There I was, age 17, in Mendocino at my father’s place, insecure and on the brink of a breakdown for fear of being unlovable. So what do I do?  I fall in love with the married garbage man. I had a thing about falling in love with unavailable men - married, gay or just plain emotionally, physically or intellectually unavailable.

Charismatic, intelligent and witty, Scrib drove a large green garbage truck. In those days detritus was called garbage and nothing was recycled, but for dumping it all back into the sea from whence we all came. Scrib backed the old rusty truck up to the edge of the bluffs just off Main Street and tipped the bucket, spilling garbage out on to the rocks and sand 100 feet below. Ultimately, all kinds of garbage was dispersed by the ocean’s crashing waves.

Even though I knew he was married and had two kids, I flirted with him. He didn't seem to mind. I was an incorrigible flirt in my younger prettier days.

When he was not acting the garbage man, he was a fine art photographer, a writer and poet. We had trysts in the derelict buildings that dotted Mendocino township. He shot many photographs of me standing in front of open doors and windows in the streaking dust-filled sunlight. With long brown hair and hazel-green eyes, I was his Rapunzel, flaunting my sexuality, enticing my prince of a trash collector to climb the blackberry vines and pick me. Choose me, my heart called out. Save me! Save me! It was an exciting summer.

After I moved to Santa Rosa to attend Junior College, Scrib surprised me one day by showing up at the hotel where I was staying. My roommates were a bit surprised that the quiet and shy Susan had an older boyfriend. However it appeared, Scrib and I had only a brief summer platonic relationship. What the girls didn’t know, I wasn’t going to tell!

My romance with Scrib was seemingly innocent and safe. We were sexually attracted to each other, but no sex beyond kissing. I trusted him implicitly. He was married. I didn't have to make a commitment, nor did he. We both knew this and we both knew it was morally wrong.

I missed seeing Scrib and pined for him after he left that day, but I very quickly fell in love with another unavailable man—oh so cool Dan, a Santa Rosa guitar player and folk singer.