Okay. I need some help with this one. Today I was driving up in New Hampshire, and I found myself behind a truck with the one sticker that really sets me off. It’s pictured here and the one on the back of this particular truck read “Git ‘r Drunk.”  I looked into the cab of the truck and immediately hoped that this was not the way this clown was going to get any girl into the truck with him. However, there are always exceptions to the rule.

They say ignorance is bliss, and it truly is in this case. Guys who brandish this decal on their trucks are about as forward thinking as the bimbos who go to work at Hooters. If, in fact, women think that working at Hooters is reflective of  “women’s liberation,” they have their heads jammed firmly up their rectums. I’m here to tell you that they have set all women back by several decades. It’s hard to demand respect from men when women are filling the very role men have traditionally carved out for them.

Here’s what I’m thinking: We’re always hearing about these FEMA camps that have been built all across the United States. The right-wing paranoia squads are absolutely convinced that we’re all going to be rounded up and incarcerated there. I suggest a better use for these camps. Let’s round up all the clowns that brandish these stupid, sexist female silhouette decals and put them in the camps. Then, we can give them all some kind of massive sensitivity training. After that, we can round up all the women who waitresses at Hooters (and related jobs) and give them electroshock therapy.

That’s what I’m talkin’ about and, seriously, WTF?

Okay, so I’ve been missing for a few days. Just a load of painful personal drama. Everybody’s got it. I’m trying to keep my shit together through mine after running my heart over a jagged little edge. And that’s all you’re ever going to know on this subject because I happen to love very deeply the other party in the equation. No bitterness here. And absolutely no regret. Just sadness and quite a bit of emptiness.

Anyway, you can consider this a rant. I’m considering this a rant.  Now, I know my name isn’t the simplest of names but you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to work it out.

Several days ago I received five pieces of mail addressed to someone at 25 Pamela Lane. Here is what I got:

D Della pinia

F. Piana

F Deborah Piana

Mr. Francis DellaPiana (this was especially charming, as they managed to change my gender as well)

Now, I don’t know any of the above-named people. None of these letters were mailed to me. Therefore, I kindly marked each of these envelopes with the appropriate “Addressee Unknown” statement in bright orange marker and handed them back to the mailman. I mean, if these people want money, they’re going to have to do better than that. My name is simple: Deb Della Piana. Spell it just the way it sounds. Nothing complicated here. It’s even more adventurous when the phone rings.

“Hello.”

“Hello, is this Miss Della Pinia?”

“Who?”

“Miss Della Pinia?”

“Nope. Sorry. Nobody by that name here. Bye.”I get these calls all the time. Usually, they are bill collectors (or the Electric Company, in my case). Now, I have already spent money with these people, so you’d think they would at least get it right. But, noooooooo. Not even the clowns I’ve already spent money with can get it right.

The very least we should expect in this economy is that those chasing us for payment will get our names right. I mean, it’s the decent thing to do. But it doesn’t seem that decency is much in vogue these days.

I guess if I were giving these flashback posts titles, I’d call this one “Oh, to be  young and just plain fucking dumb.” That would be the title. I have been in the workforce for a long time. In fact, I lied about my age so that I could work at Woolworth’s in Medford Square. I was fifteen and I told the manager I was 16. My mother was working there too, and she was pissed I did it, but as we found out when she died, she was in no position to give me shit about the age thing. It took us forever to figure out how old she really was after she died in 1992 because she had lied about it in so many places it wasn’t funny. Know why? She just plain didn’t want to be forced into retirement.

Anyway, the manager, a guy named Mr. Clark, wasn’t much for detail. Neither was his assistant, Mr. Benson. Neither of them asked me for a birth certificate, probably because they figured my mother was working there and wouldn’t let me work if I wasn’t 16. They loved my mother, but they didn’t know my mother. I did. What I knew about her was that she knew that, once I had something in my head, I was going to figure out a way to do it one way or another. If it wasn’t Woolworth’s, I would simply try it in as many places as I could until it worked. There were plenty of retail establishments around at that time. In fact, Strawberries was right near my house. I had applied there too.

Anyway, I’m not beyond living on the edge even now. (But I have to tell you that I’m just good at doing it. I think it through first. Plan. I have to. I’m married to a real crazy.) But back then, I really loved living on the edge. Totally. The whole gay thing was a head rush to me. I mean I knew I was gay by this time, but it was like some surreal thing floating around out there. I wasn’t sure how to connect it with real life. It was an alternative universe. When I look back at that now, it’s because things were so different then than they are today. From a societal perspective, it’s much easier today. Back then, it was tough. So, you tended to compartmentalize your life: (a) The normal part; (b) The gay part.

And this is how I would discern who would and would not have problems with part (b). Did they make crass gay jokes? Did they use the word ‘faggot’ or ‘dyke’ in a derogatory way. (Those terms are loaded, even though some gay people use them. They don’t mean the same when we use them as when ‘they’ use them.) Did they use the word ‘homo’? I have always hated that word. If any of those symptoms were present, I did not tell those motherfuckers about part (b). But I digress.

So, back to Woolworths and living on the edge (and the gay thing, in fact). I got hired at Woolworth’s. No problem. I was now working with my mother. And boy, did I give her a hard time. I used to piss her off on Saturday mornings because I had balloon duty. I used to have to fill the helium balloons. Pretty soon, it got to be some for the balloon, some for me. And it wasn’t that I got high on it. Hell no, it just made me sound like something out of the fucking Wizard of Oz. It was a blast talking to customers sounding like a munchkin.

