Joan of Arc of My Soul

After the shock of Nanette taking Patricia and leaving I went on a whirlwind tour which took me from Los Angeles to Seattle, to Dallas, until finally I stopped long enough to catch my breath back in New Orleans. I always seemed to return to that city. I went to my job the next morning and demanded what was owed me. Andy, the owner took one look at me and decided he would play the game of "I'll-send-it-to-you," and pulled cash out of his pocket and paid me off, with a bonus for coming up with something in the week preceding that saved him some money. He was a good man.

I was a street person again and that meant I did things I wouldn't normally do to get cash for the booze and the drugs, but it wasn't until I hit Dallas, Texas that I found myself shoving thin, hollow rods into my veins on a regular bases. The speed I found there very few people knew about. Well they knew about it they just didn't understand its multitalented use. But this guy I met in the print shop I found work in knew and turned me on. Did he ever turn me on. The drug of choice? Ritalin. What? you say, isn't that what they give . . . Yes, it is given to kids (mostly boys who just want to be boys) to calm them down, but when dissolved in water and drawn up in a syringe and then shoot into a waiting vein . . . It is NOT kid stuff.

I survived that, however. You notice all the crap I survived? Was I leading a charmed life, or what, especially when it came to surviving? Not so charmed like when it came to hanging on to the good things which came my way and treated me with respect and even love. I was like the song about the snake who was injured and cold and this beautiful woman happened by and he begged her to take him in. She was afraid, but after the snake said he would harm her she relented and gave the snake shelter. After the snake was warm and safe he bit her. When the woman asked why he had done that after all she had done for him, the snake replied, "But you knew I was a snake." In a large portion of my life I was that damned snake

But when I got to New Orleans I met my Joan of Arc of my soul, and although I tried to bite her more than once, she had the antidote for the bite . . . Love . . . This time I was starved for love . . . Two strangers met, both needed the other . . . After thirty-five-years we still need each other . . . Dorothy (Dottie) Jean Bolton . . . That's her in the graphic at the top of the page.

My Novels:

Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742