July 21-27 Hell is a broken down air conditioner

Monday July 21st
Went to the heart clinic today, surprise of surprises I've lost 5 pounds and even more astonishing is that my sodium levels were right where they should be (with all the cheap food I've been eating.)?!? Afterward I bought a head of red cabbage, shredded lettuce and carrots and I'm planning to eat nothing but salads for a week.

I'm getting more and more paranoid,edgy and impatient. My shoulders and face are beginning to spontaneously bleed again (from nerves) and the night sweats have come back.

I keep telling myself things have to get better.

...Even though I've stopped believing that long ago. Like a tease holding a piece of candy just outside the reach of a toddler's hand, fate waits for me to reach for hope, and laughs as it's pulled away when I almost have it in my grasp... I've stopped reaching for it.

11:04PM... I think I just figured out why losing my car is hitting me so hard. When I'm in that car-I'm free, the car and I are one, and I'm my old self again. I get into it and the horsepower of the car, the great looks of that car, the freedom of that car embodies me the way I was in my carefree days before the attack. When I didn't have a care in the world, and I had the money, the looks, the talent, and the business savvy to take on the world.

That's all gone now and I feel like I'll never-ever get it back. The acceleration makes up for my mangled and beaten leg. The "Inferno Red" paint and the styling represent the body I once had that turned heads and earned compliments wherever I went. The envious stares of other drivers at that beautiful red convertible with the top down represented the confidence and the drive I once had, but now I've lost it. I think that if I lose that car, that part of me (the best part of me) will be lost with it.

Family members that once discarded me years ago as a pervert or worse, never even saw the best years of my life, and if I told them about them, they wouldn't believe me. Sometimes I have trouble believing it myself. Judge Judy says on the subject of lying, that if you tell the truth, you don't have to have a good memory. My problem is I don't remember half the lies I've told to an already judgmental and dismissive family to cover what my real life was actually like.

On my quarterly visits to San Diego, I would've loved to visit my brother at the naval base, just to see his astonishment at what a year's worth of gym training and a few unnamed and unmentioned injections did. Can you imagine going within half a mile of your brother and knowing you weren't welcome to visit? Unfortunately that muscled body didn't come with a warning label that said that if I didn't become a slave to it, it'd turn into a grotesque lump of blubber in revenge...

I shake my head that they never questioned where it came from when I'd send a thousand here or a thousand there at the mere hint that they needed it, or sent lavish Christmas and birthday gifts. Oh I'd hint at it every once in a while with photos of the penthouse, or the customized British Sports cars, and luxury convertibles, but they didn't catch on or wonder. They'd discard the evidence of their own eyes and then shake their heads and turn their backs... poor Jet is making up his ridiculous stories again... Now I regret being so camera shy in those days, preferring to be on the other side of the shutter of that Nikon I'd carry with me wherever I went.

The very thought that I'd have to prove it to them, is telling of what they think of me.

I don't think I can deal with that anymore, or the loss of my beloved car; and as the days dwindle down to a precious few and I have to give that car back and know that it (like my pride)is going to be sold at some auto auction for a fraction of its value... I don't think I can bear to think about it... and it scares me to think that... God, I'd sell my soul if I could find the strength to cry-to experience that grief and the release it'd bring.

Everything that once said I was here on this earth is disappearing right before my eyes. Two houses where I grew up (one across from the Air Force base, the other across the parkway from the airport where I got my nick name) have been torn down decades ago. The airport where my mother worked as a waitress in the coffee shop, where I playfully ran freely up and down the halls day in and day out, and spent hours watching the planes and then jets take off and land has been torn down too.

The Moon High School class ring that never left my finger for as long as I can remember was lost uncountable months ago; My brain so numbed by this ordeal and by Cymbalta that I don't even mourn its loss. It's like if I look behind me, I see a wave of erasers trying to engulf me, getting ever closer, and someday soon they'll catch up to me, and like some nondescript factory worker who lived in the 1890s, the only evidence that I was here will be some weathered tombstone that no one could read, even if they could figure out who I was... and I'll be as nonexistant as I was before I was born, in limbo.

And what of my art? The pieces that started my career, were beautiful portraits of civil leaders and common folk, and landscapes of homes long gone on the walls of two non-descript McDonald's. Both of which have been torn down and replaced, leaving no evidence that they'd ever existed there, like Illustrations of obsolete refrigerator compressors and VCR components for long-forgotten appliances that also are long discarded, along with the repair manuals that serviced them. Those line drawings were the bread and butter of an unnoteworthy art career.

The movies I did the camera work on, have all been re-edited and renamed, so that the new owners wouldn't have to pay me royalties for them. Like a deer in oncoming headlights, I see that wave of erasers catching up to me, careening headlong at me and I feel nothing... I'm too numb from everything I've lived through to feel anything... everything that I once was has almost all ceased to exist...

My writing at BlogCritics still exists, telling people I was here... but so do the snide remarks, derogatory and cutting, that my loyal readers also see that were left by those who would discredit my point of view, but never write articles of their own so others just as ignorant can do the same to them.

I can't sleep tonight because of the heat
I can't sleep because of the fear of nightmares
I can't sleep because of the flashbacks.

I'll stay awake until I fall asleep finally from exhaustion...
...then I'll wake up screaming... again.


Tuesday July 22nd-Heaven is a quickly repaired air conditioner.
All my central a/c stuff is on the roof and I was awakened to the sound of footsteps on my ceiling... Santa Clause? The air coming out of those vents is almost as good as an orgasm... I said almost!

We had one hell of a storm at 4 this morning. I woke to the sound of cannons and to Mischief poking my face with her declawed paws. I swear she looked like she'd just pleaded, "I'm scared-hide me!" You know it's bad when bright light flashes through closed window blinds. With all the office buildings around here equiped with lightning rods on their roofs, it isn't any wonder that storms are an event around here.

I was going to delete all of yesterdays ramblings, but then it wouldn't be an honest blog. I discovered this morning I'd missed my dosage of Cymbalts... oy

Wednesday July 23rd

Thursday July 24th

Friday July 25th

Saturday July 26th

Sunday July 27th

July 14-20 Waiting For the Axe to Fall

Monday 14th
I had a 2:30 appointment at Ohio State's Eye clinic that didn't finish until almost 6. (The clinic closes at 4:30.) I wound up with a needle stuck in my left eye to relieve pressure and to administer some drugs into it. They're trying to schedule surgery on my right eye to remove the debris from an exploded capillary that's partially blocking the optic nerve, but can't operate until I get clearance from my cardiologist on the 23rd. I'm holding my breath until this Thursday to see if everyone got the word that I extended the lease a month on the car, since no one will finance it. I know one thing, I can't afford a cab to see Dr. "heart", last time it was over $135 round trip, so I need the damned car.

The pits is that if I do have the knee surgery, I won't be able to drive it afterward with the contraptions they'll have sticking out of my leg. On the other hand, if I let the car go, I'll never be able to get financing on another one, so I've got to find a way to keep this one-no matter what.


Wednesday 16th
Yesterday was the pits, and Dr. "Mind" only confirmed it today at our session. As Thursday is now only a matter of hours away, I'm showing more and more psychosomatic symptoms. I went the whole day yesterday with a burning sensation in the top of my throat as if I were about to throw up or about to burp. I actually walked around with a garbage bag in case I couldn't make it to the bathroom in time to throw up. At the same time I still had an appetite. I've been fighting off wanting to sleep all the time (classic symptom) and I'm having nightmares of the attack again.

The guy she wanted me to get in touch with about possibilities for my car, still hasn't called, and frankly I'm weary of hoping. I drove out to a restaurant supplier place and then Wal-Mart and stocked up on supplies in case someone shows up with a tow truck to steal the car, that didn't get notified that I paid a month's extension.
Tomorrows, I'm going to offer to send them the $1,500 I was going to use on the down payment to try to get them to let me lease it for another 6 months.

They can still refuse it, take the car, and refund me the $299.83 I paid last Friday.

I'm going to fight to stay awake tonight. I've been avoiding sleep anyway because of dreams of suicide that usually end with me screaming my head off and bothering my neighbors...


Thursday 17th:
I've dreaded this day. I really thought (convinced) that if I offered them $1,500 in cash up front, that they'd let me keep my car an additional five months. Instead they've said that the deal is already done to sell the car to an auto auction.

That's it, there's no other options left. Even if I didn't love the car, I can't get financing, even for some junker that'd probably fall apart six months after I bought it.

I seem a little less scared of death today...

I dumped a glass of tea into my keyboard and ruined it and the mouse. Just got home from buying new ones from money I can't afford. With the new tire I had to buy on a car I'm only going to have until August 17th, and having to buy license plates for a year, it pretty much taps me out. Nothing has gone right today. Dr "Mind" wants me to spend a night or possibly a weekend in a rubber room under observation...