What invariably would happen is that my mother would find a good product display (preferably a clothes rack) close to where I was, and then she’d get my attention and mouth to me, “I’m going to kill you when I get you home.”  See. That’s what happens after your dad dies. “Wait until I tell your dad” magically morphs into “I’m going to kill you when I get you home.”  Then, she’d try to appeal to my chickenshit side. “Don’t you know doing that can kill you?” I was not worried about such things at that time.

Just ever so absurdly pushing the envelope

Almost three years later my mother and I were still working at Woolworth’s. By then, I was pretty much ‘out.’ When my girlfriend turned sixteen, I told her to come in and apply for a job. The thing was, she really was my girlfriend. It’s just that nobody knew it except she and I. (Definitely not my mother.)  As messed up as this might sound (even to me all these years later), she and I were together for almost two years. Anyway, she got the job. Talking about complicating your life just a bit.

You know, this post is a testament to the stupidity of youth. For all intents and purposes, this girl (her name was Linda) and I were in a real relationship. It was emotional and it was physical. And there were definitely times when we were arguing or disagreeing. Trying to work those days with both she and my mother around were merciless. I almost immediately began to ask myself, “WTF were you thinking, Deborah?????” On the flip side, when things were going well and we could find ways to flirt with each other, it was exhilarating. You know, like everything else in life. Yin and Yan.

Ah, but as all things go when you’re young, my first relationship was about to crash and burn. Luckily, I had moved on to other things before it did, and she would move on soon after, leaving my mother at peace once again. Poor thing.

I said that love can make you stupid. Sex can make you even more stupid. There’s no question about that. I was going along my merry way, thoroughly enjoying my coming out party (it went on for three years, I have to tell you), and then something happened. It started at a gay bar called Darts, as I recall. I know the original Darts was, of course, on Dartmouth Street in Boston, and I believe it was in the site that Paparazzi eventually took.

I met Greg there after work one night. I can’t remember for sure who else came. I’m sure Joe must have come after work, maybe Steve, but I’m not sure. What I am sure of is that two of Greg’s lesbian friends, we’ll call them Lucia and Sal, were there. Yes, they were a couple. I can’t remember exactly how Greg met them. Maybe it was from work. Not sure. Anyway, we were sitting at a table having drinks when Lucia started running her foot up my leg. Of course, at first, I’m thinking it was unintentional and the result of shifting positions.

No such luck. When I moved my leg away, she looked at me as if to tell me she was disappointed. Greg and Sal were busy talking away about something (that’s why I think Greg knew Sal from work), so I obliged Lucia. Lucia was older than me, and I’m not sure by how many years. I think I must have been about 25 or 26 at the time. She was from Honduras, very sexy and very mysterious. While she was rubbing her foot up my leg, we were making small talk. This remained a flirting situation until the night I went to a party at Greg’s place in Allston.

On that fateful night, I chose to bring a bottle of Pernod. Looking back, I have absolutely no idea why I chose to drink that vile greenish liquid on that particular night. Now, this is not the new Pernod Absinthe that is coming out. This was the Pernod anise liqueur. A couple of shots would have sufficed, but it turned into a party of shots with three or four people participating (someone even went so far as to suggest someone go down the end of the street for another bottle). As I recall, we were drinking something else in between the Pernod shots. That’s not a good situation for me. I’m always up for the challenge. So, here’s where we ended up with this one:

The last thing I remember is swallowing a shot. The next thing I remember is waking up the next morning — at Jehova only knows what time — in one of Greg’s bedrooms with Lucia in bed next to me. She was smiling. It must have been fun. I don’t remember what sound must have come out of my mouth, but I am sure it was a real W-T-F moment. Because did Sal come to the party? Was she there? Do you know that I have no freakin’ idea to this day. Can’t remember. But I do know that the liaison did not end there.

I’m going to interject here because Greg was just so funny. I cannot put this incident in at the precise moment it happened but at some point, he got himself involved in this thing I was having. Greg was younger than me, but he was like a big brother. He was worried that I was becoming ‘emotionally involved’ with Lucia and it was just a fling for her. So, I remember that he asked Lucia just what her intentions were with me. I do not know what she said to him, but I remember that the fling continued on.

Let’s fast forward to the next snippet. We were sitting in someone’s apartment. I know it was not Greg and Jack’s apartment, because I can picture the room we were sitting in. It was on a second or third floor and it had all white walls with big windows minus curtains. It was beautifully sunny outside and the sun was just pouring into the room. I believe we were in Coolidge Corner, and I have a feeling it was probably Lucia and Sal’s place. I was on the sofa and I was on the end. There were two people next to me. Jack was on my immediate right, Sal was next to him and then Lucia was on the other end of the sofa.  Greg was on the other side of the room in a chair. That I can remember.

I can’t remember what the subject was. I can’t remember who was talking, but we were all having drinks and talking away. I had my right arm spread out across the back of the sofa so that it went behind Jack and part of the way behind Val. That’s when Lucia decided to put her arm across the back of the sofa and start playing with my hand. Okay, so here I am, with my hand right behind Sal, and Lucia — her lover — is diddling with my fingers. I froze. I wanted to move my arm away, but I froze. Then, I looked at Greg. I mean he was looking at it and he was freaking out. Quietly, of course. It was at the moment I saw his face that I just wanted to burst out laughing, but I managed to control myself.

