Ever hear of Turner’s Falls, Massachusetts? If not, I’m not surprised. If you want to know what it’s like, in 2000 the population was just over 4,400 and it was about 94% caucasian. In other words — Whiteyville. I never knew it even existed until Miss Headcase decided she wanted to go to school out in Turner’s Falls. She managed to find the Hallmark Institute of Photography out there. According to Miss Headcase, it would only take her ten months to get her certificate. Every school in the Boston area offered a two-to-four year curriculum, and she didn’t want to go to school for that long. Let me tell you that this WTF moment lasted for more than a year.

Relationships are funny things sometimes. Although I spent more than eight years with Miss Headcase, I wasn’t nearly as upset as I thought I’d be when she proposed this little plan. Frankly, I think she was trying to get away from me, and I think I needed a break myself. However, what would play out here was really messed up. This event would mark a slow, painful decline and ending to a relationship. I would have preferred it if we had just parted ways while we were living together in Melrose.  Not only did it cost me a lot of money, but I got it stuck up my…well, we won’t elaborate.

I’ve been trying to put this on a timeline, but I simply cannot remember what year this was. However, since I met Beth four years after I split with Miss Headcase, I figure 1988 was the year it finally (mercifully) ended. I was working for Millipore at the time and making decent money, so paying for her education wasn’t an issue. The tuition was $10,000 and she would need a car as well because she was planning on coming home on the weekends. I ended up paying cash for a 1985 Nissan Sentra. I wanted something in good shape and safe because the snow was no joke out near Turner’s Falls. Now, all that was left was finding her a place to live.

The school helped us out with that one. They had a listing of people who rented rooms at reasonable rates. We figured that this would be a perfect solution, since the school was small and didn’t have dorms. We made a couple of calls and found someone who seemed really nice. She was older (around sixty) and had just lost her husband. She was renting a room to help herself financially and so that she would not be so lonely. We drove out to TF together and met Barbara. She was a sweetheart (or so I thought at the time) and the room was a decent size, so we gave her three months advance rent. I felt really good that I had found Miss Headcase a good place to live and was happy that I could help out somebody who was still feeling the pain of her husband’s death. The housing thing was settled on the first trip out, which made the move much easier.

The first couple of months pretty much went according to plan. Every other weekend, Miss Headcase would come home. I would go out to Turner’s Falls the odd weekends. It was a postage stamp sized town. We’d go to festivals and check out the shops. There were a lot of small affordable restaurants. The surrounding towns were pretty picturesque, and it was a great place to do some hiking. I’d stay until about 4 a.m. on Monday mornings, then I’d get up and drive all the way to work in Bedford, Massachusetts.

In the heart of winter, driving back home in the early morning hours was absolutely treacherous. There’s this really ugly curve on Route 2 east. You’d best be going slowly when you approach it because there’s no sense in braking when you’re in the middle of the curve…unless you want to end up in a ravine. The first time I drove the curve in the middle of a snow storm, my car lights caught the words “Deadman’s Curve” written in red on the side of an abandoned barn. Whomever wrote that was not kidding. Apparently, several people died mishandling this curve in the winter.

What in the wide world of sports is goin’ on around here?

Several months into this experience, Miss Headcase started coming home less and less. She told me they were piling on the work and I believed it. That seemed to make sense to me. It was a short, ten-month program and there was a lot of ground to cover. I made a few extra weekend trips out to visit, but that was a tough drive. Instead, I consoled myself by running up the phone bill and partying with my landlords (this is a whole other story that will be told).

One weekend visit by Miss Headcase was indeed a warning of things to come. We had been talking about a project she was given by the school that would be an important part of her overall grade. She was to be one of the photographers shooting the children at the local elementary school. I believe she was to shoot grades 2 and 3.  I remember her saying, “I wish you could come out and help.”

I told her that I had almost four weeks vacation piled up and I’d be happy to take a few days off to drive out and help. No problem. Well, it was like I told her that I’d be removing her spleen. She got this look of terror on her face and said, “No! You can’t!” When I asked her why, she told me that the school said that people would think she’s a child molester if she brought me out to help with the project.

Hmmmm. This didn’t sound good. Somewhere in the back of my head,  the theme from The Twilight Zone was playing. If this thing was going to end, I just wanted it to end with a minimal amount of pain. Needless to say, the adventure was just beginning.

