Up the Down Escalator: A True Story of Love, Alcoholism, and a Superfund Site

By Barbara T. Esposito

While working in a lab just months after graduating with a BA in chemistry, Barbara met Ray Esposito, a real scientist, who had recently experienced a personal tragedy. They began a risky affair, considering themselves "star-crossed lovers." As they worked toward their dream of being together, they were blithely unaware that they were walking over minefields that would eventually threaten Barbara's very survival.

Their relationship began with life on the lam, starting a family, and establishing a business selling paint removers and recycling dirty solvents. Ultimately the EPA designated Ray's facility as a Superfund site, and Ray became a scapegoat. The publicity was crushing. They never knew where friends and family members really stood, and they were stabbed in the back more than once.

Things started snowballing in a way that tested not only their love for each other but their sanity. What happened next propelled Barbara into a downward spiral, and alcohol became her crutch. Fueled by the additional strain of her disintegrating relationship with Ray, she kept drinking until the alcohol was driving everything. All she could think about was getting her next drink.

Barbara's journey eventually led her back to the land of the living, but would she and Ray be able to find peace and reconciliation after all they had experienced?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barbara T. Esposito
• Release date: Dec 17, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463548103

Book preview

The Savior's Symbols

This is dedicated to Raymond G. Esposito, who, for better or worse, helped make me the person I am today.

Copyright © 2018 by Barbara T. Esposito

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The views expressed herein are the responsibility of the author and do not necessarily represent the position of the publisher.

This is a work of creative nonfiction. The events herein are portrayed to the best of the author’s memory. While all the stories in this book are true, some names and identifying details may have been changed to protect the privacy of the people involved.

Editorial work and production management by Eschler Editing

Cover design by Steven Novak

Interior print design and layout by Sydnee Hyer

eBook design and layout by Sydnee Hyer

Published by Scrivener Books

First Edition: November 2019

ISBN: 978-1-949165-14-2

Contents

---

Chapter 1: Life Before RGE

Chapter 2: The Drunk Diving Accident that Changed My Life

Chapter 3: Were You Planning to Ask Me to Marry You?

Chapter 4: From Mistress to Fake Wife, or, No Man Ever Gave Up More for Sex Than Ray Esposito Gave Up for Your Ass

Chapter 5: The Sad Saga of Union Chemical, Part I

Chapter 6: The Companion Pieces

Chapter 7: The Sad Saga of Union Chemical, Part II—The Bitter End

Chapter 8: The Downhill Slide, or, Liquor: The Cause of, and Answer to, All of Life’s Problems

Chapter 9: The Concept of Two People Living Together for Twenty-Five Years without a Serious Dispute Suggests a Lack of Spirit Only to be Admired in Sheep

Chapter 10: We’ve Had an Interesting Life

Epilogue: Tying Up Loose Ends

Addendum

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Photographs

Chapter 1

---

Life Before RGE

This may be an exercise in self-indulgent narcissism. Conversely, it might be a recitation of narcissistic self-indulgence. Or it might just be a pretty interesting story; only time will tell. It begins with events that led to my affiliation with the person with whom I spent almost my entire adult life. It is the result of an unfortunate incident that took place over the space of a split second many years ago.

Istarted my sophomore year at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania, planning to major in chemistry. Because of good preparation from an excellent chemistry teacher in high school, I sailed through my freshman year and wasn’t prepared as a sophomore for how much I had to buckle down to cope with organic chemistry, qualitative and quantitative analysis, calculus, and I don’t remember what else. In no time I was swamped—drowned, even—and about to flunk out. I quickly dropped those courses and picked up some psychology and sociology courses instead. I made it through the year but decided I still wanted to be a chem major, so I decided to take the courses I needed in summer school between my sophomore and junior years.

Lennie, one of my roommates that summer, spotted a group of University of Pittsburgh football players that were walking up the hill by our apartment, and she called out, Hey boys! In 1961 the team had their summer practice at Allegheny. Lennie was attending summer school in order to graduate a semester early, and I was repeating the qualitative and quantitative analysis courses I had flunked the year before. We invited the Pitt guys into our apartment, talked a while, and ended up making dates with two of them; we went out several times that summer. As it turned out, Lennie went out with Fred Cox, the only one of that year’s Pitt team who would have a successful NFL career. He was quiet and nice and the only one who wasn’t always bragging about himself.

When summer school ended, I went back to my home in Mt. Lebanon, near Pittsburgh. My father had a 1961 white Buick convertible, and I somehow talked him into letting me take it back to Meadville for a weekend. The Pitt team was still there. This time Ginger, my best friend from high school, was with me. I went out with Buzzy, the one I’d dated previously, and Ginger went out with an enormous blonde guy of Polish ancestry whose last name started with an O.