At the beginning, I figured Sal had no clue what was going on. However, by the time I got to the arm across the sofa incident, I had to believe that she knew. She was absolutely not a stupid person. Far from it. I’m thinking that this was probably a pattern for Lucia, and Sal had been subjected to this stuff before. Greg had also been working on me, not from a guilt perspective, but because he thought I was getting involved and he knew Lucia wasn’t about to leave Sal to be with me. That, combined with how bad I suddenly felt for Sal, was one of the reasons it ended.

I know that I spent one day with Lucia somewhere in this mix. I picked her up somewhere and we spent the day hanging out. I don’t think the opportunity for sex presented itself again. It certainly didn’t on that day, and I’m thinking that was the day we mutually ended it. Lucia and Sal stopped hanging out with us. I’m not sure if Greg stopped inviting them, or if Sal finally put her foot down. As I recall, our parties continued on unabated.

As one of my lesbian friends would put it, albeit most graphically, “We have places to go and people to…” Well, nevermind. You get the idea.

Have I mentioned my dog yet? Well, I’ve had two in my adult life. The first was Sundance.  She was a shepherd/husky mix and she was great. But my second adult life dog was something else. Her name was Simone. She was a miniature schnauzer with a great personality. I had bought her for Miss Headcase. When we picked her up, you could hold her in the palm of your hand. The photo here is not actually Simone. I wish I could find photos of her, but I can’t seem to locate them. However, this photo is pretty damned close to what she looked like. When Miss Headcase and I split, the one thing I made sure of was that she didn’t take Simone.

When Beth and I first met, Simone was jealous. The morning after Beth’s first night staying over in Melrose, Simone jumped up on my bed and unceremoniously took a dump. Just to let me know what she thought of this intruder into our lives. I had a hard time getting angry. She was pretty funny. Ah, but that isn’t the most vivid memory I have of little Simone. The one from Gloucester is even better.

Beth and I got home from work one night. We knew something was amiss when we opened the door because Simone was usually right there waiting for one of us to pat her and then take her out for a walk. Not this night. She barely picked her head up off the floor. She didn’t look very well, but we couldn’t figure out why. We looked at all the logical stuff. It had to be something she ate while we were gone. She wasn’t a trash dog. That wasn’t it. She did have a past history of eating cat shit. That was pretty disgusting, but it only took one time and she learned her lesson. She was, as they say, sick as a dog for two days. Besides, we ended up closing the door to the bathroom where the cat box was kept, and we had put a hole in the door that only the cats could get through. That wasn’t it. We knew for sure she couldn’t open the refrigerator door, and we kept cleaning stuff in a locked cabinet. That wasn’t it.

We were watching the dog trying to walk. It would have been funny if we weren’t worried. (Okay, we laughed anyway.) She literally was swaying back and forth when she tried to stand up. And forget the three stairs leading down to the kitchen. Couldn’t handle those. Now, I’m not going to lie. I think they should just legalize pot. There are many reasons for this  that we won’t go into here. That’s a different post for a different day. But let’s just say that I’m a supporter (and a party animal). I thought about this as a possibility, and immediately went for the ashtray that we hid under the living room chair when we left for work.

Seems that Simone got to to that ashtray before we did and partied on her own. Oh, yes. Ate every freakin’ roach in the ashtray. To put it bluntly, our little Simone was stoned. (And hungry, I might add. She couldn’t stop chowing on that dog food. Can’t imagine why.) The cats must have been getting a laugh out of this because they were down from the bedroom shaking their little heads at her undignified behavior. I can imagine what they were saying to each other, “Only a dog would do this.”

Okay, this is when Beth says, “Honey, you’ve got to call the vet!”

I looked at her for a few minutes wondering WTF she was thinking, then replied, “Oh, really? And tell him what? The dog ate all the roaches? Somehow, my dear, I think that might be a bad idea.”

“Yeah, you might be right.”

“Oh, I am definitely right. Let’s just go turn ourselves in instead.”

Needless to say, I did not call the vet. In fact, Simone was back to normal within a few hours. While we were waiting for that to happen, she did provide some comic moments, and we did find another hiding place for the ashtray.

Well, here I am again. Back in Turners Falls. Before I begin, I have a dateline update. In the first installment of this particular story, I said that my relationship with Miss Headcase probably ended in 1988. I’m now changing that to 1989 because a very specific weather event happened while I was still with Miss Headcase. You’ll see further on.

One night not long after Miss Headcase returned to Turners Falls, I received a phone call from her. She said that the car was not riding right and she wanted to trade it in…for a little sporty Honda CRX. I actually don’t think they even make this baby anymore. It somewhat resembled the 280Z. I was suspicious of this because the Sentra was in great shape. According to Miss Headcase, all we had to do was trade in the Sentra and give the guy an extra thousand. I told her I’d have to come out and make the deal myself. There was no way I was sending her more money. As it was, I was paying the rent and giving her plenty of spending money every week. She wasn’t working. Besides, I now believed that something was rotten in Turners Falls…and it wasn’t the car.