Friday 18th
Last night was one of the worst nightmares I've had in my life... and that's saying something. It was a flashback dream of the robbery/beating, only I knew what I'd go through after they finished with me, so just as they were about to run off, leaving me bleeding and knowing the ordeal I've been going through since that night, I grabbed the gun out of the middle guy's hand. They froze and before they could take it away from me, I put it in my mouth and pulled the trigger.

I woke up screaming my head off. Over the last four years, when these dreams started, I avoided sleep, forcing myself to stay awake until I'd pass out from exhaustion.

Saturday 19th
I woke up this morning from a nightmare where my attackers threw me in an old pizza oven and I fought to find a surface that didn't burn me. I woke up screaming again.

The reason for the nightmare was obvious the moment I regained my wits... I suppose it was due, and I almost asked myself why now God? Why now? Sometime during the night, my central air conditioning compressor died, and it was 95 in here. No repairman until next Tuesday at the earliest.

I tried shutting it down in case it just froze up and needed to thaw, but that didn't help. I opened the sliding glass doors and turned on my kitchen and bathroom exhaust fans, but it's as hot outside as it inside and the humidity is a killer. Fortunately I can take a cool shower for a brief relief, but poor Mischief is suffering in her fur coat... At least she could fit in the refrigerator, not that I'd dare try.

Last February when I was denied my Cymbalta, I went into a three day rage and trashed my apartment. Now, with only three chambers of my heart working, I haven't been able to clean for over six months... that and I'm irrationally afraid to take my trash to the dumpster or venture out my apartment door after dark. When they redid the elevator last fall, the health department said the garbage chute/compactor room was too close to the elevator shaft and closed it down. Food trash goes down the garbage disposal, but the paper trash and empty pop cans have been accumulating since then, and I'm too proud and too scared of strangers to hire a professional company to come out and do it, and wouldn't have the money either.

I swear, God is testing me. Although I've been resisting it, I may have to call Dr. "mind" and reserve a rubber room over the weekend after all. I must really be strong to have not killed myself yet.

I don't feel strong. As the frustration is building, my eyes are burning, but the tears won't come to give me release. When I was a kid, I'd get a beating from my father if I cried... so it's really hard-damned near impossible to cry, especially when I need the release.+

I drove out to Wal-Mart and Kroger's and picked up my presciptions for July. It was a debate on whether I'd go with the top down or up. Knowing how much gas I'd use running the A/C I went with Down. I'm shocked I didn't get a ticket trying to work up a "wind-chill factor"

I bought a new lottery ticket; since the lotto started back in the 80s, I've always played the exact same bet 2-5-9-14-16 22. My eyes are so bad that I filled the card and didn't realize until I got home that I'd inadvertently filled it out right except the last number-which is now 20 for the next 10 Megamillions drawings. Par for the course. Mega millions is 120 million on Tuesday... yeah right

I'm tempted to sleep in my car tonight with the A/C on. How ridiculous is that?

I haven't killed myself yet because I'm too much of a coward.

July 6-10 2008

My temporary tags on the car expired July 4th, and I forgot that that was a Friday, that everything would be closed, and the deputy registrars were all closed over the weekend. I spent Monday on the phone trying to find another source of money to keep my car and came up empty. I don’t want to (and don’t have the extra room in my budget) to have to pay to renew my plates for a year, when I’m going to possibly lose the car on the 17th.

It's bad enough that I had to send Allstate money for the month of July.

When I finally got myself out of the funk I was in, I went down to the car (looking forward to "cruising around with the top down"), only to discover the front driver’s side tire was flat. The frustration was so bad; I just stood there and stared at it for about 10 minutes with a tight chest. Fortunately when I first got it in 2003, I paid an extra thousand for an extended warrantee that included unlimited road-side assistance. All I could think of was that brief year when I momentarily had the physique of a Greek god, and now I doubted my heart condition would allow me to lift the “doughnut” spare out of the trunk. Just one more reminder of the life I once had and how much that one night cost me.

By the time they came out to change it for me, it was too late to get the plates renewed, so I drove over to a tire place on the next block. They wanted $39.99 just to plug a tire! I hopped on the expressway and headed to NTB.

Nothing accentuates just how SLOW 55MPH is until you get on an expressway with a dinky spare tire and everyone's doing 70-God I was miserable.

They wanted $24 and I said go for it. Five minutes later they told me that they couldn’t plug where a nail got it, because a couple of years ago I’d put Fix-a-flat in it and I’d have to buy a new tire.

$119.49 for a new tire on a car I'd only have a few more weeks, destroyed my entire budget for July. Oh they had other cheaper tires, but not in stock. Usually I enjoy being fucked, but not this time. The frustration and hopelessness were building up inside me because even the most simple things in my life seem to go against me. It didn't help either that when they pulled my car up front, everyone in the lobby started gushing about how nice it must be to have such a beautiful car and how they wish they had one too.

Tuesday, I drove up to renew my plates and they told me I couldn’t buy additional temporary tags, so I had to shell out $60 for a full year on a car I’ll only have to the 17th. I needed comfort food, so I microwaved some lasagna when I got home, plopped myself down in front of the TV and put a comedy movie on the DVD to cheer myself up… My cat Mischief jumped up on the tray table spilling scalding hot pasta into my lap and a glass of Dr. Pepper went flying… I spent the rest of the night sleeping... and wondering if it was worth it to wake up the next morning.

People who have never experienced clinical severe depression, skoff it off and say, "Ah stop it; you're just feeling sorry for yourself-so get over it." They don't know that this is a chemical process in your brain that causes it and that only prescription meds can control it. The fact that my life's been in freefall for five years hasn't helped either.

Wednesday, my shrink gave me a phone number of the head of her department, who expressed an interest in my case and might have some suggestions on saving my beloved car.

Thursday I sank into a “What’s the use” frame of mind and mostly busied myself answering comments on my latest BlogCritics’ article on line to take my mind off my woes.

Friday I tried calling the number Dr. “mind” gave me and repeatedly got his voice mail. I left my number… he never called back. I wonder what frame of mind I’d be in if I weren’t on Cymbalta; I’d probably be dead.

I've thought of trying to get two different $5,000 loans, but that'd mean paying double the int erst. Now I'm thinking about trying to get them to change their minds about not extending my lease on the car, by offering to use my $1,500 down payment to give them the first five months up front.

I went over to Hunting*** Bank and paid up to August 17th with their little ticket in the back of the book. It was only after I got my money out that I saw the fine print that said I'd need prior approval to extend the lease another month. I gambled and paid the $299.83 and they took it, so I guess I'll be alright.

I'm waiting for someone to screw up on a computer somewhere and send a tow truck to take my car on the 18th of this month because I didn't turn it in...

Well five days after getting my new plates I'm still driving around with temporary tags on the car that expired July 4th, because I keep forgetting to take a screwdriver with me to put them on. Somehow this has to stop.

I got three numbers on the megamillions last night!

I won a whole $7... whoopie.

How Not to Buy Your Own Leased Car

All through my bankruptcy last year, I was careful not to include Hunting*** bank in it because I didn’t want to lose my beautiful car. It’d almost became an obsession, not because it was an object, but because it was the first car I ever took possession of brand new off the showroom floor. Now I want to keep it because I know for a fact how well it was kept up and maintained.

Click on the photos to enlarge them...

One year after the bankruptcy was final, I went to Hunting*** Bank to see about buying my beloved car. In the whole five years that I had it, I never missed a monthly payment, nor was I late with one or missed an insurance payment. The attack that left me disabled was on November 4th 2004. From that point on I was on workman’s comp. In June of 2005 I started getting Social Security Disability for my destroyed left leg.

I pointed out that I’ve had the exact same income for nearly four years and had the track record to prove that I could keep up the payments despite the hardships. The lease payments were $299.83 and Allstate robbed me at $722 every six months because Hunting*** bank insisted that I be insured to the hilt and then some to the tune of $300,000 for anything that could possibly happen to the car.

When I first got it, I didn’t care-I could afford it easily. Around 2005 when I was declared totally disabled, I realized how much I’d need to start stretching every dollar, and raised my deductible to $2000 to lower the payments by a measly $16 a month. There was still a small ding on my driverside wheelwell where a lady backed into it at a grocery store, then gave me false information. Since I had planned to own it after the lease, I wasn't all that concerned. Now however when I turn in the car, they might charge me thousands to fix it.

With my bankruptcy last year, it'd be impossible to get a used car loan.
I was turned down by my bank-National C*** the moment they heard the word “bankruptcy”.
I was turned down by Hunting*** Bank, whom I was leasing it from.
Lease turn-in date is July 17th-last payment due June 17th.

June 3rd, of this year, I went into the dealership where I got the car. Laid out the situation up front concerning bankruptcy and how I'd never missed a payment nor been late with one.

