The Story of Billy The Beach Bum (Before Nawlins')

I was nineteen years old and completely broke the day I met Rusty Folsom. When I moved to Pittsburgh, a year before, it was with the intention of getting a degree. However, six months after I moved into my dorm room, I was kicked out. It was not a matter of one particular event that caused me to be kicked out, it was an accumulation of events. Starting with a very pedestrian run-in with the RA (resident assistant I think is what it stands for, not really sure though) for drinking beers in the hallway. However, two weeks later I was caught selling reefer to a member of the basketball team. Which was a pretty big deal, but still did not get me kicked out of my room or the university. No, that would be when my little illegal gambling ring was busted.

It was a nice little setup. The gambling ring, I mean. But, I should have been smarter about the location. My room was right next to the RA’s room. Now, for those who did not live in a college dorm I will explain to you what an RA actually is. They are upperclassmen that choose to live with the freshman and ‘mentor’ them and help them adjust to college while looking over them, etc. I was placed in the athletes dorm my freshman year because I was supposed to walk-on to the track team. I was a very good middle distance runner in high school and the coach talked to me about possibly running the mile in college. I lasted one practice. I often wonder where I would be today had I lasted longer than one practice, but I wasn’t getting any scholarship money, and I was not a distance runner by any means, and this was a Division I track team in the Big East; I was a smoker, and a drinker, and one practice was more than I could handle. But, as I was saying, they placed me in the athlete’s dorm, which is where I setup my gambling room next to the RA.

The RA was a nice girl, a captain of the girl’s track team, about twice my size, and definitely a lesbian. She loved me at first. I was a free spirit, a hippie as she would later call me, and I don’t think she ever met anyone quite like me. I came to college with two trash bags full of clothes and two huge spider plants that I have taken care of since I was a kid. Most kids brought computers, TV’s, bed mattresses with the eggshell, and all sorts of meaningless technology, I had none of these things in my room. My roommate never showed up, so I had my own room for the first semester. After the first few weeks I got rid of both the beds (in bunk bed form. I got a football lineman to help me throw these beds into a dumpster out back). I replaced them with my once legendary hammock. I then put a card table in the middle of the room which is where I dealt blackjack and three card poker, or where we would play any number of games like Acey Ducey, seven card stud, three card Monty (the gentleman’s game), and even Hold em’ or Omaha. But, this was before those games were televised regularly on television. This is where I learned how to play my favorite card game of all time, Spades. We eventually rented a big screen TV from Rent-a-Center and we would watch games and bet on them. I’m not saying we were playing for huge stakes, sometimes the stakes got up there, but it usually was all in good fun. Remember, this was the athlete’s dorm, and the RA was very strict with NCAA rules and regulations. It was one thing that I had sold a bench player a small amount of weed, it was another to be playing Spades smoking a blunt and slapping five about the football bet we just won while we were sitting in front of a card table with about $500 dollars in front of us.

The raid was really funny. The cops thought my spider plants were weed plants and tried to tell me I was growing weed and that I could go to jail for several years. He tried to scare me. Or intimidate, I’m not sure what the best word is to use for it is. Spider plants are a huge window plant that could never be mistaken for a pot plant. But, he did say that if I didn’t cooperate he would rat out the players whom I was playing cards and gambling with and I did not want them to go down with me. Since this whole thing took place in my room, I was kicked out of ‘on campus’ housing. I was still allowed to enroll in all my classes, but could no longer live in the dorms or participate in any on campus events.

I actually was homeless for a week. I did not bring much money with me to Pittsburgh and had no established credit so I had to find a place to crash without signing a lease and for a relatively cheap price. They call it ‘subletting’ I call it ‘couch surfing’. I finally stumbled across a place one day by chance.

The house itself was very nice. Three bedrooms upstairs, a nice porch in the front, it even had a tomato garden on the side and a fenced in backyard for our dog, Trooper. I lived here with two girls, Allison and Becky, and Rusty Folsom. All three of my roommates were 23 years old, serious students, and genuinely nice people. I was nineteen and just got kicked out of my dorm. I also slept on a hammock in the basement, had a wicked Mohawk, and loved to guzzle inexpensive champagne.