Nevertheless, I did my duty. The next day, I had too many meetings to attend to go out. I took the following day off and drove out to Barbara’s to pick her up. We went to the car dealership together and I took a look at what she wanted to buy. I immediately had the feeling that she was sleeping around with someone, and this new car was a manifestation of that. Honestly, I had no idea if it was male or female. With her new-found homophobia, it could very well have been a guy. To tell the truth, it was something I didn’t really want to deal with just then.

I was growing weary from this whole scene and wanted the path of least resistance. I gave the guy the thousand bucks and she got her car, but she got it with a warning. I told her that I knew the Sentra was in great shape when I bought it because I had a car mechanic look it over completely. She was buying a car that nobody had checked out and she was taking the word of a small-town car salesman. If it had problems after the fact, she could either borrow the money from her mother (who wasn’t about to give her jack), or get a job and get it fixed herself. I told her that if we still wanted to take the trip to Hilton Head, I needed to put some money aside.

She was busy making up the work she had missed while sick and was almost done with that. She also managed to pick up a job from our landlord up in Charlemont, Massachusetts — not far from Turner’s Falls. She was, however, concerned about completing her portfolio in time for graduation. She had all the photos chosen, she just didn’t have the time to mount and frame them for presentation. I told her not to worry about that part; just send me the negatives and I’d take care of it. I used my advertising agency to get it done, and the final tab was about $2,000. What mattered was that it got done on time and it looked great.

Miss Headcase graduates

The situation remained the same right up until graduation. I didn’t really understand why Miss Headcase wasn’t coming home on the weekends now that her portfolio had been completed and turned in. When I asked her, she said she had some stuff to finish up in lovely, charming and picturesque TF — including photographing a couple of families. Honestly, I knew the real answer to that question but I wasn’t really able to deal with it yet.

Miss Headcase’s mom flew to Boston (from California) for her graduation. I had become very friendly with her over the last three years of our relationship. We had a lot of laughs together.  I picked her up at Logan and she came to stay with me in Melrose. Two days later, we headed up to Turners Falls for Miss Headcase’s graduation. I had planned a huge graduation party for her at a friend’s house in Marblehead that would take place the day after graduation. We lived in a really nice condo at the time, but there was no yard. It was summer and I wanted to be able to cook out. My friend Linda’s place was perfect.

I anticipated that Miss Headcase would be packed and ready to come back to Melrose with her mother and I, but I was definitely wrong about that. Instead, she told me she would meet us at Linda’s the next day for her party. I was really pissed off at this, but I didn’t let that show. I didn’t want her mother’s visit to be ruined by an argument at this point. I let it go and told her what time to be there.

Miss Headcase’s mom and I sat together for a couple of hours and watched a movie. Then, she went to bed. Around midnight,  I got a call from Sam and Dave. They had just gotten back from Sam’s cottage on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire and wanted to know how the graduation had gone. I told Dave that the ceremony was great and the weather was beautiful up there. Then he asked, “Is she home now?” I told him that Miss Headcase would be staying in TF overnight, but that she was going to go directly to her party at Linda’s tomorrow. I’ll never forget what he said next, “You have got to be fucking kidding me. Come up here right now. We have to talk to you.”

When I walked in the door, they immediately handed me a vodka on the rocks and told me to sit down. Apparently, when Miss Headcase went out to do the photo shoot in Charlemont, she confessed to the two of them that she was sleeping with Barbara and had been for quite some time. Dave told me that they didn’t immediately come back here and tell me — even though they wanted to — because she promised she was ending it and would be coming home.

You know, we had been having our problems, but I was really heartbroken. Maybe I didn’t show it as much as people thought I would, but I had my suspicions about her and Barbara for a long time. I guess the truth was that I just didn’t want to know for the longest time. Now that it had been confirmed, I actually felt relieved. Sam and Dave were really pissed off at her. To begin with, I had been living in Melrose well before I had met Miss Headcase, so these guys were my friends first. They were really upset that she hadn’t done what she said she was going to do.

By the time I made it downstairs at two in the morning, my depression had turned to full-blown anger. I wanted to get on the phone and confront her right at that moment, but I thought better of it with the party coming up tomorrow and her mother here. I let it slide and went to bed. I did not sleep very well.

I called her the next morning and I could not hold back. I told her that I knew what was going on. I told her she was to show up at the party — without Barbara in tow. I made it clear that she had no option. There were about fifty people invited and I had no intention of uninviting them. I also told her that her mother had flown out from California and she needed to do the right fucking thing. She promised she’d be there. On time.

The Mad Hatters party

I’ll hand it to her, Miss Headcase showed up on time and without Barbara. Lots of people were there, many from Millipore (where I worked), some of my friends, my family, and her mom. We were all dressed in shorts and/or jeans, T-shirts, sandals and sneakers. She walked in with nylons and a suit on, and I knew her transformation into a looney toon was complete. No question about it. I remember her mother’s face. She couldn’t believe it. She said to her, “Yeah, you look like a million bucks, but who the hell are you?”

I had been with Miss Headcase for more than eight years by then, and I knew this was about as far removed as you could get from who she really was. It was absurd. She was also acting quite snobby, and that really bugged me. By the time she arrived, I had already had a few drinks. I’m sure I made some kind of comment about how she was acting and how she looked. I will never forget what she said in reply, “I’m more of a woman than you’ll ever be.”