The head salesman told me it might take some doing, but he'd give it a try. I filled out all kinds of loan papers of which I have copies, laid out the whole situation regarding being on Workman's comp, and Social Security disability, figuring they'd quickly find out if I didn't tell them up front. He had me fill out income statements, He got some kind of approval over the phone and called Hunting*** Bank to get the buy-down figure on the car. He was amazed that I only had 40,000 miles on it. More papers were signed and shuffled.

Workman's comp didn't pay a bill in 2006, and kept insisting they had, this went on my credit report, which gave both MasterCard and Visa an excuse to charge me 33.9% interest and impossible to meet minimum payments. Thus I filed successfully for bankruptcy in March of 2007 and it was final on July 2nd... all of which was explained clearly to the salesman I dealt with at the dealership.

Half an hour later he congratulated me, shook my hand and gave me even more papers to sign. In the midst of it, he suddenly remembered that he wanted me to sign an income statement leaving the amount blank. He takes a $1,000 cash down payment from me, removed my license plates from my car, issues me temporary tags and installed them, has me sign odometer reading and lease turn-in sheets, had me sign a bunch of "As is" and "We owe" papers.

I was a little worried, because it seemed that since I was the 2nd owner the 7-year 70,000 would be invalid. Never got a straight answer on that one, however I was told that since “technically” I was the first co-owner so to speak, that it shouldn’t be a problem.

He informed me that I need not make the final lease payment to Hunting***, and issued me papers that stated that my payments to Chrysler Financial would be $292 a month for five years. The first payment would be due by July 4th 2008.

He congratulated me on being the 1st/2nd owner of my car, and sent me on my way in my car arriving in a lessee and leaving an owner.

He said the ownership documents and payment book, so I can get my plates would be coming soon. The salesman wanted me to by gap insurance for the car incase anything happened to it, but I couldn't afford it. He took a moment (never leaving the room, nor using the phone) and said he negotiated my finance rate down a point for being a repeat customer and used that to buy the gap insurance for me.

The first year of my car lease I paid $299.83 for five years to the tune of about $18,000 (paydown was $11.000+). The new agreement papers I have, say $292.40 over a period of five years... which means all in all I'd wind up paying $36,000 for a $29,500 car. But I didn't mind, I love that car, and would never be able to get another of any kind with my finances.

I went home a happy man… for a change.

Out of the blue on the afternoon of June 17th (the day of my final lease payment to Hunting*** my car dealership called me to say that Chrysler changed their minds and that my loan had been canceled. I had 15 minutes to rush to Hunting*** Bank to make the final lease payment before it was late. It took them 15 minutes to find it because it wasn't on the computer-it'd been canceled/bought out? by Chrysler.

I went to the dealership and politely and calmly asked what the heck was going on. I even offered to put an additional $500 down if it'd help. I was asked to wait a few days to see what happens, while they tried asking a few more places. The salesman had Monday the 22nd off and asked me to come in the following Tuesday.

Little did I know that each and every time a credit application was made and rejected, my credit score gets even lower? Meanwhile I had no idea who owned my car or if the insurance is valid on it (yes if by Hunting***-no if by Chrysler). I was really hopeful for this deal to go through because I'd never be able to get another car with the credit I have, and would be out of transportation unless I couldn’t figure a successful way out of this situation.

I'm still being treated for posttraumatic stress at OSU, and severe depression because of the major things that keep going wrong in my life on a regular and frequent basis without warning, making it nearly impossible for me to talk myself into leaving my apartment… for a week

I spent the whole time sleeping. With severe depression, it’s an almost physical thing to want to sleep all the time rather than face the world. The following Monday I gathered my wits about me and began making phone calls. I got an appointment with a lawyer with offices on the ground floor in my building. After searching the fine print, he finally found a clause in one of the loan contracts that allowed Chrysler to pull the financial rug out from under me.

My depression deepened almost to being unable to function, but I knew I couldn’t face my shrink that Wednesday if I gave up, so the next day I got even busier on the phone.

Hunting*** Bank wouldn’t approve the loan, I explained the circumstances and she transferred me to her supervisor who promptly told me the same thing. He transferred me to his supervisor. After once again explaining the circumstances she put me on hold and came back ten minutes later to ask me if I could afford $222.80 a month. I was ecstatic and took the deal immediately.

She told me the problem was that the loan (mysteriously had fallen to $10,200) was worth more than the car. It’d fallen more than half its value in five years. I asked her what the gap was, and she said $11??. I told her that the dealership still had my thousand down payment, and I’d happily put it and $500 more if it’d help. She said it’d cinch the deal.

I breathed a sigh of relief as I was put on hold for about 15 minutes.

She came back and told me that the bank’s underwriters refused my loan. I thought of walking out to my balcony and falling over it six stories. My ears were roaring and ringing and I felt like I was trapped under a waterbed mattress. Even then, tears wouldn’t come.

She said she’d like me to call a place in Alabama that might be able to help, or even arrange for an extension on my lease.

They set up a deal for me at $252 a month to purchase it, No one will lease out a car that’s five years old, then told me the same thing I’d heard all morning and afternoon. She pointed out one thing though. She told me to get my lease payment book and see what was on the last page. There was a page that said if I wanted to keep the car an additional month past the contract to use that coupon.

I have a one month reprieve, that extends the lease from July 17th to August 17th. July 23rd I go for my heart exam and then surgery for my leg.

It hurts like hell to admit this, but the thought is never far from my mind that I hope I die on the operating table.

Then I pull back what little sanity I have left and know it’s not true…

Posted half an hour after the above.. I went out to get some pain medications, only to find my car has a front driver's side tire flat. What are the odds?

My temporary tags expired las Friday.

unfuckingbelievable

Chapter 3-1987-1996 Livin' the Good Life

For reasons that will become obvious, I’m going to have to disguise people’s names and alter company names. Also I’m going to have to compress some time lines to save space… Please remember that unless you know who I am behind the handle “Jet in Columbus” no one could possibly figure out who YOU are, so don’t be so paranoid!

ALL PHOTOS IN THESE BLOGS ARE PUBLISHED AS SMALL IMAGES-SIMPLY CLICK ANY ONE YOU'D LIKE TO SEE AND IT WILL ENLARGE FOR YOU... THANKS…

This is how I lived the good life and then found myself living on the edge of suicide.

By 1989 I’d scrimped and saved enough to finally start living the good life while I was young enough and had the looks to enjoy it. In that year I moved into a nice one-bedroom third-floor apartment in the heart of downtown Columbus, Ohio. I had hopes of one day living up in the penthouse, but for the moment the apartment served my needs, since I was rarely at home most of the time anyway. Instead I was away on either art business, in San Diego or shuttling pizzas around. Most of my clients were here locally, and the rest were in San Diego, San Francisco, Chicago and New York.

By then I had eventually taken up photography seriously. My uncle had given me my first tiny camera as a child by helping me purchase it with the Bazooka bubblegum wrappers I'd been saving.

Why settle down in Columbus?

Right out of High School, my sister helped me move away from the soap opera that was my hometown of Moon Township-a suburb of Pittsburgh. I wound up in Barberton Ohio, just south of Akron. I worked midnight to eight in the morning doing maintenance work for McDonald's for just shy of ten years.

I had always liked to pencil sketch and had even dabbled in acrylics oils, and one day a friend noticed a doodle of the house I'd grown up in on my wall. He asked if I could do an artist’s conception of what a home he wanted to build would look like from a set of blueprints. Just for fun I did several showing different versions with siding, brick, stucco etc. As word got around, other friends would describe their hopeless fantasy dream homes, and I’d do faux-blueprints, wall paintings and sketches as a sideline living.

Two days before a full-field inspection of our McDonald's, a bunch of black & white prints of historical pictures were vandalized at our store. I was asked if I could quickly produce some replacements in time for the inspection. This one is of the long-gone American Hotel.

I guess they liked them because shortly afterward I was invited to do some landscapes for a couple of other McDonald's in the area under construction; mostly pictures of local homes, farms, and businesses that’d burned down, or had been torn down. There's a few more examples near the bottom of this chapter.

Jet'sArt Custom Illustrations was born.

One day on a business trip with some friends, I discovered and fell in love with Columbus, Ohio. After moving down here and setting up shop, my friend Rich talked me into purchasing a little 1979 Triumph Spitfire convertible. A friend took a polaroid of it-it's the only photo I have because my Nikon was stolen from my car at a rest stop on Rt. 70. (It's the top image of three below-The one without a wing... and before you ask, it came with the stripes already on it.)

Wing?

Uh Rich?...I've never driven a car with a clutch before! He taught me how to drive a "standard" the same way he'd taught his wife... In the middle of a school parking lot, he showed me the shift pattern, showed me where the clutch pedal was, then got out of the car... Needless to say, after about a month of cussing I had to replace the clutch. His wife would later laughingly confide that the reason that he'd talked me into buying it was because he'd hoped I'd destroy the little *%^#@! trying to learn a clutch and then give up and sell it to him really cheap.

To quote "Tweetie Bird"... He don't know me vewy well; do he?

