Page 121 of Trading Paint
I wasn’t any better when I thought I could table dive and ended up with three stitches about my left eye when a glass bowl broke against my head in the process.
Two pain pills later, a night with the nurse who stitched me up, I was curled up on the floor of my hotel room puking my guts out and swore I would never ever drink again.
The nurse, who I have no idea what her name was, came to check on me before she slipped out of my hotel room.
“Who’s Sway?” she asked examining my face while she threw her lipstick in her bag.
“Huh?” I asked not even bothering to lift my head again, I knew it would hurt too badly.
“Umm...Sway. Is she your girlfriend or something?”
“Did she call?” I couldn’t understand why she’d be asking about Sway. I never mentioned her to anyone but family.
“No...it’sjust that when we were in bed last night you...” she looked down at her bare feet shifting her weight from one foot to the other. “When you...well last night, you called me Sway. More than once,”
Well shit.
“Shouldn’t you be getting to work?” I asked.
I knew I was being rude but it was none of her business who Sway was and I didn’t feel like I needed to explain my situation to a complete stranger.
“Yeah...I should.” She agreed. “See you around Jameson.”
I didn’t say another word to her, partly because I was in no shape to. It hurt to even blink let alone speak.
I spent the majority of the morning in that bathroom. Later I found out Aiden never even made it to his room but instead spent the night, naked, on a white Persian rug in the lobby of the hotel until security found him.
To this day, I haven’t touched a drop of wine and neither has Aiden.
I also, had some serious battery searching to do.
That something I knew had to give, was teetering on the edge and needed to be either tipped the rest of the way, or rescued all together.
Not only did I hate sleeping around but it was evident I couldn’t keep doing it. I was tired of explaining myself to them. I didn’t want to be known as the driver that made his rounds with the girls.
I was here to race, not get a reputation and judging by Ashley’s comments, I felt I was heading in the wrong direction. It just seemed like I’d come to a point where I didn’t know myself. This wasn’t me. I wasn’t this guy that slept around and treated women like shit and most of all, lied to myself.
It was time to find the batteries.
20.Bladder – Jameson
Bladder – Located inside the tail tank, the bladder holds fuel and keeps the fuel from spilling and catching fire in case of a rear impact.
In late August after the Bristol race, I was heading out to Knoxville for the World of Outlaws Nationals.
The Busch series had a by-week the following week so schedules lined up and I jumped on the chance to get back behind the wheel of a sprint car.
After I signed with Simplex, I got the same standard question from everyone when I showed up at the local bullring dirt tracks: “What are you doing?”
What did they expect me to do?
It wasn’t like I would settle for bowling in my spare time. I started racing because that’s what I loved to do. Just because I’d been signed with a team and they were paying me to do what I loved, didn’t mean I lost that desire to race at the bullrings.
When I asked Sway one afternoon if I should stop, she again offered her timeless advice.
“The people asking you to quit don’t understand why you’re doing it in the first place. It’s what you do, it’s all you’ve ever know. So you now have a job doing it. That doesn’t mean you give up what relaxes you.”
Everyone thought because I was now being paid to race that I had it easy but that’s not the truth at all. I had stress, lots of it. I had sponsors breathing down my neck, my dad watching my every move, women hounding me and to top it off, I was falling for my best friend. So when I’m stressed, I act like any other twenty-two year old, I do what relaxes me, racing.
