Luggage By Kroger: A True Crime Memoir by Gary Taylor Page B

the
"guys"—a mascot at The Flint
Journal . Several nights each week, staffers
would gather at a bar beside the shoe shop to blast away the
stress, and she fit right in. By the time we left in 1971, she had
become so engrained that a fellow reporter felt obliged to include
her in the final scene of a farewell movie he'd prepared for my
departure party. He ended that film by telling the crowd, "Here's
the real reason we tolerated Taylor these past two years." Then his
film cut to a long shot of Boop walking away from the Journal building, twisting
her ass in a miniskirt, and looking back over a shoulder to
wink.

    But our relationship had started to
change in a subtle way even before we entertained thoughts of
leaving Flint. The catalyst came in the surprising form of my draft
lottery victory, the one that placed my birthday so far from the
front that we could finally plan on a long-term future without an
interruption for the draft or Vietnam. We suddenly had to face a
troubling question: Had we really expected a concept as serious as
long-term? We should have been overjoyed with the lottery as a
deliverance, and, on the surface, we appeared to celebrate. But we
never discussed the doubts. For the first time, however, I got
scared about commitment, and I believe she did, too. Those doubts
stormed to the surface as we questioned our next moves. Buy a
house? Have a baby? Buy furniture? Get into debt? Meanwhile, we
privately confronted the more basic question each on our own: What
did we really want with our lives? In lieu of an answer, we just
marched along.

    Boop enrolled at the Flint campus for the
University of Michigan while I focused on my job. She seemed
pointed to the future. Then I came to a conclusion that I needed to
move on to a bigger challenge in a place with a better climate.
Although she wanted to finish school, Boop agreed to relocate our
shared life adventure, provided I found a place interesting enough
to her. Houston worked for both of us.

    Once again we couldn't afford the
out-of-state tuition in Texas, so she had to find a job and wait a
year to become a resident. This time, however, she wanted something
more interesting than shoe repair and found it teaching in a school
for retarded children south of town. We bought a second car for her
and began our lives again. I worked nights at the police station
while she worked days in the school. After a year, we woke up one
morning to discover we really didn't know each other anymore. Boop
had the courage to be the first to voice a doubt, and it took me by
surprise.
    "There's a problem, Gary and I
don't know what it is," she said one day in December of 1972. "But
this just isn't working any more. Something has to
change."

    Despite our
liberated view of the world on the surface, we still clung to those
Midwestern values that considered divorce an unspeakable
word. But what was wrong with me? I wondered. My self-esteem flushed down the
toilet, and I decided to give myself a thorough character exam. In
the end I determined the problem: In my focus on the future, I had
become a square. I was an old man at the age of twenty-four. I
didn't even listen to rock music any more. And who knows how I
performed in bed? All these things, I decided, would have to
change.

    By the time Boop finally left in
March of 1973, I was prepared for the end. We had been to a party
the night before. We woke up on Sunday and made love. Then she told
me she planned to rent an apartment that afternoon. I chuckled as I
remembered a teasing comment from a friend at that party. When he
asked Boop to name her favorite song, he said, she had looked at me
and sighed: "I Can't Get No Satisfaction."

    She really busted me up for a
while, but I recovered. And I quickly became grateful she had the
strength to stop our charade. It worked out best for us both.
Although we were married for nearly four years, I still look back
on that relationship with the sort of memories reserved for a high
school