Incidentally, I do know Buzzy’s real name, but I decided not to use it because of the notoriety he once had. For one thing, he was entangled in a gang rape prosecution that involved a number of football players, something that happened after I was involved with him. Later he became a lawyer and was indicted in some kind of fraud. Besides Fred Cox with his NFL career and Buzzy with his problems, the only other Pitt player from that group to become well-known was Paul Martha, whom I later saw on NBC’s Today Show during an NFL strike.

We had a good time that weekend, including on the day we drove back from Conneaut Lake. I was driving, the top was down, and the two guys were in the back seat. They started mooning passing motorists; we laughed about that for a long time afterward.

We all went back to Pittsburgh, but Buzzy and I and Ginger and O kept dating until we returned to college for our junior year. One night the four of us went to a popular parking spot in South Park, and one thing led to another, as they say. I’d had my first sexual experience at age seventeen after graduating from high school. I had dated the party in question my senior year, and he was also a virgin. He attended Allegheny, too, and we were engaged for most of my freshman year. He dumped me for the riding/phys ed teacher, and to the end of my days I will be grateful for that. He flunked out, and I never saw him again, and never shed a tear.

After that, I decided not to have sex for a long, long time. Sophomore year I dated a pre-med student I really liked, but I’m not sure how he felt about me. I do know that we went out every weekend, usually double dating with his roommate and my roommate, and I didn’t sleep with him.

Let’s just say that my personal commitment of chastity went out the window that night in South Park. Buzzy and I had sex—in the back seat, no less. He didn’t rape me, but he was a big, strong guy, and I would say he coerced me. Back in 1961, unmarried people had basically two forms of contraception: condoms and coitus interruptus. He didn’t use either of those, and I said, Jesus, you came inside me. He told me to pee when I got home and that would take care of it. I called him a jackass and asked if he didn’t know we weren’t talking about the same orifices. I got nothing out of that encounter except for a little foreplay, and probably not much of that.

When I went back to college, I stopped having my menstrual periods. Lennie got me an appointment with a sympathetic physician, and he sent me to the hospital for a blood test. No family planning clinics or college infirmaries handed out birth control pills in those days. Of course, I was pregnant. I called Buzzy; he sent me some quinine pills and told me to run up and down the stairs after taking them. Needless to say, that didn’t work.

While all this was happening, I went back home to Pittsburgh for a weekend; Ginger, Buzzy, and O were there, too. We went to a party at the apartment of another Pitt student, and we all got pretty drunk. Since the four of us had already shared some intimate front-seat/back-seat experiences, we decided on a lark to get naked and have sex in the bedroom of the apartment. It was something new and unusual for all of us; the guys couldn’t get hard-ons, but we romped around on the bed anyway. It was something you probably wouldn’t want to tell your grandchildren about.

After that brief intermission, I went back to Meadville, where I became increasingly worried about my pregnant condition. Finding out you have an unwanted pregnancy is like having an alien invade your body. I didn’t want to marry Buzzy any more than he wanted to marry me, I didn’t want to jeopardize my college education, and I definitely didn’t want to tell my parents. Marge, another friend in whom I’d confided, had an ex-boyfriend named Larry who was some kind of seamy character. Larry arranged for me to get an abortion, which was illegal in 1961.

I went home at Thanksgiving, and we arranged to have the deed done. It cost $300; Buzzy came up with $200, and Larry gave me the rest. (Would Larry expect to be repaid at some point? The answer is much too painful for me to recall.)

Marge and Larry took me to a place in one of the not-so-great parts of Pittsburgh; I think it was in the Hill District. I imagined they used coat hangers or knitting needles or something, and I was scared. A black woman took me to a small bathroom in the basement of her house, and I had to remove my underpants and spread my legs while she inserted a catheter tube into my cervix. She told me to leave it in place until it came out on its own, and said the abortion would occur within two weeks. Meanwhile, I had to attend school in this condition.

Early one Sunday morning, I finally started having severe pains. I ran to the bathroom, where I delivered a fetus that resembled a rubber baby doll I’d had as a child. I didn’t look to see what sex it was, but immediately flushed it down the toilet. Luckily no one else was awake, and my roommate at that time didn’t know about my problem. I went back to my room until I had more pain, and I returned to the bathroom, where the afterbirth was expelled. There was blood all over the place, but I mopped it up with my blue terrycloth robe, which I then hid in my laundry bag. My roommate slept through the whole thing.

I was terribly weak and stayed in bed for a day or two. I thought the worst was over, but lo and behold, I started exuding milk, as if I had given birth to a full-term baby. It was weird to be in class when wet spots started creeping over my breasts, which were also painful. I just prayed that nobody was looking at the front of my sweater. Eventually it all passed, and I was relieved I had survived intact.