He pulled a practical joke on me one morning... I went out to find he'd painted "JET'S RUNNERS" on the tires in giant white lettering.

WING?? .......(patience)

No one told me just how hard it'd be to find parts for the little British 2-seater... because they stopped making them in 1980. When I decided to replace that clutch, I discovered that the only way to get the transmission out... was through the interior ...which meant my taking out the passenger compartment tranny cover, floor shifter housing, seats, and the carpet... oy. Oddly enough, the more I learned its "pain in the ass" foibles, the more I grew to love it.

Shortly thereafter and out of necessity, I began buying several of its cousins, brothers and sisters to get replacement parts such as very breakable pot-metal interior door handles, trim pieces, tail lights, mirrors etc, not to mention hard-to-find engine parts. Looking back, I don't seem to recall that I had ever wanted to know about a Stromberg "side-draft" carburetor... or for that matter how to adjust one. The stock 4-cylinder 1500cc engine came with a carburetor that occasionally requires you to unscrew the cap on the top of it and put a couple of drops of oil in it every so often??? I'd never seen a carburetor that stuck out of the side of an engine. I was going to ask what that canister stuck sideways on it was, until I guessed correctly that it was the air cleaner. It took me 20 minutes of muttering to myself to discover that the fuel float that I was trying to locate and adjust was only accessible through the bottom (?) of that little carburetor!

A riding lawn mower engine?

Nah too big for that-It produced damned good fuel economy though and the little thing "hauled ass." (went fast for you non-Americans)

In all of my photos, I couldn't find even one Spitfire with an open engine compartment. I found this one on the web. (In case you suspect me of doing it, I'd never paint anything even resembling pink... yuk) Take note of those chrome clips up there just behind the wheel wells. If you undo them, the whole entire front clip flips up and stands vertically on the bumper! You'll need to know that in just a few paragraphs hence...

With four cars to pick things off of, I spent all of my spare time restoring it, and in fact wound up with enough spare parts to build two good ones, one for long trips (plain brown) and one to show off in (the striped one below). Rich managed a pizza shop in Hilliard, Ohio, and during the winter break in the art business, I delivered pizzas for him. A huge blizzard hit that winter and he in his little Spitfire and I in mine, were the only two vehicles that didn't wander off into a snow drift and get stuck. The comical part of that is when I got stuck, I simply put the car in first, got out, and lifted up the back end, then rushed to get back into the car... I had a lot of fun that winter.

I eventually sold one of the restored Spitfires (the one without the stripes) to a constantly begging and pleading collector in Chicago and was pleasantly surprised that I got enough for it to have paid for both cars and then some! He sent me on a scavenger hunt by telling me about a couple of rumored mid-70s Spitfire prototypes and after doing some research and a ton of driving, I discovered not one but TWO brown "JetFire Xs" (!) with those distinctive "Super Bee/bird" rear spoiler wings. The middle one's serial number ended in Xo2 and the bottom one ended in X05. They apparently had been proposed for the American market, but never went into production and they'd somehow avoided the usual practice of putting failed prototypes to death in a crusher. Now come on-with a name like Jetfire how could I resist?... So I bought both of them. I found out later that British Leland couldn't use the name Jetfire because GM had named an Oldsmobile that and they held the rights to it. Oddly enough, they're both titled as 1979 models, but I think they may actually have been based on two different model years. Either that or one was updated after it was built to display the final "1980-1" model, which was the last year they were built.

They both came with stock OEM equipment in "plain Jane" BL brown when I got them, with the following exceptions...

The spoilers...obviously, but each "wing" was of a different design, materials, and probably manufacturers. I saw a photo of one on a race track with a HUGE one. If it hadn't been for the weight of the engine, it probably would've rested on its back bumper with its nose in the air. Both cars also had identical custom tan interiors, but without the usual plaid tartan in the door and seat panels. I liked the yellow paint trim stripes that came on my stock Spitfire so much that I had it (kinda) duplicated on the middle one (stripes) to set off its wing...

Unique to the middle one in the above image to the left (yellow stripes + wing)

It had a huge Triumph logo on the hood (excuse me, bonnet) in yellow, which the other didn't. It vaguely resembles a "T/A screaming chicken", but not quite. It had flared body-colored brown side mirrors with a yellow trim stripe. After deciding to keep this one, I matched the yellow color when I and a friend with a paint shop added the stripes later.

...Of course Bill (the backyard mechanic guy I was buying/swapping parts from) had a screaming fit when he saw I'd had the very rare car repainted. It got three coats of stock brown paint, another two of the yellow, and three of clear-coat... then it was sanded to within an inch of its life to a near mirror finish.

It has twin five-foot-tall tilted back antennas on either side of the fiberglass airfoil. The passenger side one is for the AM/FM cassette and the driver side one is for a CB radio. Someone wandered off with the CB equipment (but fortunately not the wiring) before I got it, so I installed my own. (I had a great CB handle back then, which required anyone wanting to talk to me to call "Earth"... This is Snowman to Earth!)

Oddly enough an admiring cop at a restaurant pointed out that it had no side marker lights, which shocked me because after a couple of months you'd think I'd have noticed!?! I frowned and went out to look for myself... he was right!

The bottom car of the image above had a much cleaner look to it, but "felt" smaller, and it had an unusual set of accessories that I'd never seen on a Triumph Spitfire. It came with a bulked-up 4-cylinder with a Weber carb on it, but I didn't have it long enough to figure out where the motor was from (probably a Brit brand or something shop-built.) It also had a metal interior transmission cover instead of the usual fiberglass.

It came with black wheel hubs, flat black flared side mirrors, electric windows (!), windshield wipers with a delay circuit, electric 6-way driver seat (!!!) a motorized rear-view mirror that auto-tilted when someone with high beams was behind you, no stock body striping along the sides and it sported the more modern black rubber bumper. For some unfathomable reason, the tan interior and seats came with black carpet, and the matching floor mats had big white Triumph logos which would've been a bitch to keep clean.

It had an unusual airfoil that folds/curves in at the bottom supports and appears to be fiberglass over steel. It looked very breakable and if I hadn't bought it as an investment to resell rather than keep, I probably would've junked it in favor a duplicate of it's twin brother's much sturdier wing. I felt sorry for the poor thing and transferred my "Jet's Runners" tires to it to give it a more sporty look until I could get out and buy stock white-letter radials for it.

Frantic car collectors began hating/dreading/blacklisting me because I had a knack for finding unusual cars and then had the nerve to actually drive the damned things, customize them, and let them run free to terrorize the unsuspecting local townsfolk, rather than grow old and bored somewhere in peace on display. I had a friend build me a new dashboard out of mahogany (All Spitfires' dashes were hand-made out of wood) for the striped one, and installed digital instruments (another unforgivable sin from what I'm told.) What? Oh calm down; I saved the original to put back on... what're you cringing about?

After all, isn't that what they're made for... driving? I loved driving it too, and it was great at gas stations and restaurants, but the cops kept pulling me over because they wanted to know what the hell it was. I got used to them taking photos of it too, and then sending me on my way.

From what I'm told there were only five prototype versions ever built, each with a different air foil and engine; one was missing, three were still in existence and one had been wrecked beyond repair on a race track...

In my travels, I spotted a beautiful brown absolutely immaculate Triumph TR7 and fell in lust... uh love. After having it checked over by a body shop, I was astonished to discover there were only two very minor dings on the whole car, and it had its original paint!

A week or so later I bought a 2nd older brown TR7 to strip body parts off of, in case I needed them for the good one. As it turned out I didn't need them and the second older one got the dreaded (by others) yellow stripe treatment and became my daily driver while the nice one you see to the right took me on business trips.

I also soon learned that the downfall of every Triumph is its dreaded and storied Lucas electrical system. I began storing aluminum foil in the glove compartment to wrap fuses with until I could get home.

I don't think I even thought about how much I was spending back then. I was doing well enough to be careless with my budget. That financial condition was to the point where I'd pay my apartment rent up a year in advance and overpay hundreds on my utilities so I wouldn't have to be bothered with them.

Bill and I started looking for a warehouse where we could stash the cars that we were buying and then stripping for parts. Without really trying and out of necessity, we started a business (with me a silent 1/3 partner) selling and repairing Triumphs and MGs, and parting out what was left. (Cue the Pet Shop Boys) "I've got the brains, you've got the brawn-let's make lots of money!" Much to my surprise my partner Bill did quite well in the mechanic/business end of things.

A couple of months after I’d lovingly completed my older TR7 the way I wanted it, a drunk driver doing about 60mph plowed into me on a rainy night near Ohio State University. I was sitting at a dead stop at a light and he hit me from behind, crushing the back of it all the way to the seats, and slammed me diagonally across the intersection and into a tree… then continued on as if nothing had happened.

Fortunately there was a Columbus cop coming the opposite direction and radioed help for me, while he chased him down.