We were down in the basement of Linda’s place where people went out to the pool and we were alone at that point. I remember wheeling around and saying to her, “Really? You think putting on a skirt, shirt and jacket makes you a woman? You’re pathetic.” We got into a minor fight there, but I put an end to it. This wasn’t the venue for that. I wasn’t ready to have everyone know. To begin with, many people never liked the fact that we were together. They thought she took advantage of me.

We made it through the party. Later in the evening, the few people still hanging around and were inside with Linda having coffee, including Miss Headcase’s mother. We were outside and it was time to talk. According to Miss Headcase, the whole thing was her fault. She had come on to Barbara. I wasn’t sure about that. The more I had been exposed to Barbara, the less I liked her. I was sure it was mutual. Then, Miss Headcase asked me for a favor: She asked if I could wait until she made a decision about who she wanted to be with. It took real balls to ask that question. It took a great amount of stupidity for me to accept that situation. We decided to make the trip to Hilton Head anyway. The plans had been made. The place had been reserved.

Besides, when it comes to relationships, I’m not a quitter. Whether a lover or a friend, I’ll give it my all so that I can at least walk away knowing I did my best to save it. That’s very much a Della Piana characteristic.

The bitter end

Miss Headcase headed back to Turners Falls after the party, and her mom and I returned to Melrose. On the way, she asked me why Miss Headcase was not coming home. I decided this was as good a time as any to tell her what was going on. She was really mad. She also felt really bad for what I had been going through. I confessed to her that I had a feeling this was going on for some time, but there was no way I could prove it.  She and I had two more days together and I was already on vacation, so we ended up having a good time together. I took her into Boston. We went to some museums, saw a movie and generally hung out together. I drove her to the airport. Two days later, I picked up Miss Headcase and we headed (by car) to Hilton Head.

I have to say that Hilton Head didn’t thrill me. There are three things you absolutely have to like for Hilton Head to be fun:  (1) Tennis; (2) Shopping; and (3) The Beach. I’m not big on any of those, but Miss Headcase wanted to go there. I still can’t figure out why. She really didn’t like any of those things either. Perhaps it should have been a sign that she was drifting off into insanity. Frankly, the best part of the trip was stopping in Charleston, South Carolina. It was really beautiful there — the way you’d expect a charming southern town to be. However, it is not the place to be openly gay. To say that its inhabitants are a bit backwards on social issues would be an understatement.

The condo we were staying in was right on the beach. You could simply get up in the morning, pull back the curtain and be staring at the ocean. It was beautiful, but I knew instantly that the trip had been a mistake and there would be no saving this relationship. I could have stayed home. Instead, I was facing this crap thousands of miles away from my comfort zone.

According to Miss Headcase, she was still confused about her decision and that meant we were not sleeping together. Not that I wanted to at this stage of the game. Every night it was the same. She’d go into the other bedroom so she could call Barbara. I absolutely hated being there, and I was totally relieved when we were forced to evacuate because of Hurricane Hugo. Three days under these conditions were enough for me.

It was a long ride back. There was nothing more that I wanted than to drive all the way back up to Turners Falls and dump Miss Headcase off. That would be the best part of the vacation. However, I was just too tired to make the round trip, and there was no fucking way I was staying in Turners Falls for the night. Instead, we stopped in Melrose for the night. She immediately headed for the phone to let Barbara know that she would be returning the next day.

That marked the bitter end. I drove her to Turners Falls early in the morning. Barbara was positively animated, asking me about the trip and about Hurricane Hugo. She was happy to have Miss Headcase back and, at that point, I was happy to get rid of her. I knew going back to work would be difficult, but at least I had four days to get my act together.

Aftermath

My contact with Miss Headcase after that was simply to ensure that she got her stuff out of the apartment. I know at one point that my anger finally came to the surface, and I told her I wanted the car back. We fought about it for a couple of days, but I finally chalked that demand up to finally having had enough and let it go.

Eventually, Miss Headcase and Barbara moved to Florida. This happened largely because Barbara’s children (they were grown and married) were completely against her relationship with Miss Headcase, particularly because it was so close to their father’s untimely death.  We eventually stopped talking altogether, but after Thalia was born, I did get a call from her at the office one day. Seems she had been talking to a mutual friend who worked in one of the labs who told her I was in a relationship with Beth and that we just had a child together. By then, whatever I had once felt for her was completely gone and I was more annoyed than anything. I told her that I was happy and I really didn’t want to try to be friends. That’ s just not my style. When it’s over, it’s over. Miss Headcase accepted that.

Several months later, I decided to take a trip out to California to see her mother and her sister. I was there for a week and we had a really good time, but her mother confessed that she’d lost weight and hadn’t been feeling well. A few weeks after I got home, she called and told me that she had been diagnosed with colon cancer and was going to have surgery and chemo. Unfortunately, she was gone within six months. That was a really sad time in my life. At the beginning of my relationship with Miss Headcase, I had a contentious relationship with her mother but that changed and we got to be pretty good friends.

Where Miss Headcase is now, I do not know. As of 2002, the web tells me she is still in Florida. Is she still with Barbara? I do not know, nor do I care.  I was happy to end that chapter in my life and my intention was to avoid commitment for a while.