Anybody remember that old SNL skit with John Belushi and Bill Murray about the the friends that overstayed their welcome? It was actually called “The Thing That Wouldn’t Leave,” and John Belushi was the flagrant friend. It was hysterical. Well, it actually happened to me back during the eighties. To make matters worse, I was also in the middle of one of those very bad long-term relationships we lesbians sometimes get ourselves into. Her name is Miss Headcase to you.

I had a friend named Margo that became good friends with Miss Headcase and I. Margo and I worked together. She was a product manager and I was the marketing services manager responsible for her product’s promotion program. I shit you not that every single problem this girl ever had was a result of the slug she called her boyfriend. This guy was a dirtbag. In fact, we’ll call him Mr. Dirtbag. It doesn’t get any more accurate than that.

He basically lived off Margo. This guy simply didn’t work and it wasn’t because he couldn’t work. He was a drunk and a coke head who had already spent time in The Tombs of New York. The problem was that he was as engaging as hell and you could really have a great time with him. What money he did end up with, he was generous with. In other words, he was hard to dislike.

One time I suggested that we all go up to the Saratoga Performing Arts Center to see Emmylou Harris. She is one of the few country performers I really dig and it’s because she pushes the envelope like few have before her. I got hooked and then got them hooked. They thought it was a great idea. We drove up in separate cars the night before and stayed at a place called the 1811 House in Vermont. I know the place is still there and I also know it has changed hands since then. I remember the suite that Margo and Mr. Dirtbag rented. It had a spiral staircase up to the bedroom, and a fireplace in the living area.

Mr. Dirtbag was in rare form that night. The coke was everywhere and the party went until the wee hours of the morning. We had a blast. I remember thinking it was a damned good thing that the concert was not until the following night. We needed time to recover because we had to go from Manchester, Vermont to Saratoga, New York for the show.

However, time had passed for Margo since that fun event. The times were interspersed with too many days and nights of living with Mr. Dirtbag’s antics. Sometimes he would go on benders and disappear for days. Other times, she couldn’t get rid of him. She decided that she’d not be there when he returned from New York this time. That’s when she asked if she could stay with us for a few days while she found another place to live. Of course, Mrs. Headcase and I thought it was a good idea for her to get out and we readily agreed.

Here’s the problem: The days turned into weeks and months of camping out on our sofa. She turned the living room into a bedroom. It looked like a bomb hit it every day. If that wasn’t enough, Tommy was trying to hunt her down. He only had a cell phone number and did not know where she was…yet. However, by now, her apartment was gone and she had no apartment to move to.

As time passed , Miss Headcase decided this was my fault. You know how that works, it’s the old guilt by association thing. Margo just happened to be my friend before she was our friend. Get it? The added tension wasn’t helping my own relationship much.

The only saving grace was that Margo had periods of extended travel. I was in the middle of such a break and it was mid-week, so I decided to knock off work early and take the next day off. When I walked in my apartment door about an hour later, Mr. Dirtbag was sitting in the middle of my living room with none other than Margo, who had finished up her trip a bit early.  So much for peace and quiet. And so much for peace, love and understanding.

I was working on my final exposed nerve. All I needed to see every damned day was Mr. Dirtbag lazing around my apartment NOT WORKING and getting fucked up all day. I mean, I certainly was a party animal, but there was a time and a place for everything. “We’ll be out by Friday,” was all she said. My reply was simple. “No. You will be out by Thursday, which is tomorrow.” I remember vividly what I said next, “Hotel Della Piana is now closed.”

That was it. I didn’t see them for the rest of the day, and they went out for dinner that night. We didn’t hear them come in, but I know for sure their stuff was still there when I went to bed. Miss Headcase and I slept a bit later the next morning because I took the day off. By the time we got up, the living room was empty. They were gone. Just like that, after weeks and months of tension, it was over and done with.

There was still the little matter of working together. Was it uncomfortable? Oh, yeah, in the beginning it definitely was. Time took care of that though. It eventually settled back down into a friendship of sorts, although not like the one before she camped out at Hotel Della Piana. In a year, she was gone from the Company. She came from the New Jersey shore and I hear she got a job that allowed her to return there.

Several years later, I’d run into Margo again. But that’s a different story for a different day.