Two mind-boggling things happened that night. I had to be pried out of the car and was amazed to find that I only had a couple of bruises. The second was; take a look at the deck lid in the bottom photo of the wreck. The Camaro crushed the trunk nearly to the seats (the gas tank is behind those very seats by the way) and yet the trunk lid was almost completely untouched and is hanging right where it should have been!!

His insurance company asked if they could surprise me with an offer of something special if I’d settle without litigation. All they'd tell me sight-unseen was that it was a Triumph TR8 convertible...

(Well, it was titled a TR"8" convertible) anyway. I spent a couple of days fantasizing and wondered if it was some freshly painted bondo-covered junker.

The next week Bill called me all in hysterics and ordered me to get down to the shop NOW.

They delivered it to our shop wrapped up like a Christmas present. I signed a document releasing them from further damages and took possession of it. It was in nearly pristine show-car condition except for the top which had been damaged while in storage. I think I nearly fainted on the spot when Bill pointed out that I hadn't noticed that decal over the right tail light, having been distracted by the custom one-of-a-kind tail lights themselves... it says TR9-with a rather cryptic serial number beneath it?!? I researched and could find no mention of a mid or late 70s TR9. (Compare the stock taillights on the brown one above to the ones below-big difference.

My not noticing it is understandable... I had since moved forward and was too busy staring wide-eyed at the front end... and wondering what was underneath it. Problem was I couldn't find...

If you're not familiar with Triumphs and you haven't enlarged the photo yet, you may not have noticed some peculiarities unique to this particular car. For one thing there's no hood (bonnet)!?! The guys laughed when I tried to raise a hood that wasn't there. The metal front fenders and bonnet had been replaced with a one-piece fiberglass unit. See that clip on the fender in front of the door? Undo them on both sides and you''ll discover that the car was configured just like a Triumph Spitfire and everything forward of the doors-including the wheel wells-pivots up and forward, hinged on the front bumper! I loved the Spitfires for that very reason because it gives you complete access to any part of the engine from nearly any angle.


I was also distracted by a neat bit of custom "metal shopping." Someone had recessed the door handles into black triangles to make them look like a vent for a mid-engined car.

I took these photos after I'd driven it in the rain down to a shop to have a new top put on it (apparently the poor unsuspecting thing had stuff piled on top of it while it was hiding under its tarp.) The duct tape and immaculate paint had me a little suspicious too, but after I had a few body men look it over, they said "No bondo." While they did that, I tore the back end apart trying to figure out why the backup lights blinked with the turnsignals. (crossed ground wire.)

I was looking at a rare car that had been stored in the back of some Jaguar dealership and forgotten... that only happens in fairy tales and car lover's wet-dreams. I also discovered where the big pop-up headlights used to be, now was replaced by modern rectangular headlights underneath that sank down beneath the bumper until they were turned on; then they'd swing up to just beneath the blackout plastic... using the same motors that used to operate the old headlights. Even I was impressed!

His insurance company had the nerve to call and ask me if I liked it. It was a fight not to gush. Note the custom British vanity plates! Whoever transformed it had dumped the standard little small-block V8 and replaced it with a more modern fuel-injected Buick 3.8 liter V6 "Grand National." That was then connected up to a Borg-Warner 5-speed manual with overdrive transmission, and they'd completed the drive train with a rebuilt Ford 9-inch 12-bolt rear end off of a ’69 Ford Torino.

The rear drive train was so big, it was necessary to install air shocks to jack the back up so that the beefed up drive shaft would clear the interior tunnel. Perched atop the power plant was a new and enthusiastic Holley 4-barrel and Edelbrock intakes. Also along for the ride were Cyclone headers and stainless steel pipes... just to make it sound good.

I believe it was Jay Leno who while stating what he thought of a Porsche he'd just driven said regarding it... "If you have an erection lasting more than four hours, consult your physician."

I knew the feeling.

People unfamiliar with the little British sports convertible were always complimenting me on the European wedge styling. Those at intersections were aghast at how fast I could power away from traffic lights, assuming (wrongly) that there was some dinky little power plant under the hood. It also sported the only pair of British Racing Green fog lamps under the front bumper in the U.S.

I eventually sold my beautiful and untouched brown one to the same collector that just wouldn't let me alone before. His chest all inflated at saving the poor thing from me. Where it is now, I'm not sure... probably some undisclosed location with a guard on it...I had no intention of hiding that beauty under a tarp, but I wasn't going to overdrive it either, so with the proceeds I bought a “daily driver”…

...a midnight blue turbo-charged fuel injected Cobra Thunderbird.

The only thing that gives it away to victims of my lead-foot at intersections, was that little chrome Cobra emblem behind the front wheel well? It's got a gas-guzzling 5-liter Cobra Mustang super motor under that grandfatherly looking hood... that'll press you into your seat-Ho ho ho!! I used to be known for never driving a normal car without a story connected to it.

I loved that car ... The striped brown "Jetfire" was borrowed by a friend who wanted to drive it to a local car show. On the way back it was broadsided by a cab running a stop sign. It died as it lived-having fun being gawked at... Ohhhhh Ahhhhh!

I miss the Cobra T-Bird too. A few years later I had the nerve to use it as a pizza car. I sold it to an assistant manager who promptly blew the engine... alas.

While all of this was going on, a good friend of mine talked me into doing a 24 x 36 portrait of Little Raven, Chief of the Arapahos in pencil and charcoal for his local Bureau of Indian Affairs. It's displayed on the wall behind his desk.

Life went on and my partner Bill really started making us some good money and we were gaining a great reputation in the local area… Then his wife sued for divorce, insisted that the business be sold as part of the settlement so she could grab half of his share of what the shop was worth. Bill was devastated and was left with barely two nickels to scrape together.

My money and time was tied up in other ventures, and Jet’sArt Custom Illustrations of course, so I couldn't help him much. I waited until after the divorce was settled and she couldn't take anything else from him, and then signed over my nearly completed yellow TR? to him and my titles to the junkers to sell for what he could get for them, and then arranged for the new buyers of the business to hire him to remodel the shop into an auto parts store in exchange for a small apartment in back where he could live rent free and be employed as a mechanic/salesman/night watchman for them. He has since moved down south somewhere and we lost contact.

I loved that yellow car. I drove it around for about a month before we started transforming it. If anyone knows where it is now, I'd love to see it completed.

Such is life...

This is another example of some artwork I used to do professionally... The image/screen print below is from a nifty screen saver I'd created for my office help's computers where my image (bottom right) and logo fade in and out of the picture in different places and in different sizes. If you catch "me" with the cursor, it would bring up a game menu (for when I was out of the office and they were bored). It's entitled "The Woods". Click on it to enlarge it-though I should warn you it's designed for a 28 inch wide screen graphics monitor...

My art business flourished a few years later, mostly designing custom graphics for CD covers for local bands or graphs and charts that businesses used for inventories etc. In my spare time I worked on a gay spy novel entitled "System 10" and its sequel, "A Ghost of a Chance." It seemed like I'd just finish updating the 600-page single-spaced manuscript, when technology would lurch ahead faster than I could rewrite it, so the book wound up on the back burner again and again... alas. A publisher friend said it'd only sell if it had a lot of sex and violence in it, and so I reworked it accordingly. Now I'm seriously thinking of taking it back to its original state and selling it as a period piece.

In the 1990s a good friend named Brian S. let me hitch a ride in his private "time-share" business jet (that's it on the cover of my manuscript behind the two people shaking hands) for a trip to San Diego. I paid half the fuel and airport fees-it was great. We’d stop to refuel in Las Vegas and I’d have a good time at MGM Grand's blackjack tables.

I've always dabbled in photography, but never-ever seriously. I'd taken one of my Nikons with me on the trip, and had it with me while visiting a friend's small movie studio. As a joke, I was talked into designing the box artwork for a gay X-rated feature that he was producing. To my shock they actually liked my ideas better than their pro's work! They offered me an irregular job whenever I was in town, which eventually became a regular pastime around three times a year.

As I became more experienced, he took me under his wing and taught me videography too. I graduated to much larger and more complicated equipment, none of which I'd be able to explain having-not that it mattered because it all had to stay at the studio in San Diego anyway. I started submitting scripts later and to my shock some were accepted! (Yes, porn has scripts-how do you think they're copyrighted?)

The piece to the right is 48 x 24 and is framed in brass. The lady who was interviewed for this said it was her grandfather and she had an unusual request, considering it'd be displayed in public. He was the local blacksmith and when he posed for the photo many considered it immoral for a man to blatantly display his chest, especially if it was muscular and specifically if it was hairy. Therefore when the plate was developed his undershirt was airbrushed closed to his neck. She asked me if I could draw it open as he was very proud of his physique, having to tote heavy wagon wheels all day... I was happy to do it, and got a bonus hug from her when she saw it.

I began earning some good money-not insanely great money, but it helped me live comfortably and was a factor in my moving into my penthouse and buying some great cars. On one such trip I paid to have my favorite sister flown down to meet me in Las Vegas for some fun at the tables, then afterward we flew back on a commercial airline to her home in Oregon for a great visit.

