This is a story about a very weird night in 1987. It was Thanksgiving night, & I had stupidly come home to from Austin to be with the family, & it was never any fun, I had been a vegetarian for a year & all the meat - my family always had turkey & ham around - wasn't fun for me. I found out later that my mother put turkey grease in everything because she thought I was going to die. That sort of thing eventually stopped me from visiting for any of the holidays.
My friend Joe was going to come by & pick me up for us to drive back to Austin, he had gone to see I think Love & Rockets or Siouxsie & The Banshees but I couldn't get away. But he grabbed me & we set out. We needed to get to Austin to see the Jesus & Mary Chain the next night, & probably neither of us wanted to stick around with family.
If I stop to think, I've only been in maybe three car accidents in my life. That night, on an almost deserted ramp on I-35 in Dallas was one of them. Some car full of people I never saw came at us - this ramp was taking us I think from I-30 to I-35 - hit Joe's car on my side, the passenger side, & we went into a spin. I don't think we hit the walls The passenger door was ruined, but somehow, adrenaline I suppose, Joe & I were out of the car & looking around. We approached the car that hit us, to see if they were okay, but they took off, in the wrong direction. Helpfully, the few cars approaching got out of their way. I don't even think we got a license plate.
Both of us were dazed. In those pre-cell phone days, in the middle of the night, with people not stopping to help, we didn't know what to do. Wait for cops? Go to the cops? Go home? We decided to drive to Austin, but we couldn't stop talking about it. After all, we were both very young - I was 19 & Joe had recently turned 20 - & we had survived something horrible.
We finally stopped at a convenience store in Hillsboro & for some reason called the Dallas police. They of course were unhelpful, & we weren't about to drive back. So we headed back to Austin.
At the time I was sharing an apartment with my friend William in an area south of the Colorado River in Austin known as the Riverside Student Ghetto. William was still with his family, & both Joe & I were very exhausted when we got there. It was a long drive, & if you've been through an accident you'll know, the adrenaline draining from your system is like coming down from a high. It's not fun.
For some reason, my key didn't work. I couldn't get into my apartment. It was like three am. It was cold out. I think I might've walked to see if, for some insane reason on a holiday weekend, the management was there. They weren't. I remember Joe went into the laundry room, which was always lit, & curled up on a table. I wasn't going to do that. I went back to my apartment & broke a window pane in my bedroom window. I was able to unlatch it & crawl in & let Joe in the front door.
Surprisingly, a security guard showed up. We hadn't seen him, but if he was even the slightest bit observant, he had to have noticed these two guys looking tired & panicky in the dead of night at this apartment complex. We were probably the only thing he noticed all night.
Also surprisingly, he didn't approach us in some threatening way, as one might approach people who were, you know, breaking & entering. I was so tired - I had just broken a fucking window - I just showed him some mail with my name on it & my driver's license to identify who I was, & I tried to demonstrate to him that the key fit in the lock & didn't work.
& then, of course, the key worked.
As a postscript: I don't remember if they made me pay for the window. It was fixed in just a few days. Maybe I argued that their stupid door & key were at fault. I don't know.
What I do know is I must've looked like the most inept B&E guy ever clambering through that window.
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