February 1976
“I’ve been working
the last six damn nights in a row and am completely exhausted. I miss Eric a
lot. These insane hours just get me down. Honestly, who wants to do this crap
their whole life? Work my ass off in a dead-end job? I wish Sissy and I had
enough money to open up our own restaurant: she’d do all the cooking, I’d wait
all the tables, and Eric would be the manager. She’s got all these great
recipes that are so delicious, I know people would flock to eat there. We
haven’t come up with a name for it yet, but we’ll think of something. I know we
will. Besides, I think it would be fun and most importantly: I’d love working
with Eric. A few weeks ago, we talked about running our own record store, too.
Yeah, it’s a long shot, but hey, it would really be cool!”
With a manic vigor, Jenny pondered at the hope of a restaurant. She wrote down all
these different ideas for its name and menu. Almost pestering Sissy to
seriously look into it, Jenny asked her if she would ever consider it. If Sissy
weren't such a homebody, and had the money to fund it, she probably would have
followed through with it. Given how tiring Jenny's job was, and at times how I
felt mine was a dead-end lackluster, our own restaurant felt like a creative
and healthy alternative to the daily grind.
"Eric the Manager!"
"Manager of what?"
"The restaurant,
silly."
"Are you and Sissy talking
about that again?"
"Of course! Don't you
wanna be Manager?"
"Jenny…we've been through
this before…"
"Come on. Wouldn't you
like to get out of that stuffy record store?"
"Yeah…"
"And not have a
boss?"
"Where are we gonna get
money to do such a thing?"
"The bank. They give it
away all the time…like Regina Tyler."
"That poor girl. If she
only knew you were talking about her…"
“Oh, brother. She was the loosest
of all the cheerleaders. You even said so yourself. And for that matter, how do
you know that information anyway? Hmm?” Jenny’s eyes stared wildly back at me.
“Because four guys on the team
slept with her. Still, it’s not nice.”
Taking a sip from my beer and
scrunching her chin into her neck, "Pfffft…I'd tell it to her face if she
were here." After a quick laugh to herself, "So…do you think we
should serve breakfast all day or just in the morning?"
"You're not letting this
go, are ya?"
"The morning it is."
Jenny’s fascination continued as a distracting pipedream.
Her fantasy was openly shared, sometimes too much so, yet her fervor yielded an
almost discarded notebook. Her paper therapy, her lined book of poems and
inspiration was given little attention in the next few months. A string of
silence fell upon her empty pages.
“The upward climb toward sanity must have been a covered path because I never
found it. Days were dreamt through and nights spent staring into the darkness.
When you can’t pinpoint a moment of your existence that includes sunlight,
there’s either a biological or psychological breakdown taking place. These were
my darkest moments that I tried to hide from Eric, though that was impossible.
I sit and watch as tears go by without seeing the dawning of the day. And some
adult part of me quips that I’m somehow matured, living so far from home, and
leading my own existence here.
Life could have been kinder. Moments like when my grandparents, who were
Catholics, never wanted me hanging out with Lucy, who’s Protestant. Me wearing
my skirt too short and being called a whore by my father. All it took was Eric
calling the house once and all hell broke loose. Fuck, I couldn’t even take art
because I’m a girl and I should have been in home-ec. The worst thing in the
world for me would have been spending my 8th grade year baking
cookies with a bunch of chatty girls who are coming of age. How gross.
This little bird flies high out of reach of anyone but one day has to come back
to earth…”
After a few scratched out sections it continues:
“…Life is truly about adapting to our human conditions and getting beyond the
chemical reaction called emotions. I don’t know if I can begin to wrap my
fingers around how to overcome that battle with myself. Perhaps I will in my
next life. But I’m in this one now and have to be strong. If not for me, then
for Eric.
When and if I do sleep, my dreams disturb me often. In some, my parents are
back together at home and I’m getting blamed for their unhappiness. In others,
Eric’s parents ring me to tell me how much they hate me. But the worse of all
the nightmares is seeing Eric an old man, all by himself, and I know he’s
alone. The expression on his tired face, the age in his eyes, speaks a silent
hint that I’m dead. I worry that if I were to die, he in fact would be so
desperately isolated and alone. The nights I used to stay up in my room at
home, stare at the walls, listening to music, and even though I felt I was
surrounded by friends, they were probably all in my head. I too then was by
myself. It is a terrible feeling that I’d hate to embellish him with.
But what if it were true? How would he lose me? What hell would he have gone
through to suffer such an amputation of our love? I know his heart is pure and
that he loves me. I hope he knows how special he is to me. And not just because
I’ve been making him breakfast or kissing him in the middle of the night. He is
everything to me. I love him.”
I
saw the passage as a rare entry that cut a deep slice into her woes. The same
night she entered those lines, I had picked her up from Jerry’s. From what she
told me, Sissy and Marion got into a fight and Jerry did not take his sister’s
side, but Jenny did. Everyone had been drinking a little and things got very
vocal. Jenny tried to calm the group down but whatever pills Jerry had taken
kicked in extra hard with the booze. As Sissy sat on the floor crying, Jerry
began aggressively shaking her. Marion circled the prey and began calling her a
crybaby.
