Wastin’ Away Again… From Brooklyn to Key West and the Heartbreak In Between (Part 2)
…On The ROAD to Technology
Key West, Key West. What a different world than anything I had ever seen or felt. Work hard, party harder, sleep late, and hang out with friends who were just strangers a moment ago.
It was very different from the life I left behind in New Rochelle, New York. Right out of high school, I got a job doing computer-based engraving and managing a trophy and awards company. The money was awful, but I had a big apartment and a ’65 Mustang Fastback. The car was dangerous, unreliable, and barely got me to work on most days. But I loved that car.
I also had a beautiful girlfriend named Cristina, who was born and bred in Brooklyn. She was my life for over three years as I wasted away in New Rochelle, dreaming of a different life, a different place. I wanted out of my hometown and felt terribly trapped. I was 21 and felt like I was 40 years old, though let’s face it, I had no idea what forty would actually feel like. I was just a kid with no path or direction forward in life.
Cristina introduced me to Bruce Springsteen’s Live/1975-85 album on our first date. When she played that live version of “Fire,” it just ignited the night. Everything with her was fire and heat. How I got there from just weeks before, meeting Cristina in some random New York City club, was unknown, but it was meant to be.
The first time I saw Cristina, she was across the room, leaning against the wall, holding up the room. Not like me, I went over to talk to her after much prodding and pushing by my friends. We danced, we had drinks, we connected. At the end of the night, I got her number, only to find out the next day that it wasn’t her number at all.
But that night, lost in dreams of her, I could barely sleep, thinking about calling her. For the next few days, I tried every combination of that phone number, but as they say now, I was just ghosted the night I met her.
Not giving up on the dreams I built from that one night, I convinced my friends that we needed to go back to the club. Giving every reason and every excuse, hoping if I went back, maybe I would find her again. So, the next Friday after work, we were back in the city, back at the club. I don’t recall exactly what happened, but after moping around the club for a few hours, looking around the club and at the entrance, I saw her. She came back. It was destiny.
I made my way over to her, said my hellos, and then gave her shit for giving me the wrong number. For the next three-plus years, we were together. She would take the train from Brooklyn to stay at my place, and I would take the train to stay in Brooklyn. We spent a lot of time in the city, just walking around, going to bookstores. Cristina bought me my first copy of On The Road by Jack Kerouac. From the moment I cracked open that book, the wanderlust hit me, and the dream of hitting the road was forged. It would take some time, years actually, from reading that book until I left my life behind in New York and pretty much never went back for over thirteen years.
No need to go into the details, but one day, after years together, one early morning, like many before, I kissed her goodbye, told her that I loved her, and walked out the door. Tears spilling from my eyes, I knew it was over. I started the walk to the subway station to make it back to where I lived. Engulfed in sadness, but with adrenaline racing from knowing that this day I would hop a plane from JFK Airport to Seattle, making my way ever closer to my destination of Anchorage, Alaska.
Back in Key West, working at Margaritaville, I started making enough money to move out of the inn on Angela Street. I moved a few times, once into a house with no AC. As hot as Key West was, and then working the line dripping with sweat, there was no escape from the heat with the exception of cold showers, which I took multiple times a day to escape the humidity and heat.
I didn’t stay too long in that house where I lived with my traveling partner Tom. Not being able to take the heat and lack of AC, I packed my big black army bag and took a cab from wherever I was living to a house in Bahama Village. This place had a pool. It was just rented rooms, but I had a small TV, black and white with no cable, but you could always get one station that would give you something to watch when you needed it.
The best part of the place was that there was AC and a pool. The worst part was the chickens that ran wild in Bahama Village and the roosters that let out their calls early in the morning every day. It seemed like an endless barrage of sounds in the mornings. I didn’t stay that long as I was offered a room by one of my friends, Doug, and my kitchen manager at Margaritaville, Steve.
The place I moved into next was an old Victorian house that was huge and had a fitting name: The Miller Mansion. It was an upgrade from a shack with a pool to a giant, beautiful house. Doug and I became best friends, sitting around night and day smoking cigarettes and talking about books and travels. Doug was a traveling man as well, who was now a waiter at Margaritaville at night. I built a nice system of friends, all travelers who made their way to Key West and then to the night shift of Margaritaville. There are so many stories I could tell, but maybe one day I will write a book and tell it all. But for now, this is more about the direction my life took to get to working full-time in technology, which would start a short time later, about 61 miles north of Key West, just outside Marathon, FL, in Duck Key at Hawks Cay Resort, mile marker 61.
More about me can be found on my LinkedIn page @ www.linkedin.com/in/boehmjesse
Email me @ IAM@jesseboehm.com
