Juvenile Crimes - Chapter 33
Wedding Bells and That Time Marijuana Saved My Life
Portland, Oregon, late June 1996 continued…
As summer rolled around, my older brother, Greg, got married at the Rhododendron Garden in Portland to a woman who had followed him to Oregon about a year after he was established. It was a nice event in a perfect outdoor garden setting on a beautiful sunny day. He couldn’t have had it any better under the circumstances.
Greg surprised me by inviting our former stepmother, “Margaret.” She surprised me more by showing up. They had never had any love for each other, but I guess he felt an obligation to try to keep her involved in his life, per our father’s request before he died. My interaction was pleasant enough with her, but the old tensions and hatred between her and my mother were palpable. Luckily, no cross encounters or harsh words were exchanged, at least directly.
I brought Selena with me, of course, and her sense of romance was already heightened. After the wedding, we were off on a one-week vacation to Cancun, my first long break since the murders and first full week off since I started the job. Selena was warmly embraced by everyone who wasn’t socially dysfunctional or overtly racist – more than a few of each still existed in my extended family, and one aunt in particular who had a very big mouth and a very tiny brain was in attendance. The important thing was that my immediate family took to Selena right away and welcomed her. Margaret would even surprise me by asking me when I was going to get married, nodding to Selena.
“Life’s too short, you know,” Margaret asserted with a hint of grief in her voice. “Don’t wait too long or you might miss out.”
“Yeah, I hear you,” I replied. “It’s definitely been on my mind. How can it not be, with all this?” I said, referring to the wedding.
While I would speak to Margaret on the phone a few more times, I didn’t know that this would be the second to last time I ever saw or talked to her.
I was extremely excited to go to Cancun, especially with Selena! Beyond being my incredible girlfriend, she was also my interpreter, and we were determined to have as much tropical fun as we could fit into a week. I had never had a tropical vacation and I longed for one ever since I can remember growing up in the frozen tundra of North Dakota.
The trip came about from a bank promotion for opening a new checking account. Blanchett’s wife worked at the bank, and he talked me into seeing her a few months prior. The deal was six-hundred bucks for two round-trip airfares and a luxury hotel room at a beach resort in the heart of Cancun for a week. It seemed way too good to be true – I was skeptical all the way up until we were checked into the hotel. But it was legit, and our accommodation was phenomenal. The rooms were all mini suites with gorgeous marble floors. From the inner wall, our room was laid out starting with a huge luxury bathroom, followed by an open bedroom with a king mattress, then a living room two steps below the bedroom which led to the balcony. We were 11 stories up, overlooking the very large resort pool and the white sugar-sand beach of Cancun. The blue and turquoise water beyond absolutely called to me!
I had two goals that week, with a tugging inclination for a third. First was to have as much fun in the water with Selena as possible. To that end, I had prepared by buying us snorkeling gear and fins. I even bought a modest wetsuit for Selena for her birthday a couple weeks prior. I didn’t realize how completely unnecessary that was since all that gear was rented on site very cheaply.
My second priority – well, maybe it was actually first – was to have as much incredible sex with my spicey Senorita from South America as we could endure! Our relationship had blossomed quite well, and it progressed very fast. Her family was warm and inviting to me, even with the language barrier that we sometimes struggled with. Selena tried to bring me over for every birthday, or other family celebration they had, whenever I could make it. Selena herself was always vibrant and smiling; funny and beautiful; innocently sweet but totally sexy. Altogether, I was starting to see a real possibility of having a life with her, a stable and happy life…and I was definitely in love with her…
Which led me to the third possibility: should I ask her to marry me? I was leaning more and more in that direction, but I wanted to have fun with her while trying to gain more certitude in my mind. It was a huge mental leap for me to seriously consider spending my life with anyone but Tami, but now I was. Seriously. I also wanted to wait for the perfect moment.
The evening of our arrival was sweltering Caribbean heat and humidity – just what I longed for. After settling into our room, we got familiar with the hotel grounds and nearby street market. Immediately, we were accosted by young guys trying to give us various trip or adventure packages, as well as goodie bags stuffed with travel gear, beach towels, even booze. The trick was that you had to sit through a “quick meeting” about vacation packages. Time share scams. We picked one that gave us a free trip to the ancient Mayan city and temple, Chichen Itza.
Our evening ended as I had hoped, with hot vacation sex. What I didn’t expect was to end up tossing and turning most of the night with vivid, horrifying and extremely bloody nightmares. They were some of the worst I had ever had: graphic, grisly, completely terrifying. I probably woke up at least a dozen times. None of those dreams had anything directly to do with the mass murder scene I had been to – none of that crime scene entered those dreams - but they were certainly related in my subconscious mind.
After a three-hour high-pressure sales pitch early the next morning, we found a friendly SCUBA instructor at our resort pool and arranged for pool training later that afternoon. That night was almost an exact repeat of the first night – Selena and I had a wonderful tropical evening. Then I got hit by another night of intense nightmares, very much on par with the previous night. Ghastly amorphous violent nightmares.
Our dive was the next morning over the gorgeous, protected Mesoamerican Barrier Reef, which was filled with tropical ocean life. Although I had some trouble and pain adjusting to the water pressure at 30 feet down, I was thrilled to be there. The reef was filled with life and color - I felt like I was in a National Geographic diving film. After, we spent the afternoon lounging on the sugar-sand beach, unwinding. Another romantic evening followed…as did the horrendous nightmares. Again, random, extremely violent dreams kept waking me up all night.
I didn’t say anything to Selena about the nightmares because I didn’t want to scare her or freak her out about me. After all, I was sneaking up on the idea of proposing to her still.
Chichen Itza was scheduled for all afternoon and evening on Thursday, so we filled Wednesday by renting a private boat for the day from a young local. For $200, he took us back to the reef for snorkeling; provided snacks and beverages on the boat; and took us for lunch (fish he caught while we snorkeled) to Isla Mujeres (the Island of Women), which is a few miles off of Cancun on the other side of the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef. Another fantastic day. I even got to hold two fairly large sharks - a sand shark and a nurse shark - that were kept in an ocean “pen” for dumbass tourists like me to take photos with.