One would hope I had learned something from that horrible incident, but that wasn’t exactly the case. The truth is that alcohol and binge drinking were often the bane of my existence; what I thought of as partying was actually self-destructive behavior. I’m not going to list them, but let’s just say there were a number of liaisons that I regret to this day—and I assume they contributed to the amoral view of sex I used to have. One doesn’t like to think of oneself as promiscuous, but, really, what else could you call it? On the bright side, I studied hard that year while taking difficult courses that required five afternoon labs per week, and I made the Dean’s List both semesters.

Toward the end of my junior year, some of my sorority sisters, including my roommate Jean, and I went to the amusement park at Conneaut Lake, just a few miles from Meadville. While we were there, Jean started talking to a young man who identified himself as a private investigator whose main income came from divorce cases. He asked her if she would like to work for him, and we both gave him our home addresses.

Yes, it’s crazy, but he called me early that summer, and I arranged to meet him at a drugstore located near a hotel in downtown Pittsburgh. I guess I should thank my lucky stars that he never showed up, but my problems were just beginning. A man approached me and said he had noticed that I seemed to be waiting for someone; he introduced himself as Bill Ditmar. Since I had already told my parents a story about where I was going and couldn’t exactly go home for the night, I agreed to have dinner with him.

Bill was about thirty and was nice-looking, but I don’t know what I was thinking—and that wouldn’t have been the first time. I spent the night with him at the hotel, and we began a relationship. As things go, it was pretty stupid, but then again maybe not as stupid as some of the other things I did during that time, and I actually didn’t expect to make it to age thirty.

Birth control continued to be a problem for me, and I soon discovered I was again pregnant. Bill had some connections and arranged for another abortion, this time in a nicer neighborhood. I told my parents, who now lived in Upper St. Clair, that I was visiting Ginger at State College, but I stayed for a week or so at the apartment of a woman Bill knew in Mt. Lebanon.

Bill knew a lot of strange people, something that will make sense when I describe what he was. First a disclaimer: he wasn’t a bad guy, and he treated me well, but I’m afraid I was attracted to him for the exciting or dangerous side of life that he represented. He told me right up front that he was a pimp, and while he never suggested that I work for him, he told me all about that lifestyle. He told me all the pimps in Pittsburgh were white, but all the pimps in New York City were black.

Birth control pills were not yet generally available, but they were available, and he had the connections to get them, so that problem was finally taken care of. I always wondered what my family thought when he came to the house to take me out, but they never said anything. He used to visit me when I went back for my senior year, but I always arranged to meet him where no one would see him. Sometimes I took the bus to Pittsburgh and stayed at his apartment in Shadyside. He was the one who introduced me to oral sex, both received and given, and we had quite a good sex life. While I was at his apartment, I met a woman who worked for him, and she told me details about the life of a hooker. He gave me a record player, which will become significant later in the story.

I broke off with Bill early in 1963 and dated a couple other guys, but none seriously. John had a girlfriend who was a sorority sister several years behind me; we were attracted to each other, so we used to secretly get together and neck (or make out, or whatever you want to call it). Though we were doing that, he still considered that he was being faithful to his girlfriend. I used to see him a lot, so I think he worked in the dining hall with me.

When graduation approached, I started to worry about whether I was going to pass several courses I needed for my major. In fact, I spent all of graduation week drunk; when I got to the graduation ceremony I still wasn’t certain I was going to graduate, but President Pelletier handed me my diploma. I had made it!

I spent the next few nights all-out partying, and John was at one of the parties I attended. Somehow, we ended up together—I mean really together—and that morning I woke up in bed with him, naked I presume. He told me we had had sex, and since I didn’t remember it, I indicated we should do it again; he said no because he was feeling guilty about his girlfriend. That was the last time I ever saw him; I went home and moved on with my life.

My dream had been to live in New York City, but chemical companies were few and far between in the city, so I was resigned to looking for a job in New Jersey or somewhere north of the city. I interviewed at Lederle Labs in Pearl River and Union Carbide in Tarrytown, but didn’t get an offer. I really wanted the Union Carbide job because I wanted to room with my friend Joan, who had a job at AT&T in White Plains.

I interviewed at American Cyanamid in Princeton, and they offered me a job that I accepted. Besides securing my future job, my summer was devoted to drinking and partying. One person I went out with was named Stan, and we doubled with Ginger and a banker. Stan was a really nice guy, much more so than the average guy, although he complained that I always fell asleep in a corner whenever we went out. Carrying on my tradition of sleeping only with dirtbags, I didn’t sleep with him. After I left for my job in Princeton, Ginger took over my boyfriend; she and Stan dated, although she was ostensibly engaged to her future and former husband.

Chapter 2

---

The Drunk Diving Accident that Changed My Life

On August 1, 1963, I began working at American Cyanamid in Princeton (it was actually located in Penn’s Neck, New Jersey). My direct boss was Ron Bambury, and our group leader was Milon Bullock; my job was synthesizing organic chemicals used to kill worms in livestock. My family drove me there a few days before I started the job and deposited me at a house on Route 1 where I could