After the “child molester” comment, Miss Headcase headed back to Turners Falls and went right back into the closet. She began to come home less and less, and began to spend more and more time with Barbara. Now, since last night’s post, I’ve had several people write comments on Facebook telling me that Turners Falls is a gem. It’s beautiful. It’s an oasis. It is beautiful, I will give it that. It is a wonderful place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there — even for a limited period of time. There was an undercurrent of homophobia there that extended even to the Hallmark Institute of Photography. If that wasn’t enough, Barbara was a staunch Catholic and started bring Miss Headcase to church on Sundays. Had Miss Headcase not been Miss Headcase, had she had her convictions in place, if she were more comfortable in her own skin — what transpired next may never have happened.

Not only were the Christians (frankly, I can’t tell the difference between Christians and Catholics; the differences are subtle) working on Miss Headcase’s psyche, so was the school. They were convincing her that being outwardly gay was bad; and for God’s sake — do not bring me around. She should be wearing dresses. It was like going back in time to the fifties, and I confess that I was totally freaked out by it. Miss Headcase, on the other hand was buying it “lock, stock and barrel,” as my mother would say. It wasn’t enough that she wasn’t coming home, she now was restricting my visits to TF. There was always something she had to do with Barbara, like take weekly trips to Enfield, Connecticut.

When I finally found out what was going on in Enfield, I have to confess that I laughed like hell. I was almost embarrassed to admit it to people, but I finally did tell a few people. I mentioned in the last post that I was friendly with my landlords (since I’m an R & B fan, we’ll call them Sam & Dave). There was a good reason for this. They were gay, and it was an absolute blast living in their building. We got to be very friendly. While Miss Headcase was away, I’d go up to their apartment on Sunday mornings and we’d have ‘Grapefruit Flips’ for breakfast. (Essentially, these consist of very cold grapefruit juice with a ladle of vodka — preferably a high end vodka — on top; no mixing. Then, you just chug them.) After a few of these, it was easy to tell them what was going on in Enfield.

Barbara was taking Miss Headcase to weekly church-run square dances. Square dances. Apparently, they didn’t have any square dance specialists in TF? Either way, I knew real trouble was on the horizon. While I found this all very disturbing — apparently Miss Headcase was taking the place of Barbara’s husband at these events — I confess that I just had to laugh at the vision of Miss Headcase square dancing that was in my head.

In comes the WTF phone call

Early one evening, I received a phone call from Barbara telling me that Miss Headcase was very sick. I can’t remember exactly what the situation was, but I think it was sold to me as some kind of rabid ‘flu’ or something. She thought that she should come home and be seen by a doctor. Now, of course, I was in a panic. I called my niece and her boyfriend (now her husband) and asked them to take a ride out to Turners Falls with me to pick her up just in case I needed help. They came right over. It was practically the middle of the fucking night when we got up there, and Miss Headcase was virtually unconscious.

For the life of me, I didn’t understand why Barbara hadn’t just put her in the hospital out there. She looked like she belonged in a hospital, and it didn’t look like the flu to me. She was in and out of consciousness. The fact of the matter was that I was not convinced that a hospital out there was wise, given the goings on. We loaded her into the back seat of the car and brought her to Melrose. By the next morning, she was in the Melrose-Wakefield Hospital, where she would stay for at least two weeks.

To this day, I really don’t know what it was — if you can believe that — but I had my theories. Remember that this was either 1987 or 1988. Miss Headcase wasn’t divulging any information about what may have transpired in lovely, picturesque Turners Falls. And believe me when I tell you that gay partners had no rights back then. In fact, the doctors wouldn’t even talk to me because I was not ‘immediate family.’ I told nobody in my family anything about this except my niece and her mother, my sister Mamie.

What did I think it was? Well, let’s start with alcohol poisoning. That could have been it. I knew they were working on Miss Headcase out there — and I mean emotionally, which is something she couldn’t handle. She was in therapy when I met her, but quit immediately after we got together. I told her that this was a mistake. I wasn’t a therapist and I didn’t want to be her therapist. I also told her that our relationship wasn’t going to solve her emotional problems. She had at least confessed to me a couple of months before this incident that she had been drinking too much. Drugs? Who knows? I thought alcohol was a more likely candidate.

All I do know is that they would not release her until she visited with the hospital psychiatrist. She did that, and was released. We went home. I asked her point blank why she had to see the psychiatrist. Miss Headcase told me that it was because she had “lost time” and they wanted to be sure she didn’t have any lingering emotional issues with that. While her explanation made all the sense in the world, I had to wonder if it was the real reason. I still do not know all these years later.

Miss Headcase stayed home with me for about a week. Then, it was time to return to Turners Falls, the Hallmark Institute and Barbara. If you think this is as weird as the situation could get, just stay tuned.

Okay, so today we’re driving back from the store and changing the radio station and we stop at the song Spirit in the Sky. This turned into a real WTF? moment. Here’s how the conversation goes:

B:  Oh, I love this song! It’s Hedda Nussbaum, isn’t it?

D:  No, Beth. Are you fucking kidding me? Hedda Nussbaum was the woman who was involved in that unbelievably nasty abuse case in New York where her five-year-old was repeatedly abused and killed by her boyfriend. It’s not Hedda Nussbaum. It’s Norman Greenbaum.

B: Oh, yeah.

Now, this is woman with five degrees in various subjects, and difficult subjects as well — like Pathology, Biochemistry, Counseling Psychology, Music Comp…stuff like that. Five. Norman Greenbaum. Hedda Nussbaum. What’s the matter? Can’t you see the similarities, people? W-T-F?