I recall once offering on a whim to buy her a new refrigerator for Christmas, and it almost came to blows when she wouldn't let me. She's always been very independent and self-reliant. I could see how it'd prick her ego for me to do that, and now I'm sorry I did. I'd always had an open and over-willing wallet when my family was concerned... and despite my current hard times still do.

I've often wondered how my family didn't figure out something was going on, since most of them thought I was only a pizza delivery guy... despite a hefty bank account, a downtown penthouse filled with curios and collectibles, and a fancy car. At one point while touring around Oregon with one of my sisters, I let it slip that I was doing some video work, I don't think she actually understood what I'd meant-in fact she may not have even heard me, but just in the slight case I let it slip again I went out with her and bought a little Sharp camcorder at Sears to explain any further "slip of the tongues" away.

Back then, only two members of my family actually knew about what I was doing on the west coast; my favorite sister and a wonderful aunt. I'd never exactly sworn them to secrecy, after all I'd been disowned by the rest of my folks years ago anyway for being gay. Sometimes I think that they see me as some evil lying perverted homoSEXual who probably has kidnapped and molested every little boy I saw and would rot in hell in eternal damnation. I've mostly shrugged it off figuring if they found out they'd start pointing fingers and self-righteously saying in unison "See, I told you!", which most of them do anyway without provocation.

If certain members of my hypocritical and judgmental family actually knew just how many of their number were gay, they'd spend the next solid month in church, PRAYING that it wasn't some sort of contagious disease, which it nearly is...

...denial runs rampant in my clan-even I'm not immune to it at times.

I figured it was a lost cause after learning that the sister who still lives near Pittsburgh where we all grew up, actually married and raised a family for 18 years and never told her kids that I even existed!

Speaking of relatives, my one regret was that some of my family were going through tough times while I was enjoying myself. My younger brother had been in the navy serving on an aircraft carrier during the Gulf War(s). I was so worried about him, I became addicted to CNN Headline news hoping I wouldn't hear bad news about him.

Before they sent him there, he was stationed somewhere at the naval base in San Diego with his wife and I often wondered what he'd think if he'd seen me all bulked up. He probably wouldn't have recognized me... Hell; I didn't recognize me.

He eventually moved to Seattle and is doing very well for himself.

The 36 x 24 painting below (yes that's a painting) is of a general store in East Liberty Corners. The owner broke down in tears when she saw her long-gone business. She had only one complaint...

She blurted out with a laugh that the sidewalk was never that clean and uncluttered out front.

My older sister in Oregon from my father's first marriage owned a great restaurant in the Willamette National Forest, but it was going under because of local economic bad times, the road through the National Park was often closed and fraught with landslides or downed trees, and her health was failing. I began sending $1,000 checks and Wal-Mart gift cards to them to help make ends meet, without asking for anything in return. I mention this only because later on in my time of need, my father would throw it up in my face.

It’s a sign of the times when you occasionally do something nice for someone, just because it feels good to do it, but then they always suspect that you have an ulterior motive hidden somewhere.

One of my very best friends had moved to Chicago and on one of my visits there he asked for a loan of $40,000 because he’d run into unexpected expenses while opening up a bar in the suburbs. Some real estate magnate was converting a big warehouse into condos, and rather than tear it down, he sold an attached building to Tom. Unexpectedly the building wouldn’t pass inspection without a new roof. It felt good to be able to help him out and even better that I realized I had enough cash socked away that I could do it without too much financial pain.

Chapter 4-1997-2004 The best years of my life

(Cue theme song from “The Jeffersons”… Hey-Hey we’re ah movin’ on up!!) As 1996 arrived I finally got my chance.

After being on a waiting list for seven whole years, I was able to move up to the penthouse of our building; top floor-center apartment, wall-to-wall floor-to-ceiling glass, a private balcony covered in my hand-grown flowers and vegetables, and a great view of the downtown Columbus skyline.

As you can see, I'm pretty good at growing flowers. One year I had four big palm plants out there... so the neighbors began referring to my balcony as "Gilligan's Island." Here are samples of recent balconies over the years…

In photo number…

1. Well, that’s part of my view anyway. This is a shot down my balcony railing. I found some planters that would just barely fit in the space between the bottom of the railing and the floor of my terrace. There are all different kinds of petunias that I trained to trail over the balcony in a multi-colored “waterfall”.

2. Another year I had white, peach, pink, red, purple and lavender geraniums in the floor planters, along with yellow and orange giant marigolds. It was the first year I got brave and tried growing tomatos in 5-gallon buckets. The hanging baskets have trailing petunias and geraniums. If you look at the pictures long enough you can smell the flowers.

3. Those big red flowers are Hawaiian Hibiscus plants. A friend of mine manages a drug store that sells live plants every spring. On the first day of the sale, I was amazed to see Hibiscuses for $4.99 each!?!. I went in to ask him if my eyes were deceiving me and nearly fainted… They were supposed to be $24.99 each and had been mispriced. He was so grateful that he let me buy as many as I wanted at $4.99. I got the three of the variety that grow like a 4-5 foot tall tree, as opposed to the bush. To the right of them are my infamous bragger tomatos.

4. Ahhhh the wonders of Miracle Grow. There’s actually a comical aspect to my balcony that I’ve never taken a photo of. A couple of years back I hung up two big wooden birdhouses on opposite ends of the ceiling of my overhang. About two months later I heard the chirping of baby wrens… from both little houses.

A commotion arose out there one day and I looked to find a male wren flying from one house to the other and then back again. At first I thought he was stealing food or nesting material until I realized that I had a little “Payton Place” going on. The cocky little male bird actually had two wives and families!!!

A really dumb move to have two wives living next door to each other. Eventually they worked it out and there was peace…

…until it was time to teach all those kids how to fly. They would fumble out and down to the floor; only to be bewildered as to which house they should try to get back too.

5. I’d learned my lesson after the previous year when I put up four tomato plants, because I wound up giving a ton of them away when I couldn’t eat them fast enough. My landlord had a small fit because he was worried about them falling off the vine and hitting people below… which never happened.

If you look close enough you’ll see that nestled in the bucket with the tomato plant is a green bell pepper plant.

Do I need to describe the spaghetti sauces I and my neighbors made that year?

6. If you look carefully at the very top of this shot, you see the roof of my terrace. After the tomato plants grew 8 feet tall I had to run twine between each of the hanging basket hooks to train the tomato vines to grow sideways… otherwise they’d have tried to top the roof!

Yes, my neighbors were beginning to call me Oliver Wendell Douglas of "Green Acres," with his corn stalks on his Park Avenue terrace. The only thing missing was Lisa sneezing.

Life on the road had taken its toll on my body. What with all that pasta and fast food on the go, and hotel room service catering, it was playing hell with my waistline. With less and less time in the gym, I lost my fantasy physique nearly as fast as I’d gained it.

Oh well, I got to be a “hunk” for only about a year and a half of my life, but then just like Cinderella’s gown and slippers-at midnight, I was becoming the out of shape troll I was before I started all of that weight training. It’s true what they say about being a slave to a muscular body-you have to constantly maintain it 24/7 or all those muscles turn to flab… no worst-make that blubber, unless you’re on steroids, which I refused to use...

...but I was very tempted… oh so tempted.

I found out later that some of the things my co-body builders were injecting me for pain or muscle spasms were indeed steroids and I'd suffer greatly for my ignorance in allowing them to intorduce me to them...

I sometimes go back and look at those pictures from that era and shake my head in disbelief that I actually looked like that. It all comes at a price though, because you wonder if you get opportunities because of your skill or your looks. You also pay for it in health problems later in life... just ask Ahnold the Governator.

I was still driving the tricked-out Cobra T-bird on art business trips and as the seasonal business cooled down around the end of October of 1997 I used it to deliver pizzas in. I decided to give a needy assistant manager the Volvo 240 DL that I was looking to get rid of, as a gift that he could recondition for his son. On the way to a delivery near my home downtown, I took him with me so he could drive it back to the shop. I laughed and showed him how the mighty big-block Ford could press you into the seat, and pointed to the tack and told him we were already doing 100 MPH, which actually was reading 1000 RPM.

The idiot actually believed it, and as thanks for my generosity, the bastard reported me to the company for doing 100 in a 45 zone!!! They forced me off delivering and gave me an inside job. The previous year, I'd been presented with a big bonus check (in the thousands) for going ten years without a single at-fault accident or ticket. I was getting offers from a competing company to come over to them as a delivery consultant and guidebook writer anyway, so I bid so-long to them the following March.

With Jet’sArt custom Illustrations and Jet’sArt custom business forms going full-time now, I had a staff by then who’d research what color that old hotel used to be or if any pictures of a long forgotten founder of a town were still in existence.

I was becoming a successful businessman with art clients, invitations and more flirtations in the adult film industry on the west coast and/or New York-mostly as a writer and an occasional line producer.

