Good god on a bicycle. Two receipts from the Brown County Sheriff's Office. I actually paid a total of $388.50 bond for this guy I was going with - one of the good bad guys, to be sure, but still and all....not exactly the love of my life or anything like that. This is the guy of the Jack Daniels incident, mentioned below, which has cost me more money in the ensuing years by way of chiropractor therapy for the neck he used to bang my head into the ground when I said I was leaving town. Twenty years later, I make a similar mistake. One should never assume that a college education actually makes anybody any smarter!

So - a farewell card from Doug - "It's rare to find an open mind. I love you for the freedom you've inspired in me." Amazing note to get from a biker. I inspired freedom in HIM? Hmmmm. Doug stories - almost too numerous to tell. I'll tell one. He was doing some time in the county jail for some traffic snafu or something equally meaningless. The jail was having some construction work done on the top floor (of what was a three-five story building, I don't remember which). Doug figured out a way to get out through a ventilator vent in the ceiling into the construction area, down the side of the building, and completely away. He did this every night for the two weeks he was in there. Went to see his girlfriend and...... Well, we'll bring the curtain down tastefully on that scene. Told me he wasn't worried about getting caught sneaking out. He was worried about getting caught sneaking back in! Which he did. Every night.

I am writing this as a journal of disparate memories prompted by random items pulled from the folders of my life. The item for today is a matchbook from O'Shea's in Sheboygan, WI. It's a biker bar. One side reads Ride to Live, Live to Ride, printed around a winged skull. I don't know why I have it. I don't remember partying in Sheboygan.

This must be 1985. I'm leaving, and I get a note from a woman who says she enjoyed knowing me because I "allowed me to be me". These were biker women. A very strong bunch. Kinda like Cher's friends in MASK. The good bad guys. I wonder what happened to many of these people. I'm afraid the drugs were getting to them. I'm afraid some of them were lost. I've never returned to find out. I remember when crystal meth hit town, going over to some women friend's house one afternoon, and there they all were, high as kites, and macrame-ing everything in sight. They'd bought out the craft store. They had piles of magazines and patterns, and the living room was piled high with macrame twine. The women were shaky, nervous, couldn't stop talking, couldn't stop moving. I thought, I don't think I want to do this. I'm not too crazy about macrame'. Haven't liked it much ever since, actually. I did do some of that crystal - one last time, when I hadn't planned on it. Thought it was cocaine, actually. Until it burned. Up all night. Next day, tried to call my son in Madison. Couldn't find him. Ended up talking to a roommate of his for about an hour, babbling on and on. Embarassing to remember. Poor kid. Haven't touched it since. Gods! The 80's!

1983, and a card from another long lost friend. Nancy Crandall. She had just returned from South America, and was living in Boston "but without a stable address" as so many of us were in those days. We graduated college together. I know I saw her a year or so later, because she called the day after my first beating from a now long-gone ex-boyfriend. She helped me pull myself together, and told me that her ex used to beat her as well. We had all been in school together. So many things were not out in the open in those days. We didn't talk about it. I was embarassed. How did I have the bad taste to pick someone who would beat on me?

Those were my biker days. I had broken up with the "good" biker, and was now running with the "bad"guys. Well, not exactly. As I told my mother, we're the good bad guys, not the bad bad guys. Still and all.....It was the kind of culture that passed out little "Season's Greetings"cards that read, "Money's short, times are hard, here's your fucking Christmas card." On a sheet of paper that has some of the lyrics to Karma Chameleon (written out by someone other than myself), is a draft of a birthday card to one of the biker crowd. I said, "Dear Dusty, I don't know what to get you for your birthday. I wish I could give you freedom and happiness and the love and understanding of the lady of your choice. But I don't know that much magic. All I can give you is the wish."

Dusty and Tommy lived in a trailer behind my house, and were hiding out from the cops who were after them for driving warrants. Nothing any more serious than that.

I got beaten up because I was leaving, and my boyfriend knew I was never coming back. He didn't exactly beat me. He just banged my head against the ground over and over until I thought it was going to come off. Today I go to a chiropractor to deal with the damage he did which was not apparent until a few years ago. It was a Jack Daniels incident. I wish I knew wht happened to Nancy.