Chapter 13 – War is Over

"It must be an Eric Carmen kinda night for me: all by myself. Maybe I should have rode with Diane up to see her mom? I don't know, I hate second guessing myself. Eric needs his nights out too...why did he pick tonight? Of all things, it's raining cats and dogs."

A few weeks later our country lost the struggle against the Communist threat. South Vietnam gave in after the fall of Saigon. And for my brother, Sam, and for everyone else’s brother, son, husband, father, and so on…I felt they died for nothing. And for a war that occupied most of my life, its ending was so anti-climactic. But at the same time, it all made sense. The year prior our President resigned to avoid the scandalous prosecution he knew was imminent. He’s then pardoned by his less active predecessor. Despite my feelings toward our Commander in Chief, I’ll always remember a funny bumper sticker from high school that read: Don’t change dicks in the middle of a screw – vote Nixon in ’72.

Sam felt about our country the same as my dad did. Both were staunch conservatives seeking to fight evil. At one point, probably because I didn’t know another view, I felt the same way. He put his life on the line and entered a hell that only the survivors can detail. It must have been awful. From what my dad dug up from petitioning the military, Sam’s platoon was ambushed after an explosion rocked his camp at 3 AM. Unaware of the trap they were hiking into, Sam and five other soldiers were killed that night by the VC. Pretty much, their dog tags were the only way the survivors could tell those boys apart.

“He rarely talks about his brother and got really upset when I forgot his name. I guess I had no business bringing him up. After all, they seemed to have shared a rugged relationship.”

I dwelled on thoughts of my brother but also the failures of this country and the world to stop madness. For those who returned, there were no warm welcomes. For an insane Communist regime, it carried on. For all the hippies that fought to keep us out of the struggle, their ideals vanished like Jimmy Hoffa. Because peace didn’t work, and drugs entered our culture, clusters of people resorted to alternative behavior which led the way for the change in the music scene and the collective conscious. I felt it was all wrong and the 70’s was the decade we’d see Armageddon. People got strange.

“This old, creepy woman was in front of the liquor store, standing there with a stroller. I looked inside to see what I imagined was a grandchild. How weird, it was a monkey doll. She told me his name was Chester. It freaking got worse when I talked away and she was making monkey sounds.”

In my early teens, it all was painted so shiny and flawless (from a youthful, naïve perspective that is). The summer of love was a magical portal of time that I was too young to enjoy. When Jim Morrison was crooning tunes in L.A. clubs, I was still years from wandering into those establishments. When the Beatles were altering their sound to meet to new wave of thought and culture, I was a struggling footballer in junior high. And as Jimi, the Who, the Mamas & the Papas, Eric Burdon, and so many others floored the audience at the Monterrey Pop Festival, I was still learning all of their names.

Jenny exposed my interests to so much information, so much talent, and excitement. As more was shared with me, I realized how narrow my world had been. And it wasn’t just music, it was writing, poetry, philosophy, and spiritualism. It was about transforming who one was into their own unique being. She lived to be free, without bondage, and no limitations.

“Name the first song off any album and I’ll guess what band it is.” Jenny liked to play that game and show off how good her mental encyclopedia was.

We happened to hear it on the radio on the first trip to California – Jenny shared with me the song Creeque Alley by the Mamas and the Papas. She told how L.A.’s music scene came together. What neither of us knew was how much all of this had changed by 1973. The mood escalated from humorous tales of Led Zeppelin renting out an entire hotel floor or Keith Moon throwing televisions out windows. Obviously, the music itself had changed, but big business, big paychecks, and large scores of coke were making up this once art form. There were a lot of groupies hanging around the hotels off the Strip trying to get laid or get famous, weird stories would circulate of debauchery, clubs had a rough edge to them such as the Troubadour, and drugs had gone from expanding the mind to isolating it.