I met Allison one day while she was walking Trooper. I was sitting on the side of the street watering my spider plants with the empty remains of a Pabst Blue Ribbon beer can. As she walked past me her dog stopped and I started to pet him.

“Wow, he likes you. He never lets strangers pet him. He usually scares them away,” she exclaimed.

“He’s a good pup. What is he, a pit bull?” I asked.

“Well, sort uf. He’s more of a mutt,” she said with a laugh.

“ahh no wonder he likes me, I’m a mutt too.”

Allison was very beautiful and had a certain bohemian attitude that I was attracted to right away. She looked Italian or Spanish with dark skin and brown eyes. When she asked me where I lived, and I told her that I was ‘in between’ places she offered to have me stay in the basement of her house. It would cheapen everyone’s rent, and I could take care of the dog while she wasn’t there. It ended up to be a great place to live, and my hammock did not get in the way of the washer and dryer that were set up down there. I spent most of my time on the porch anyways. I always thought it strange how quickly she asked me to move in, she always explained that she never thought I’d agree to live in the basement and that she was just being nice.

On this particular night, Allison and I decided to each buy a bottle of cheap wine and get drunk to celebrate our new living arrangement. By the time Rusty came home, we were both in our own little happy drunk world. I was playing her guitar and doing some improvisational rap while she was whistling to the tune. Rusty was a bit tipsy himself when he arrived, it was a typical Friday night in a college town, and he plumped himself on the couch quickly passing out.

Ally and I stayed up late and talked a lot of nonsense about our childhood, how we ended up in Pittsburgh and what we wanted to do with our lives. She was from Cleveland, Ohio and she was the first person that I’d ever met from there. I explained to her that I was from south jersey and grew up in a beach town. I told her all about how different Pittsburgh was from where I grew up. We had a connection that night, but it was more of a big sister little brother type of connection, or at least that is what I like to tell myself. In actuality, I think that I was just too much of a wuss to make the first move.

In the morning Rusty woke up and I was still awake from the night before. It was probably close to five am and I was playing with Trooper in the backyard running around like a lunatic. Ally had gone upstairs hours before and I had decided to eat a tablet of acid in my drunken state. Rusty stomped down the back steps angrier than all hell.

“What the fuck are you doing dude, that dog is gonna kill you!” He screamed.

“No, man, it’s cool. Troopers my homeboy,”

“Seriously, I don’t know who you are, I don’t really care, I just have seen that dog do some nasty things, and I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“No, man, honestly it’s cool. I’ve been partying with him all night,”

“First of all, man, dog’s don’t party….” He couldn’t finish his sentence because out of nowhere he just started to laugh.

“Trooper parties, bra.” I explained. “He parties hard.”

It was about this time when Ally arrived and she explained to Rusty about how we had met, and how I got along with her dog. She also explained that I would be living in the basement for the next few months. At first Rusty was against the idea. He had a little talk with her in the kitchen. He even threatened to move out and said that I could have his room. But, eventually he gave in. Over time Rusty and I became very close. I always look back at that summer as the best and worst summer of my life. I was living in a completely different environment than I was accustomed to. I had developed a very bad drinking and drug problem and was intoxicated almost every hour of the summer. I had no job, no girlfriend, and I slept in a hammock in the basement. I had long hair when I first met Rusty, but one night I got real drunk and shaved it. My hair was real curly, and I never used gel or anything like that, it was a unique kind of haircut but I pulled it off. I never wore shoes. I always walked around barefoot, and no one could ever understand this because the streets of Oakland were littered with beer bottles and trash was everywhere. But, that’s how I had always been. I always rocked the barefoot and I still do. Ally nicknamed me Beachbum because of this and because of the hammock, and also because I was actually a bum when she met me. The name stuck, and I was always known as ‘Billy the Beachbum’ around campus. I thought it was cool and I was somewhat of a local celebrity. I was a fish out of water. I eventually realized I was in a place that I did not like, and despite my love for all the people around me I eventually went back home and got my degree from a small local school while working at my family restaurant and surfing everyday.