Chapter 7 – Over the Hills and Far Away

“I got him to write a poem. It wasn’t very good, but it was sweet. Poor thing. He must have scratched out half the paper getting it perfect to impress me. I folded the page so I can easily find it without flipping.”

Being bored and apparently very intrusive one day, I began reading passages from Jenny’s notebook she kept. Well, she actually had two but would only admit to one. The first notebook was her life before her second stay in California. Though she wasn’t proud of it, she kept it anyway. To her, those pages and binding were memories of the life she walked away from. In it were the reflections of deep depression, troubled youth, and someone loudly seeking solace.

It had been a week since coming back to be with Jenny and this was my first day we were separated. Jenny had left one afternoon to hang with her friend Sissy and a few other chicks from the Canyon. I had nothing better to do and was kicking back. Getting up, making myself presentable, and driving an automobile seemed too much work that day. It was a Burrito Brother lazy day.

The rudeness of my act was eased by notions that by reading her notebook, I’d know a little more about her. Seeing her write in it was not a common occurrence, nor one I chose to dig about, but she could fill up the pages quickly. When she did, she spoke of her feelings on life, her love for me, and many poems.

“My world is a tattered delusion

So my mind is in scattered confusion

Surrounded, yet alone

In bed, but not at home

My body, my cage...where is the escape?”

Her second, and “only,” notebook was a happier approach to life. Her words were more honest about herself, she wrote of her friends as she got to know them, and how magical the land was. Even during the months I was not there with her, she spoke of me as if I had never been away.

“…His heart seems to beat just for me. I have loved Eric since I saw him walk the halls in 9^th grade. He probably doesn’t remember giving me a hungry glance back then, but he did, and I never forgot it. Yeah, the edgy hippie girl and the jock boy. What a combination! Who would have pictured us together? But it worked. His dark brown eyes are open and he cares for me as I am. I don’t need to pretend to be someone for him. No lies, no fake bullshit, no one-sided seduction…”

A part of me was worried with things I might read or find, but my conscience was kept at rest. As happy as writing those words were for her, they were equally therapeutic for me to read. Some of her poems could slip into the dark recesses, but nothing for me to pull her into a shrink’s office over.

“The plot of life gives me headaches

Splitting migraine, tearing splinters

Dull concentration w/ blurred distortions

Mirrored panels inscribed w/ heresy

My head kills me

This orchestra won’t stop

Relieve me.”

I spent the better part of three hours reading from each notebook, learning more about the girl I loved. Boy, she could talk but she had even more to say in her writing. When done, I carefully packed them back into a burlap bag of hers and set it back near the corner of the bedroom. I thought I had done my best to act inconspicuous, but she noticed a few days later.

“So, what did you think?”

Catching me completely off guard lying in bed one morning, I replied, “Of what?”

“My writing.”

It didn’t click. My gaze come off the ceiling and bestowed her instead, “What are you talking about?”

“Come on. My notebooks, you read them. What do you think?”

Propping myself up and looking down at her with a confused face, and then back to the spot I knew her notebooks were, “Wait. How did you know I read them?”

“The Holiday People saw you sneak in my bag.”

Considering how sure I was to recreate how she left everything, I was sort of disturbed by that statement. “No, really Jenny, how do you know? Did I turn one of the notebooks the wrong way? Did I not close the bag? What?”

“No, everything looked normal. You even kept the folded pages neatly tucked in. I never would have questioned anything unless they told me.”

Man, what the hell? What? “Okay, that’s messed up. Are you pulling my leg?”

Speaking very innocently, “No I’m not. So, you never answered my question.”

I don’t think I said anything right away. Getting my faculties straight, “It was very beautiful. I’m amazed at your talent: your abilities to write.”

Very dead-pan, “You didn’t read the passage about me and that guy and the one-night-stand did you?”

The confused face made a second appearance, “What? What guy?”

“Ha ha, it’s a joke!” Shaking her head, “I’m kidding.”