Jenny, a disturbed witness to the carnage, tried to call me. Before she got to
the phone, Jerry ripped it from the kitchen wall. She panicked and ran to a
neighbor’s house. Using their phone, she finally reached her savior. When I got
there and wormed the story out of Jenny, Jerry and Marion had already fled in
his Chevy. Sissy, who was devastated, was consoled by my girl, who was torn up
herself.
Rubbing Sissy’s face, “We can see if Diane will allow you
to stay with us for the night.”
“No, I…I don’t wanna leave.”
As I stood before the broken phone, “Did he hurt either of
you?” Both girls nodded no. “This is really fucked up. I mean, how the hell
could he do this?”
“Eric, he’s never acted like this before. I don’t know what he took but he
flipped the fuck out.”
Once again, my perspective absorbed another negative effect of the current
culture. More and more it encouraged me to miss what had come and gone before
we even arrived. This was the result lying in its wake. California would never
be the same.
If Jerry would have walked through that door right then, I’d have beaten the
shit out of him. It was hard to watch the two females cry and even more so, to
know that once again Jenny had been exposed to violence. Those days should have
been over. I trusted the people within this house the most with her safety.
Sissy asked that she be alone when Jerry came back. My
anger couldn’t let that happen and after some cooling down, I convinced her to
come back with me and Jenny. We called Diane before we left to make sure it was
okay to have Sissy over. No worries.
The next morning, we had plans to do something nice for
our shattered friend, but she was nowhere in sight. Jenny, who wouldn’t let me
go back into the Canyon on my own, accompanied me to investigate. Upon pulling
up into Jerry’s driveway, we saw Sissy, Jerry, Marion, and Jack sitting on the
front porch. They all turned to stare as I purposely parked cock-eyed behind
Jerry’s car. Keeping Jenny behind me, I marched up the steps to confront the
brood.
Jerry started to speak when I interrupted him, “You owe my
girl and your sister an apology.”
With sad eyes he looked at me, then Jenny, “I know, brother, I fucked up.”
I towered over him, “Brother? Funny you use that word. A
brother wouldn’t do that to his sister or her friend.”
Marion sensed the tone in my voice and tried to calm me
down. His hand reached for my arm but I pushed it back. “Don’t touch me,
freak.”
Sissy settled us all, “Eric, my brother has already
apologized to me for what he did. He would like to do the same for Jenny.”
Looking at Jerry, I fired, “Go ahead!” I drew my arms into
a crossed position, hunching my shoulders, and grinding my teeth. My body was
so tense it began to hurt like I had played into overtime. Jenny stepped to my
side with her arms wrapped around my waist.
He took a long pull from his cigarette and ran his hand through his balding
strands. Expelling a sighing growl, “Jenny, I’m really sorry I put you both
through that. You know that’s not me. It was just some bad shit I took, you
know? Marion and I didn’t mean it. Can you dig that?”
Marion took over, twiddling his colored bangs in his
fingers, “We fucked up. We hope you all forgive us. You too, Eric.”
Jack stayed quiet the whole time, like a juror debating
his side. Part of me wanted to lower my defense, but a sniffle from Jenny’s
nose reignited my anger. I looked Jerry hard in the eyes. I read him like I
would a receiver, waiting to tackle him to the ground. “I appreciate all that
you’ve done since we’ve known you, especially for Jenny. But let me say this, if
you ever, EVER do anything like this again to these girls,” then grabbing the
neck of his t-shirt, “I will beat the fucking shit out of you,” and turning to
stunned Marion, “AND you.”
Sissy gently pulled my hand from her brother, “No,
please.” Her sad blue eyes connected with mine as she swiped away the hair
hanging below her scarf, “Enough.”
From behind, Jenny kept her arms around me and pressed the
side of her face into my back. I realized that my anger was no different than
Jerry’s. We all calmed down, sat together, and had coffee and cigarettes. After
an hour, there was still an awkward tension, but things seemed to be in better
shape. When we left, Jenny gave Sissy a kiss and a hug. It was an odd
twenty-four hours for them and the best thing was to move on.
That was the last time we saw Jack. Sissy later confided
with Jenny that he was the one who gave Jerry the drugs which caused the whole
episode. Apparently, Jerry wasn’t the only person to get his mixed baggy of
pills. Jack’s best friend flipped out,
pulled out his revolver, and committed suicide. The gruesome truths which are
the products of a generation’s failures suddenly hit Jack. Honorably, he said
his goodbyes to Jerry, Sissy, and Marion, got on a bus, and fled to Mexico with
a young girl just out of high school.
“Rain can fill in the pot holes
Stuffing can fill the turkey
Dirt can fill the ditches
Books can fill the empty shelves
Love can fill the soul & heart
But love cannot fill in the past.”
-----------------------------
“Phil, your sincere observation was appreciated by our
eyes and ears. Who will guide us now?”
The day after Jenny’s
twenty-first birthday, Phil Ochs hanged himself. Not only was a folk singer’s
voice silenced, along with his buried body were a whole generation’s struggles
for righting the wrongs.
This is drugs & all of it fantasy's & horrors...
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