Date with a Pistol

About four or five years into the really bad drinking that I had become aware of at about 13, things had gotten progressively worse.

I had tried to explain to this guy I was dating when I was about 18 how my mom could get. “I don’t believe you,” he flat out let me know. Honestly, I couldn’t blame him. Mom was such a beauty, and always a lady in public. All our nasty secrets were just that: secrets.

Mom’s drinking was done in the privacy of her own home, so all the havoc was mine and ours only to behold. Therefore, our hell was not even believed by some of my friends.

One night this same guy came to pick me up for a date. As I recall it, he asked my mom if he could drive me clear to Galveston. “Sure,” she said. “And where will y’all stay the night?” This, may I remind you, is out of the mouth of the woman who one year earlier threatened to remarry my father because I said that I thought it was silly to get married just to be able to have sex. Side note: this is a reference to a Bible verse my parents liked to quote which said basically that it was better to marry than to burn with passion. I said that you should just have sex rather than marry someone you aren’t sure about. This sent her into a tizzy that had her claiming I hadn’t learned a thing from either of them and that if that’s what I had decided then she should get back together with him to teach me right.

Back to the night at hand, I’m pretty sure that what happened next is that Mom continued to have a few more, and that the guy hung out with us a while before we were supposed to leave. Maybe Mom started getting mean – I’m not sure there. But I do know that she sure got ready for my date to leave. He probably asked her to calm down, and – now this I remember – she threatened to shoot him with her pistol if he did not leave.

He called me later and told me that he believed me.