“I might have to go through your notebooks again.”

           “Come on, I only love you.” Unbuttoning my shirt, “Let me show you.”

We turned up the radio and slipped back into bed. The opening lines of Led Zeppelin’s “Over the Hills and Far Away” was the perfect soundtrack.

For a girl who had a lot of time on her hands, sitting alone up in a room, her only artistic outlet was this notebook. Unlike other chicks, who’d pick up a phone and rehash the day, Jenny had no one to share that talk with. Her world was narrow and obscure because of her isolation. However, the quiet times spent in solitary evolved into the artist she was inside.

And for all the phases she went through for a young person, for all the faces she put on for people, perhaps it was her writing that was the only truly honest side of her. Through the pen, she didn’t hold back. Neither did she through intimacy. It all sort of happened naturally. And as her writing fought for her opinions, her love making fought for affection. Either way, I was seeing the rawest side of Jenny. It was bold, beautiful, sensitive, and submissive.

When we finished, she laid on my chest and twiddled with my left hand. Like any of her non-sequiturs, “Do you know what a flapper is?”

“No, it sounds like a naked, old lady parachuting out of a plane. Oh wait, a flapper…it’s that thing in the tank of a toilet.”

Laughing, “No, no. They were the groupies of the 20’s. They were these cute little chicks who broke moral standards, shook what they had, and didn’t give a damn.”

“Oh,” I see her opening her mental index of information. “Would you like to have been one?”

“Yeah, especially Clara Bow, the It Girl.”

“It?”

“Meaning she had it. She was such a big star that hair salons across the country would do women’s hair like hers. That wanted to be like Clara Bow.”

Knowing Jenny knew the morbid truth to the people she brought up to me, “What happened to her?”

“Like so many other silent film stars, they didn’t make it in the talkies. Either it wasn’t their genre or their voices weren’t right for film. She had a high-pitched New York accent. I think she died almost 10 years ago. Kind of became a crazy recluse.”

“That’s pretty depressing, don’t ya’ think?”

Without answering, she got up and grabbed a small purple bag from the bathroom and brought it back to bed. With it, she had a small, dusty mirror. For the next fifteen minutes, still completely naked, she shocked me by putting on makeup. And not just any makeup, but as she told me, how the girls in silent films used to do theirs. I’d never really seen Jenny with much makeup before and apparently with it on she looked very attractive, more so than usual. Her lips were etched in red, her face pasty and cream, hand-drawn eyebrows, fluffed eye lashes, and dark shading over her eyelids.

“How do I look, dah’ling?”

“Fucking delicious.”

           

“Silence is not golden,

It’s a prison

Even my written words

Are not justice to

Expression.”

Back home, Jenny would catch the bus to the theatre downtown, which played silent films once a month. I had really never watched one until I went with her one afternoon. The film was The Merry Widow with Mae Murray and John Gilbert. There was a sad irony to the players’ names and her parents’. Without sound, she told me to focus more on the actors’ and actresses’ expressions than the dialogue. Being a tragic love story, there was plenty of emotion to view onscreen. I had never known Jenny to really be glued to a television set, but she seemed so focused on this picture. During the most heart wrenching moments, you could almost tell she was feeling it with them. It was almost as entertaining to observe Jenny’s reaction as it was the players in the film. And after it ended, she had to discuss it with me.

“What did you think?”

“I’ve never really watched a silent movie before.”

“I know, but did you like it or not?”

“It was different, but fun to watch. There’s a lot of visual qualities that we don’t see now.”

“Exactly. Plus, I like the clothing and the makeup.”

“Say, what was the director’s name again?”

“Erich von Stroheim: the man you love to hate.”

“What?”

“Stroheim was very meticulous and drove his crew up the wall. I think I read in an interview that Jim Morrison said the Doors were the band you loved to hate.”

“Well, we don’t hate them.”

“Nope, and I love you!”