Being on the road all the time also cuts into your social life, and the more I worked, the less I had time for a lover.

I'd lost several lovers because of my absences, though life on the road was never lonely. I was determined to change that too, by staying closer to Columbus and finding most of my art clients locally. I was afforded more time at home, and stared working on my other hobby... gardening. (Cue theme song from "Green Acres"

As I said before, I’d discovered that I was good at writing map/guidebooks for pizza shops. The manuals would have streets sectioned off by color instead of map coordinates, and included hand-drawn apartment complex maps and instructions on how to get to all streets in a given area. I’d devised a system whereby a brand new delivery driver would be able to route deliveries without any help on the first day he worked, just by delivering only to one color on the map, which was listed on the delivery ticket. Just to make sure my instructions were accurate,

I’d drive the delivery routes there for a while in order to see/record/offer suggestions for any problems that a driver might encounter. As I stayed home more, I actually began enjoying delivering pizzas as a sideline.

In June of 2000 I actually had two different major pizza chains bidding against each other for my books.

I paid cash for a white Sebring convertible (which is what I usually rented when I was on the road), which I used to drive to business stops in Chicago and the surrounding states, ah the good they do die young. With its untimely death and more improvements to my bank account, I went looking to put a major down payment on a brand new set of wheels that had caught my eye on a whim.

On July 17th of 2003, I picked out an inferno red '04 Chrysler Sebring convertible to tool around in. At the time I thought leasing a car was like renting a car-only for a longer period. The company that owned it took care of the maintenance and upkeep, and I paid for the gas. Boy was I wrong about that! But I leased it anyway, not caring about the expensive required insurance. Unbelievable as it sounds, it turned out to be one of the smartest moves I’d ever made.

It still boggles my mind that my family never caught on, or even asked how I could afford such cars on a pizza man's earnings.

A good friend and client of mine in Pittsburgh had a computer lab and asked me if I wanted to beta-test a voice command system he was working on and hoped later to sell to Chrysler. He’d originally built one for the T-Bird and wanted me to road test the new and improved version.

Nowadays, if you hear people talking to their car you don’t bat an eye, it’s becoming commonplace, but back then, they would look at me funny when I'd walk up to my convertible and then tell it to start, turn on its sound system, change the CD and even tell the top to go up and down... that was until the car actually did it right before their amazed eyes! Back then it was really fun to watch people's reaction.

From what I understand some of the technology actually made it into cars and I’m kind of proud that I might actually have had something to do with that. I would send him e-mails of problems I was having with mine, and he’d work out the bugs and send me new breadboards or software fixes for it. The remote top now appears on the new Sebring hardtop Convertible!

As my business and reputation grew, I was spending less and less time at home again. We have a great private gym in our apartment complex, but I rarely got to use it as more time was spent out of state. A few times, I tried recapture that fleeting body that I used to have, but I'd get caught up in some distraction and gain the weight back and lose the muscle tone I'd gained. I’d find out later I was a diabetic and didn’t know it.

Eventually as the economy cooled, I found myself at home more than traveling too, and pizza delivery was to temporarily become my primary source of income. Why? Well it's hard to explain, but creating art is something that I enjoy... when it became a business and I had to churn them out as a living, suddenly the fun is gone.

Oh don't get me wrong; I was still putting out good work, just not as often... To paraphrase the Righteous Brothers "I'd lost that lovin' feeling."

I tried my hand at being an office manager for a good friend’s restaurant. I found out later that he wanted me to run the place into the ground as a tax right off. By the millennium he’d consumed all of his profits in cocaine. I hung in there through the disputes and bounced payroll checks, not wanting to be the first rat to abandon ship. A week later his mother came in and fired me, since no matter what was thrown at me I wouldn’t quit.

I got a phone call from the supervisor of “the Pizza Shop” wanting me to do a custom delivery map and guidebooks for a new area they were going to try to dominate. That led to another and another, until I had a little office/cubbyhole at their headquarters where I could cut and paste maps together and over-use their photocopier.

With a new supervisor, came objections of how much it was costing. Never mind that I was saving them tons of money on the time it took to train new drivers.

I went back to delivering pizzas… with the occasional trip to San Diego.

When you travel a lot, even if you can afford to pay cash, you inevitably use your credit cards to make airline, rental car and hotel reservations on-line. If you don’t pay attention, they can add up on you, especially if you have money to spare. 2004 rolled around and when resolutions were considered, I decided to forgo extra expenses like health insurance and started paying down a $20,000 credit card debt by sending Visa $1000 to $1250 a month and MasterCard $600, and did it without it even denting my budget.

With each passing year the economy slowed, and my business clients started cutting back on interior and advertising budgets. Clients couldn’t afford my landscapes for their offices and waiting rooms either. I found myself delivering pizzas more to make ends meet, but the tips were great towards those credit card bills; besides I liked the people I worked with. As the year progressed I'd spend more and more time in Columbus and delivered full time and did artwork less.

It wasn’t really a problem, in fact I was thinking of trying to heal the rift between myself and my father by getting some investment advice, because I had quite a tidy sum in the bank by then.

I'd still fly to San Diego on "business" occasionally. During the big fires I contributed cash backing to convert one of our warehouse/studios to temporary living quarters until they could get the insurance companies to help. I didn’t want a payback, I just liked helping people, I’ve lost count of how many people keep trying to read something sinister into that.

By October I'd completed all of the contracts I had for client’s Thanksgiving and Christmas graphics and newsprint ads. I settled into a well-deserved two-month hibernation over the holidays before I’d have to start working on “President’s Day” and Valentine stuff for the first quarter of 2005.

As usual by mid- October I’d get bored and “antsy”.

One particular pizza chain considered "full time" 33 hours!?! It was a good way to make fast extra money for big payments toward paying off my credit cards. It also meant extra pocket money towards Christmas presents and expenses if I wanted to fly out to see family in Pittsburgh or Oregon.

One thing I loved to do was to determine which of my friends were the neediest, then determine what I could do to help. This usually entailed driving around at about 3AM Christmas Eve, and leaving two or three bags of groceries on several doorsteps and sneaking away hopefully unnoticed. There were also the Christmas cards taped to the window of a friend’s front door window with an unsigned money order for between one or two hundred dollars.

No one had to know I’d done it. I knew and that was all that mattered. I’d start planning these sneak attacks months in advance, and have the route and a budget planned out by early October.

Little did I know it wouldn’t happen this year…

As the 2004 election went into a fever pitch, I chipped in and bought a bunch of copies of "Fahrenheit 911" to give out as door prizes at a sponsored "get out the vote" event at some of the local gay bars. One of the highlights was getting to meet John Kerry when he was in town along with Christopher Reeve's wife. Well, that's stretching it a little, I got to shake his hand for all of maybe five seconds, and exchange some chit-chat before he moved on to the next volunteer in the row. Four years later I'd be furious with him for dumping John Edwards to support Obama for president. I wasn't a big Edwards fan, but doesn't loyalty count for anything anymore?

November 2, 2004 I did my best to vote Bush out of office.

Four days later my life as I knew it would come to a crashing end. Not all at once mind you no, it is a slow painful death that almost five years later is still grinding me under its heel…

Chapter 5-November 6, 2004-A Pizza Delivery Nightmare...

Saturday November 6th, 2004 was in some ways a better than average day.

For obvious reasons I’m going to refer to it as “The Pizza Shop.” When the Ohio State Football team had a game on Saturdays, we were allowed to wear an OSU football t-shirt and jeans instead of the usual uniform. That sunny fall day the temperature was in the upper 60s, so I wore a long sleeve gray sweatshirt under my buckeye attire and jeans in order to keep warm during deliveries, basically because I insisted on doing them with my convertible top down. I’d stash the pizzas in the passenger side foot well with a couple extra bags on top of them to keep the food hot with the dashboard heat cranked up.

I loved to refer to it as “cruising around with the top down and the stereo up.” Customers would wave at me and I’d tap the horn and wave back. I had more than a few customers that’d request I deliver because they thought it gave their neighborhood a little class bragging that even their pizza delivery guys used new Chrysler Sebring convertibles instead of the expected competitor’s junkers.

My typical Saturday entailed working lunch from ten in the morning till around nine or ten that evening. I’d made it a tradition to come in early and create a big breakfast pizza for everyone using scrambled eggs instead of sauce and piling it high with the typical western omelet toppings and Velveeta cheese, and then I’d run it through the oven with some hashed browns and all of us would have a super breakfast on me.

From today, looking back four years, it’s really hard to remember how the early part of the workday went, so I’d say my tips were a little above typical. We had a very diverse delivery area with low-income housing projects, vast plots of middle-class streets interspersed with the usual businesses and gas stations you’d find next to the average expressway exit.

The day seemed to wear on forever and by 4PM I was hoping it’d turn out to be a slow day so I could go home early.

No such luck.