By the time I graduated Aquinas in 1973, I was involved in my first serious relationship with a woman (or a girl). I was 19 years old. Marie and I had actually met in high school, but had not acted on anything until Aquinas. By the time graduation came, we were talking about moving in together. While we were still at school, however, she was living in Woburn and I was living in Medford. I spent a considerable amount of time at Marie’s house. Her younger sister was hysterical and often hung out with us. Marie also had an uncle who was a Roman Catholic priest running a halfway house for troubled youth. Sometimes he’d be in Woburn with some of the boys from the house.

Oddly enough, my oldest sister worked for the center run by Marie’s uncle. We’ll just call him Reverend Slowhand for lack of a better name. If that isn’t enough, two of my cousins were enrolled in the program there. I tell you all this because it is relevant to this story. By the time my relationship with Marie ended, it marked the most unbelievably fucked up experience of my life.  In order to fully understand it, we have to pass through a flashback experience first.

Before Marie and I were even a couple, we were part of this larger group of female Aquinas friends who hung out together all the time. Prior to Marie, I had a minor involvement with one other girl in the group, whom we’ll call Kathy. Kathy’s parents had a place down on the south shore near the ocean and we used to go down there on the weekends in the summer. Likewise, Marie’s family had a place in New Hampshire on a lake. We also went there several times with her family. One weekend, however, just us girls went there alone.

At that time, Kathy and I were involved to some extent. We had been drinking all night, and the others were passed out on the sofa in the living area. That’s when Kathy and I decided to go find a bedroom, but we found more than we bargained for. We found a staircase that led downstairs to a bedroom. I opened the door and flipped on the lights, and stopped dead in my tracks. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. There was a huge four-poster bed with red satin sheets, a red velvet bedspread and mirrors everywhere, including on the ceiling. I didn’t know whose room this was, since we were told that the bedrooms were upstairs, but I knew it wasn’t Marie’s parents’ room. I started checking things out and it became apparent pretty quickly that this was Reverend Slowhand’s room. I was pretty sure this wasn’t the norm for a priest, and I knew he was bringing kids from the center up here on weekends. I might have been young, but I was pretty savvy about some things. Uncomfortable about bringing it up to Marie, I just didn’t. In fact, Kathy and I pretty much agreed to forget we even found the downstairs. Before that weekend was over, I slipped back down there during the day for another look and snapped some pictures. I don’t even know why I did that.

Fast forward to post-Aquinas

I don’t remember exactly how long after graduation Marie and I moved in together, but it could not have been immediate because I spent a year at Bunker Hill Community College after that. When Marie and I finally did move in together, we moved into an apartment in Malden in a building owned by my brother-in-law and other members of his family. Marie was working in Boston as a medical secretary and I was probably at Millipore by that time, although I cannot remember specifically where I was. I can only surmise that I would have to have been working to pay the rent. We lived a pretty normal life. We went to work, came home and cooked dinner, and walked our dog, a Lab/Husky mix named Sundance. All in all, it was a pretty mundane life, but her family knew there was something more than a friendship going on and they were determined to stop it. That’s when the Reverend Slowhand got involved.

Marie came home one night from work and told me that she had to go out to dinner with her uncle later that week. She really didn’t want to go and I remember her saying, “I wish they’d just leave me alone.”  This was a sentiment that she would echo every night right up until the night she was to meet her uncle. I knew she was under incredible pressure. She had to be. She had been brought up in a devout Irish-Catholic home and her uncle was a priest. The reality was that she didn’t have to go out with her uncle. Marie was in her early twenties by the time we moved in together. She didn’t have to go anywhere. I remember telling her not to worry about it, just go and listen politely and it would be over before she knew it. I told her I’d wait up for her. Inside, I was not that optimistic and I knew we were saying goodbye for good when she left.

I may have been somewhat “in the closet” in some circles back in those days, but I knew I was gay and that I’d always been gay. I also knew where it was safe to be “out” and where it wasn’t. In the final analysis, I knew I could withstand the pressure if push came to shove (although I prefer that it didn’t). I also knew that Marie could not withstand that pressure. She was still questioning herself and adjusting to who she was.

It was a long night and I sat up all night on the sofa waiting. She never returned to our apartment and I never saw her again. Early the next morning, I called her house in Woburn asking for her. I remember her mother saying to me that, “Marie is here but she needs the company of boys now. She will not be speaking with you or seeing you again.”  Then I remember her asking if my mother knew what was going on with me. That was one complication I did not want, but I also knew that Marie’s mother knew how to contact my mother (she had already moved in with my sister and her family).  I had the trump card. I had found the bedroom in New Hampshire, and I’m sure everyone in that family knew it was there. I also knew that whatever was going on up there wasn’t appropriate behavior for a Catholic priest.

I remember telling her mother that if she called my mother and told her anything at all, I would let everyone know about the existence of Reverend Slowland’s bedroom in New Hampshire. I told her I even had pictures. (I never processed that roll of film and would probably never be able to find it, but she didn’t know that.) There was dead silence on the line. I mean, dead silence.  Then the phone clicked and I was back to the dial tone. I never heard from any of them again. Events would unfold later that would simply blow my mind. I had suspicions, but even I couldn’t imagine the depth of Reverend Slowhand’s depravity.