Jenny and I couldn’t imagine how serious this was nor did we want to admit the truth of it. Putting all the pieces together seemed too arduous but anyone with a brain knew drugs and alcohol were ingrained into the music industry, but everyone seemed so open about being a junk head.

“I was mortified the first time I saw a girl shoot up. She forgot to lock the bathroom door and that girl just sat there on the toilet, the needle and tourniquet still attached. Maybe I gasped for no reason? She seemed in ecstasy as it ran through her veins. Whatever got her to this point was wiped away by the opiate.”

And as I try to piece together memories about all the sour events regarding Jenny’s drug use, which I hate detailing, it’s easy to psychoanalyze her profile. She was seemingly destined to take a path of self-destruction. Her father drank and a queer anecdote was her mother used to drink turpentine to kill back pain. You know, back then, you didn’t put two and two together. When times got hard for me, I apparently repeated the same steps my mother’s father had. Knowing my mom’s dad was an alcoholic would also explain her own nutty behavior.

Because my folks never shared truth with me, I had to leave home and find it myself. I had to know what love was. It took extreme passion and heavy pain to make me grow. Being a big guy on a football team, having some scraps with some kids after school, or being responsible for some house chores doesn’t make you a man. Having to make it in the sick world we live in, going through all the ups and downs, and coming out alive and still a good person is what makes me a man. Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey.

It takes so much to fight so hard. Jenny and I had a few drinks, were sitting up in our room, and pondered b.s. topics. We traded questions and answers and on my tenth turn I asked:

“So, if we left L.A. and journeyed someplace else, where would you like to go?”

“Heaven,” was her puzzling reply.

“What?” I sort of laughed.

“There really isn’t any place else I wanna be besides here on the coast. And when I die, I hope I’m good enough person to get into Heaven.”

“Why would you think you aren’t?”

“I had the chance to be a good Catholic.”

“So what if you’re not? Who cares?”

“I’ve done enough to tarnish my soul.”

“I thought you weren’t religious?”

“Okay, so I’m not. But I think about these things.”

“Why? We’ve got a long life ahead of us.”

“I hope so.”

“Come on, why wouldn’t we?”

“Oh, the Holiday People are lonely.”

Her comment made me feel nervous and tense. The Holiday People had always been a humorous suggestion, always some reference mentioned for a giggle. But this time it wasn’t funny. I felt like they were near and was afraid to look too hard around the room.

“And why are they lonely?”

“I don’t know. They said they’re waiting.”

            “Waiting for what?”

            “For me.”

It was sick shit and was making me ill. My stomach felt like a weight and my skin felt like it was crawling. Before it could get a grip on me, Jenny took her turn and asked me a question:

“If you could fuck anyone famous, who would it be?”

“What?” I was outraged. I mean, how can you take one really odd comment after another with such grotesque transition?

“Come on, we agreed to be truthful. Who would it be?”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes. Answer the damn question!”

“I don’t know.” I stumbled, yet came out with, “Ann-Margret.”

“What?” She slapped the bed covers. “You’d put your cock in that tramp?”

“You wanted an answer.”

“I see that’s how you got your Carnal Knowledge, mister,” crossing her arms.

“What? Do you want me to be sorry?”

“No, because I know you’re not.”

“Fine. Who would you fuck?”

“Not you, you two-timer!”

“Who would you sleep with?”

She points to her records, “Anyone on those album covers.”

“That’s sick.”

She pouted her lips at me, “Jealous?”

I flip through her albums and stop on a Judy Collins one. “You’d do her, too?”

“No way, sicko. I’m not a dike.”

“Who knows where the time goes, huh?”

“Ugh!” She knocked back another glass of wine and fell asleep. All I could do was laugh, shaking the bed as I did it. I thought my hysterics was going to wake her.

“That fucking bitch, Ann-Margret. Eric has to go and pick some sex kitten like her. Every time I see her I’m just going to think of her fucking Eric. Thank God he didn’t say some old broad like Katherine Hepburn. Gross. It’d be like that Abbott & Costello mummy movie.”