Pinotblogger: the Capozzi Winery blog

Part 1 can be found here.

The ride to jail was more than a little surreal for the obvious reasons (”Oh my God, I’m actually going to jail,” etc.). But it was made even more so by the fact that my blue uniformed chauffeur was blasting 2Pac the entire ride from Davis to the Woodland hoosegow. It’s hard to think of even a handful of artists that would be more inappropriate for a cop to be rocking out to, and I gave it some serious thought for a good part of the ride. It was David Lynch, backward-talking midget weird.

After check-in I alternately leaned against a puke encrusted wall for support and sat on a strange pony wall extending into the middle of the holding tank. The other gentlemen in there with me, even though they looked comfortable lying on the ground, seemed to be impervious to the noxious smell of stale piss emanating from the floor. I have a pretty high tolerance for filth as I mentioned, but grabbing a few z’s of fitful sleep on the concrete seemed to come at just too high of a cost in terms of overall health and cleanliness.

So when I got a chance the next morning to blearily call the only relative I had in the area, I didn’t think that I would have to explicitly state that discretion was of the highest priority. I did tell Amanda I understood how difficult it would be to get herself out to Woodland, but I knew that she had extricated herself from the fetid embrace of the Sorority Life cameras before. Surely she could do it now as well, when it really mattered.

No such luck. I should have known what was in store when Amanda called me en route and suggested that I walk a bit down the road to meet them, away from the front of the jail.

Amanda pulled up in my Jeep which she rescued after I had unceremoniously abandoned it on the streets of downtown Davis. I was immediately struck by the fact that not only was she not alone, she had inexplicably brought a hot blonde along with her. Lovely.

While I’d been waiting for Amanda I’d picked a small rose for her – you know, for the trouble. I crushed it a little in my hand.

Then a van pulled up behind her and a camera-toting stranger emerged from the back of the Jeep. And suddenly everthing got exponentially worse. I looked at Candace and I remember that she was smiling. How fun for her! For me it was a special slice of hell that is probably best reserved for someone like Paris Hilton. Paris could take it. Me, not so much.

I kicked Amanda out of the drivers seat (I still had my licence in my possesion for some reason) and prepared to make a quick get away. To my horror, the camera operator got in the passanger side seat next to me and pointed the camera right in my haggard, glassy eyed face.

I thought it couldn’t possibly get any worse, but I was wrong. Instead of letting me stew in quiet self-loathing and sudden hatred for my cousin, Candace decided to engage me in some ever-so-pleasant small talk. She asked me about the bass pole in the back of the Jeep. Was it mine? Where did I like to fish? And oh, really, what kind of fish? She either didn’t have a clue, or this was her unique brand of torture. No one should be allowed to be that bubbly and happy. Either way, at that moment, I hated her.

And that’s how we first met. And somewhere, someone has a tape of the entire thing (email me if you’re reading). So weird.

I didn’t talk to Amanda for a week, but Candace called me and explained that Amanda had tried as hard as she could to shake the cameras. Apparently the producers didn’t know the purpose of the girl’s little jaunt into Woodland, and Amanda had been sly enough to avoid the tapped house phones and call me on her cell. I was assured that none of the footage would make it on the air and, as it turned out, none did.

As the quarter wound to a close, I started spending time with Amanda again. Like war buddies that had been through a cruicible together, Amanda and Candace stayed close after Sorority Life wrapped. We all spent the summer together, splitting our time between Davis and Healdsburg. More raucous partying ensued as the girls decompressed, and I did a lot of ride hitching. We flirted and frolicked. It was great.

Then my apartment burned down. Typical, really. It was an electrical fire caused by an old strand of Christmas lights in Amanda’s bedroom. Homeless, I moved in with Candace and her roommates, something I would have never considered doing if not for the fire, and amazingly we’ve been together ever since. We finished up at Davis, got married and even had a kid. That’s Jackson up there on the right. What a cutie.

It’s a crazy love story, and completely unlikely. Still, I think that sometimes people were just meant to be together. I can’t prove it, but I believe it and it gives me great comfort. That no matter how hard we try to avoid them and screw things up, there are gifts in our lives that we ultimately have to receive. Candace is my gift, and she came wrapped in a box of reality videotape, high insurance fees and smoldering apartment debris. That’s all the proof I need.