period, that didn’t cover the $6k. I was doing much better than that, of course, but I still needed to conserve my funds. Fortunately, I knew what was going to happen to Ling-Temco-Vought and Gulf+Western, and Intel had their IPO earlier this year. Still, I needed to watch my pennies. It wasn’t going to be parties every night.
My big dilemma with my funds was that I needed to conserve and build my cash for the two upcoming events which would make me a multi-millionaire. In 1973 oil was going to skyrocket, and in 1979 silver was going to go even higher (relatively speaking) before collapsing back. The more money I managed to make and save now, the more I would be able to leverage then. I figured I could conservatively manage ten-fold returns on every dollar in 1973, and more than that in 1979. I was reading the Wall Street Journal and Fortune religiously.
Another reason was that all of this took time. Time to cook, time to do wash, time to clean house. This was all on top of time to do homework, time to run and exercise, and time to go to aikido class. I even contemplated quitting the pizzeria, to free up some time, but at least that provided some income. The only way to handle it was through rock solid discipline and time management. The average sixteen year old would never be able to handle it. By now I must be at least seventy, depending on how you count it. I had discipline to spare.
The one thing I knew I didn’t want to do was let everybody know I had moved out of my house. If the rest of the school thought I had my own place, I would be under never ending pressure to be the party spot every weekend and most weeknights. Leaving aside that this didn’t actually appeal all that much to me, telling people no would piss them off. Far simpler to not let them know. It would come out eventually, but better later than sooner.
Not that I was going to live as a monk. Tuesday, after school, I met up with one of the guys I knew, one of the Vo-Tech crew who looked like he was better at robbing liquor stores than buying from them. Really, he was a very nice guy who just liked to ride and repair motorcycles. He ended up owning a Harley-Davidson franchise and did very well for himself. James ‘Tusker’ Tusk was in the tenth grade like me, but had been held back a year, and looked older anyway. I had him drive his car over to Towson Liquors with a list and a fifty. He drove back to school and we transferred it to my trunk. I let him keep the change and a couple of sixes of beer. I let him think I was stocking up for a party.
I carried it up to the apartment covered with an old blanket, and then poured myself a shot of Black Velvet. It had been a long time since I had a drink! Felt good. After that I made myself a Seven & Seven, and did my chores around the place. The biggest problem with living as a bachelor, which I remembered from my first go-around, was that if I made a nice meal, I always ended up with leftovers. All my recipes were family sized.
The one person I knew I was going to have to tell was the one I was most nervous about — Jeana. I wasn’t worried about her telling anybody, but she might not be all that thrilled about a boyfriend that independent. Certainly her parents wouldn’t be! Dating is one thing, when the only place you can be alone with a girl is the back seat of the car in winter. A boyfriend with his own apartment is quite a different matter!
It had to be faced, however. The Monday after Thanksgiving, the same day I was moving into the apartment, Jeana told me that she would be able to come over to the house for dinner the following weekend. This was after my offer to her to bring her over at Thanksgiving, which she couldn’t attend. I ducked it by saying I would have to check with my mother, and then ducked it again later in the week, by saying we had guests coming in from out of town and we would have to wait. She just nodded in understanding. The following Monday, she asked again.
I was going to have to face this at some point. We had been dating three or four weeks already, and Jeana had already accepted when I asked her to the Christmas Dance at the school. I asked if she wanted to see my house that afternoon. Her eyes lit up, and after school I helped carry her books to the Galaxie and we took off. I drove over to the house, but parked across the street, and didn’t move to get out.