Welcome to Pedophilia

Marie’s uncle was a virulent pedophile priest. The Reverend Slowhand was right up there with Geoghan, Porter and Shanley. By the time the scandal had played itself out in the press nearly twenty years later, the Catholic Church would quietly settle 17 cases against the Reverend Slowhand. He was accused of raping and molesting boys both at his halfway house (which he ran under state contract) and at his vacation home in Barnstead, New Hampshire. He also stands accused of molesting a family friend in Woburn over a four-year period. This abuse started when the boy was thirteen. The church dealt with Reverend Slowhand like they dealt with all the others, they just kept moving him around and giving him fresh bodies to toy with in the name of God.

I have no idea where Marie is. I don’t know if her parents are alive or dead. My most recent Internet check tells me that the Reverend Slowhand retired from the priesthood in the late 90’s and is living in his little sex parlor in Barnstead, New Hampshire. I’ve not found any obits, so I’m assuming he’s still taking in air and taking up space.

There were several things over my lifetime that pushed me away from the Catholic church. This was one of the biggest. It also convinced me that organized religion run by ordinary men isn’t the answer.  Even though I am Buddhist today and very mindful of what it means to be Buddhist, I do not spend time attending services at a center. I stay away from that portion of the program because it’s often reduced to politics and power grabs.

I have had some unbelievable things happen to me over the years. That’s why I started writing this blog. But this one incident has to be the most twisted event in my life. As my mother would say if she were still here, “This one takes the cake.”

This is one for the books. It will show the folly of youth, and the incredible greed in which students engage just to have party money. More dough means more trips to the “packie” as we used to say. (Or, of course, two bags of Jamaican in those days.)

So, I graduated from Aquinas and it’s 1973. For lack of anything else to do, I enrolled at Bunker Hill Community College. I don’t even remember what I took, probably liberal arts because I was teetering between art and writing. [Of course, I ended up at Aquinas to begin with because my mother spent many days and nights trying to convince me that there was no future in either.] Anyway, this little Charlestown adventure — to a school where the most fun we had was throwing rocks at the water rats and then slamming the door shut before they went for your throat — lasted one year. In 1974, I’d join Millipore Corporation. That’s for later. That’ll give us 23 years of stories.

So, we’re sitting in the cafeteria at Bunker Hill on an unbelievably snowy day. It was really coming down. The drive had been treacherous. Then, after we spent all morning getting there, they decided to send us all home. Idiots. We were talking about the new movie, The Exorcist, when somebody asked for a volunteer to go see the movie alone. We all asked what was in it for us. The response was too good to resist. The ones who didn’t go to the movie would pool their money and give the volunteer $50. The volunteer would have to bring back the ticket stub. I took it. Little did I know that — this one event — would bring home to me just how incredibly powerful my Catholic education and brainwashing had been.

I drove in a raging storm into Boston. It was windy, the snow was piling up quickly and it was freezing. I was really happy to get inside the Music Hall parking garage. Back in those days, and in that weather, the investment was worth the payoff. I went inside and bought a ticket, carefully putting the stub inside my back pocket after going past the attendant. I was literally alone inside the theater. There were maybe 3 other people. That only made it worse. Here’s where I came out:

I was completely freaked out, scared to shit. You know, I read the book and it was bad enough, but seeing it on the big screen was horrifying. It was scary and outstanding, right down to the music. I know that the movie kind of destroyed Linda Blair’s career before it even got started, but she was brilliant in that movie. Actually, they all were, but she really stood out. She had so many ways of scaring the shit out of you: The flopping around on the bed so completely out of control; the levitating; the evil shit she said; the impression that she even smelled bad; and the bile colored puke were just too much for me. Those individual scenes were some of the most frightening I’ve seen on the big screen, and I’m a big horror fan. But it was the overwhelming reality that she was so completely in the control of someone or something so evil was the most frightening part of the movie. She wasn’t even a bad kid. She was benign. She did not invite Satan in. Even the image of Satan that they use inthe movie is exactly as I had envisioned him all of my young life.

I lived in Melrose at the time, right next to some railroad tracks. It was on the commuter line and the stop was called Melrose Cedar Park. I did a pretty good job after the movie telling myself it was just a movie. I went to bed normally that night, at about 10 p.m. because I had school the next morning and wanted to cash in — especially since I had psychologically screwed myself by going to that foolish movie. It was fine until about 11:30 p.m. when the first train went through…and my bed shook, as it always had. Of course, after The Exorcist, that shaking was a bit tainted. I sat bolt upright after coming out of a dead sleep and was terrified that my bed was shaking. I immediately jumped out of bed and turned on the light. After that, I slept with the light on for nearly four months. And I certainly did not go back to bed that evening. I turned every light in the apartment on, made myself coffee and watched television until I had to leave for school the next morning.

To this day, I can’t even bring the movie into my house. I tried renting it about four years ago and ended up leaving it in the trunk. I was convinced the next morning that I was going to be possessed as soon as I sat in the driver’s seat. I dropped it back into the drop off box on the way to work. Totally irrational, I know. But the nuns had me for fourteen years at that point and they scared the shit out of me. The worst thing was that they made you as afraid of God as they did Satan. That really sucks. No solace anywhere.

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. The little girl, Reagan, was using a Ouija Board at the beginning of the movie, and that’s when all the problems start. My Ouija Board went out in the trash the next morning…after I bent and broke it into pieces. I had that thing for years until that movie. Permanently scarred, I tell you.