Friday the 13th...The Final Chapter / Part VII

Note: I'll apologize in advance for the F-bomb contained in the following entry. But really, there is no other applicable word.

The auction was held as scheduled and after numerous unanswered emails and phone calls, two weeks later I finally made contact with the auctioneer, who reported that the sale of the kitchen equipment (which we didn’t own) and the beds and remaining few personal items that we did own, netted us around $5000. He then asked where I would like the proceeds mailed, and said he’d get me a check. That was three months ago, and as of this writing, I’ve not received a penny.

Many of you might find it hard to believe that someone would, essentially, steal (auction) your belongings in broad daylight as you stand by and watch and then thumb their nose at you when reproached. It used to be hard for me to fathom the notion that people can be so blatantly dishonest, but my Colorado experience has shown me that no matter how solid, legal and on the up-and-up people and professions may appear, the reality is that thieves, cheats, liars and crooks can mask themselves with legitimate facades and walk and operate openly among us, and more often than not, with total impunity. Certainly I’m not inferring that this sort of behavior is peculiar to Colorado; it just happened to be in Colorado that I put myself in such a position of vulnerability as to be exposed to the predators that are licensed to prey and kill, and then next, be fodder to the vultures who feast upon the remains. Needless to say, this newly found knowledge and experience has hardened me a tad, as it is no longer elementary to my nature to give people the benefit of the doubt; ‘tis indeed a shame.

Friday, August 13th, 2010, 10:00 AM MST came and went without a whisper. It was the day after my 54th birthday, and a normal day at the office for me in Jackson, MS. I didn’t mark the minute, or even recognize until an hour later when it dawned on me that the foreclosure had occurred; no tremor in the force such as Obi-Wan Kenobi felt when Alderaan blew up. It just came and went; I didn’t feel sad, happy, relieved, depressed, jubilant or defeated, broker or richer. I think the fact that I’d been physically removed from The Riverside and Grand County for so long helped to ease the suffering, and it shook me to imagine the suffering I would have endured had I no place else to go, having had to stand my ground in Colorado and bear witness to the process to which I’d just been subjected. It was also important for our general health and well being that we so resolutely decided back in March to walk away from the venture, to quickly shed the pain of the struggle, the failure and the loss, and begin life anew in another locale. As someone on Madison Avenue so succinctly put it, “know when to say when”; I strongly suggest to one and all, when the opportunity/need arises, take heed in those words.

It’s easy to be philosophical and wax poetic about the laws of physics after you’ve been run over by a truck and survived. I can look back now and see with clarity the red flags that prior were obfuscated by my desire to live, what I thought at the time was, my dream job in my dream locale. The truth of the matter is that the night we signed the papers to purchase the hotel, December 27th, 2007, I had such an immediate, overwhelming feeling of dread and remorse that I literally became physically ill. My first night sleeping in the hotel and the new life that we’d just mortgaged our souls to obtain, I awoke at 3 or 4 in the morning with a high fever, bone-rattling chills and a bout of overwhelming nausea. Perhaps a nasty dose of altitude sickness for this unsuspecting heretofore flatlander? I think not, rather, a severe physical reaction to the notion that I’d just done something fatally stupid and irresponsible.

For a fact, the body’s natural defenses to illness can quickly break down when exposed to a severe stress, becoming impotent to the onslaught of a phantom virus seeking harbor in a fertile port which lacks the will or resistance to send it packing. If stress was luck, I had a boatload of it that night, enough so that there wasn’t a lottery that was safe from me the night of December 27th had I a free dollar left to play, and to wit, that transient virus found solid purchase upon my stressed-ridden body.

I made it through that miserable night, but midway through the next morning, I walked out of the hotel into a frigid day, a bright sun in an emerald sky and headed west down Grand Street, to stagger across the bridge over the Colorado River and walk through waist-deep snow on to the isolated western riverbank until I was out of sight and sound of the hotel and any human who might be wandering by, and I vomited from the very depths of my person, profoundly, loudly and violently.

As I trudged back to the hotel through the waist-deep snow and bitter cold that I realized was not just a winter vacation accoutrement but now a part of my day to day existence, the gut-wrenching nausea was gone, but the feeling of dread persisted. As forcefully as I had expunged the bug that had so quickly invaded me and rendered me a staggering, vomiting slug, I knew that the real source of my heartburn was yet eternal within me, both physically and mentally. Once back at the hotel, a hard look at the man in the mirror and a subsequent discussion with same found that we were both in agreement; buddy, you fucked up bad: HUGE – BIG TIME.

This was within 24 hours of our ownership of The Riverside Hotel. Talk about your classic case of buyer’s remorse.

To be concluded.......