She rents one of the duplexes I have. I once thought about telling her not to worry about paying the rent but I know that would insult her. Which is the last thing I want to do. This woman is the sister I never had. From the first time I met her, literally the first hour, Ann has been there for me.

When I initially took over the duplexes it was a chancy thing (to say the least). Ann helped me avoid a confrontation with some rednecks that would have ended badly for me. By ‘badly’ I mean my being beaten bloody and probably arrested.

When I was injured in an incident with an asshole named Braon she was there acting as a personal nurse. When I was visiting the jail in Richmond to see Jason, the man I thought I wanted to spend my life with, Ann drove there with me. When that ended badly she held me when I cried. She immediately included me in her circle of friends and made sure I felt comfortable with them. Her group members include dancers like her, bouncers, waitresses, bartenders and kitchen folk. All are good people. You just have to learn how to accept folks as they are and not as you would want them to be. The only thing I would ever change about Ann is that I wish she would not smoke so much Ganja (which is what they call weed up here) but that is just the way she is. It does keep her calm and mellow, otherwise she gets nervous about things. To each their own.

Beverly is another story. When I first met Beverly she was a bank officer at the Credit Union. I went there for advice about how to get a good credit rating and possibly buying a car. I asked for her because she was the only woman listed on their directory. It was one of the best choices I ever made. Not only did she help me out with that problem but she also told me about seminars the Credit Union was giving concerning various financial matters. At first I did not understand most of their jargon at the seminars but I made notes to look things up later. Slowly it all began to make sense to me. Even though I only had a GED.

The reason I had dropped out of High School when I was 16 wasn’t because school was hard. For me it was incredibly easy. I could never understand why others didn’t get things right away so I began to get bored and started what other people called “acting out”. You see my upbringing left something to be desired in the way of life skills. Skills such as how to cope with the world around you without violence. I did learn at an early age that if you wanted things in life you had to get them for yourself and not wait for others to help you. I also learned:

‘You can have what you can hold, if you can’t hold it, you can’t have it.’ That may not be the socially acceptable political correctness people like to hear, but it is the truth.