At the 4PM shift change we were short of help so I started counting the hours till 9PM. After delivering the evening rush with about four or five other drivers, I was told to take one more delivery run of three stops and then I could call it a night. The evening stayed warm so I left the top down.

The pizza shop is located in a big one-way traffic circle with cars traveling counter-clockwise. It had businesses including our pizza shop-blue circle on the inside and apartments around the rim on the outside, with middle class homes in the surrounding area. I checked my stops, shrugged that they weren’t likely to be tips and grabbed my parcels and cokes, after first dropping most of my money in a lock box in the store.

According to the totals I’d probably have to make change for three twenties since the welfare checks had just come out a few days earlier. I had a huge pocket full of change, and by the evening when I’d get tired of being stiffed at pizza runs, I’d give them 2-3 dollars in pennies, nickels and dimes half-heartedly apologizing that the last delivery took all my currency.

My first delivery was into the apartment complex surrounding our circle and by about eight that evening it’d already gotten dark. After using an alley I made it to the address. Three black guys were milling around a van two slots over. A young couple had exited their car and was in the process of carrying grocery bags through a door further down. I thought nothing of it because people were normally outside on warm evenings, and they were talking to each other openly and I think one even waved.

The long building had sixteen apartments arranged within four separate doors. Inside each outer door was a stairwell to the left that led straight ahead and up to two doors on an upper landing, and to the right it was a narrow hall that led to two doors directly below side-by-side one being behind the open stairwell. The apartment I’d delivered to would be on the first floor straight ahead to the right. Red Circle

I entered the building and knocked. A woman answered the door, I smiled and gave her my cheerful “prerecorded banter” and accepted a check from her. As expected the check was written for the exact amount with no tip. I checked her I.D. and no sooner than I had, the door was closed in my face before I could thank her. I shrugged and headed back outside to the car.

I’d done this hundreds of times before here; our Pizza Shop was no more than a couple hundred yards from the complex and I was more interested in getting the deliveries done so I could go home after a long day. The complex was going “Section 8” which meant low-income customers and no tips.

As I exited, I stuffed the check into my pocket, and from the front door headed for my car. The parking lot was now deserted and I told my car to start, (see an earlier chapter) turn on its headlights and then start the CD player, as I made my way to it.

From out of the corner of my eye I spotted them coming from behind the van and thought nothing of it. I had people approach me all the time asking for directions after getting lost in the apartment complex, or they’d overheard me talking to my car and came over to tell me how “sweet” it was and ask if I’d do it again.

Tossing the bags in the passenger side, I’d almost gotten my door open when all three began sprinting toward me. I’d jumped in, but they caught the door before I could close it. I tried saying, “lock-panic!” to my car but only got the first word out; resulting in only one chirp acknowledgement. The car was now in a "standby" mode. It would now ignore any voice commands and I'd have to hit the disarm button on my remote to drive it anywhere.

The first word only "locked" the car in whatever mode it was in. It was part of the anti-carjacking feature, so that in cold weather I could leave it unattended and running if I needed to run into a convenience store for something. The keys would've been locked in the ignition had I managed to get them in the slot. However at least the gearshift was frozen (small comfort.)

Unfortunately I hadn't managed to get my foot on the brake either. If I were stopped at a traffic light and a carjacker opened the door with my foot on the brake, I could flee the car to safety and call the cops. The anti-theft feature activated, and the carjacker would have control of the car for about five minutes, then all of the controls would freeze, leaving them where the police could find them-five findable minute's distance away, stranded after the engine shut itself off, the keys magnetically locked in the ignition, and the alarm sounding.

I looked up to find the business end of a .45 automatic in my face.

The young one in the middle seemed to be trying to tell me in heavily accented English to get out of the car. Later I'd surmise that the only words he knew in English were the ones he was using because he didn't seem to understand anything I said to him. The area had recently been invaded by Somali refugees, none of whom seemed to speak our language, resulting in most of them being unemployed.

The three 16 to 18-year-old young men were black, and the parking lot was dimly lit. The one in the middle had the gun and the two on either side were jostling with each other to get to me first. The car continued running without the keys in the ignition. Had I gotten the word “Panic” out, the alarm would have started going probably scaring them away.

To this day I'm still beating myself up for not holding down the lock button on the remote that I had in my hand. Things were happening to fast to me and I didn't think of it.

The only thing to do was to do exactly what they said; it's really the only way to survive a robbery, because if you piss off someone that's scared, which most robbers are, you're likely to get shot by them out of frustration.

They grabbed me by my T-shirt, yanked me out of the car, and then threw me to the ground. After dark I always stashed my wallet in my lock box back at the pizza shop for safekeeping. Terrified, I kept telling them I’d give them anything they wanted if they’d just leave me alone. One began kicking my left chest hard with a grin, as the one who spoke broken English demanded money. I only had about $48 in currency plus my big pocket of change. They were furious at what little they'd have to split three ways, and began going through my pockets as I lay in a protective fetal position on my right side.

One stopped and jumped into my convertible. I had one moment of clear thought and threw my keys under the car where they couldn't be reached. The moment he hit the brake the engine died. He started babbling at me in a language I didn't understand and then jumped out of the car to rejoin his friends.

It quickly became a beating in revenge for them having to split only $50 three ways.

Coins clattered to the asphalt parking lot and the one with the gun began repeatedly beating me over the head with the butt of his weapon while demanding the rest of my money and my wallet. I gave him the customer’s check, which only made him madder. The other two began kicking and stomping on my left leg and foot while their leader continued beating me about the face and head.

Oddly enough, I don’t remember being in pain then; I remember the sound of the impacts, but no pain—probably because by then (the doctors later explained) I was in shock. It occurred to me that if they’d meant to or were able to shoot me they would’ve done it by then, so I started screaming for help at the top of my lungs. They immediately panicked and ran away into the darkness between the buildings.

All I felt was terrified fear and panic, but I knew that the first thing to do was to get away from there. My car controls were frozen so that even I couldn't drive it away for about another three minutes, so I ran back into the apartment building. I knocked at the door of my customer and they refused to let me in or even open their door...

That’s when I saw blood on my hand from where I’d just scratched my head.

I urgently and then loudly told them that I’d just been robbed, I'd been hurt, and to call 911. I also asked them to call the pizza shop, reciting the phone number. I got no reply, so I tried their neighbor’s door to the left. They wouldn’t open their door either and I was beginning to fear that the robber trio might come back to shoot me in order to keep me from identifying them to the police.

I was starting to feel dizzy but still not really in pain. The neighbors yelled through the door that they’d called the police and I slumped against the wall under the stairwell hoping it’d hide me. Suddenly the neighbor opened the door, took one look at me and screamed, then slammed the door shut again. It startled me into jumping away from the door and my back hit the opposite wall next to the customer’s door.

That’s when I saw it.

The wall where I was leaning before was covered with blood. I looked down and my shirt and jeans were stained reddish-purple. I started panicking/pleading with them to give me first-aid and that I was bleeding. The neighbor lady opened the door, threw a wet washrag and a dry towel at me and slammed the door closed again.

I wiped my face and the white square of terrycloth came back bright red. I slumped down to a sitting position against the wall and heard the sirens approaching.

Two policemen cautiously burst through the front hall door, guns drawn and anxious. One put on a pair of surgical gloves and checked my head, then radioed the ambulance to get its location and told it to hurry. I kept trying to stand, but he kept pushing me down and saying to relax. Still not feeling any pain, but with a tightening chest, I got up anyway and told the cops what happened. I didn’t have health insurance, and figured that it was just a few cuts on the top of my head and nothing to worry about. My stupid pride or the stress of the situation prevented me from realizing that any medical costs would’ve covered under workman’s comp.

Two of my assistant managers arrived and looked at me like I was the walking dead. I knew I’d be tied up here for a while so I turned over the pocket key to my drop box, my receipts and money, and one of them left with my other two deliveries, while the other assistant manager stayed with me. I refused the ambulance driver’s offer to go to the hospital because I was still not feeling any pain. They wrapped a bandage around my head and gave me an ice pack and told me again to get it checked out before too long.

I nodded after signing something and they left.

Another cop came in and told me that local TV station vans were arriving and I knew that if I couldn’t identify my attackers, they might be able to find me by my face plastered all over the local late-evening news, so I took the cop’s offer to get me out of there before the TV news set up shop.

I was beginning to feel an odd sensation in my left foot, almost as if there were holes in the floor whenever I walked, but I didn’t feel any pain, so I didn’t think anything of it. For a moment I panicked, thinking they had the keys to my car, but remembered I'd thrown them under it and fished them out.

Arriving back at the pizza shop everyone blanched and asked me if I was all right and I said I was. I always had Sundays off and I figured after some rest I’d be back to work by Monday. The manager looked skeptical. He had my paperwork and after giving me the $175 or so in tips I’d gotten from the long day, he said I was $51 short, which is how much the thieves got.

An extreme effort was made to keep me f