Jay in Fort Lauderdale...

After his near-death experience with his heroine/coke ball - I distanced myself from Jay. I loved him as a friend but had fallen out of love with him, hard.... I just could not balance his life, his problems, his anger, with the love we had - I returned his keys in his mailbox, I stopped answering his calls, I stopped going to his place, I stopped participating in his life - It was hard - Every night I worried about him.... Every night I hoped that he was safe.

After years of not speaking, you can imagine my surprise when I got a text from him this week.  The text said, "Hey babe, I am in FL. Call me sumtime"  Now Jay is not Internet savvy, he types with his index fingers, he does not have a facebook or a twitter account.. he had absolutely no idea I was in FL.  I wrote him back, "which part of FL" - He typed out "FtLaud"... I called him up.  Guess he was having some trouble back home and was sleeping on a beach, he had been held up twice at gunpoint, he was broke, homeless - I told him, "I am in Fort Laud too. I will pick you up in the morning..."

My current boyfriend sees good in just about everyone - After all these years of watching me model for money, dealing with guys hitting on me, he knows that I live for our relationship... 

When I called him and explained the situation, he said "Don't worry about it - If it was one of my old friends, even an old girlfriend, I would do the same thing... I trust you."

Oh man - When Jay crawled into my car, skinny, lobster-red, wild-eyed, clothes torn up and stinking... I did a double-take.  He looked like someone who had been living on the streets for years .... He launched into a speech about how he was cleaning his life up - no more drugs, no more drinking, no more cigarettes... I nodded and congratulated him (knowing full well that he was trashed) - Hours later, after showering and grabbing some food, he starting catching me up about life.

Guess he had hooked up with a 27 year old girl with three kids, accidentally got her pregnant, had a baby with her.  For the last three years, he has been a dad to all four children, including her one autistic child. Being a father was the one thing keeping him sane and grounded - He talks about kid baths and family dinners, and I see happiness. It beams from his eyes.. But aside from the kids, his relationship was falling apart - One night he got drunk, caught his GF cheating on him, and went crazy - He put his fist through a wall and she beat him with a baseball bat in self defense - The next morning, she took two restraining orders against him.  She found a new boyfriend and told Jay not to worry about Father's Day "You are not seeing your kid anymore" - blah blah blah (God, re-reading this, it sounds like Jerry Springer... oh and it gets worse) - He quits his job. Tries to hang himself in the backyard, but the rope broke (he has quite the scar to prove it... ick) - Eventually, not knowing what to do, he just ran from his problems.... He jumped on a bus and tried to get a job in New Orleans with BP Oil but they were only hiring locals. And so he ended up in Ft Laud, homeless on a beach.

I know the drama involved here. And I know that with Jay comes chaos..

But I invited him to go camping with me in the Keys... He spent the entire time talking about his daughter - I spent those few days trying to talk him into gaining control of his life, to stop complaining and blaming others, to start doing something productive - I talked him into calling his mother, to get a ticket home. Talked him into getting a job that might overlook his past arrests "The military sucks, but if you prove yourself and you want your daughter back, that will be your best option...." Truthfully, I not even sure the military can clean up his record. Truthfully, I am not even sure if sending him home was the right advice... For all I know, next week he could obsess about his daughter so much, he might try to kidnap her or something... *sigh*  Hard situation...