A few days before Christmas I was on my way out of my apartment building and heard my name called. Loudly. I turned, and my Guardien (super) hooked his finger to summon me to his office. I was in trouble. Déjà vu! (If you're wondering what that means, it's French for "I have been in trouble most of my life. So I know an angry finger hook when I see one." The French are amazing how they simplify such complex concepts into two words, n'est-ce pas? <-- That, by the way, is also two words.)
Then he started yelling at me in French as he jabbed his finger in the direction of a medium-sized box on his desk, then back in the direction of my nose. Most of what he said I didn't understand, but the part about it being "la dernière fois!" (the LAST time!), I understood. Evidently, he had placed the usual slip of paper in my mailbox telling me that a package was waiting for me. But I never open my mailbox because nobody ever sends me anything. That box had been sitting on his desk for 32 seconds longer than he could stand, so he was mad.
It wasn't a good day for me. I took the box, tail between my legs, went back upstairs to my apartment, set the box down on the floor, and burst into tears. Then I wiped the snot on my $1.50 Target gloves, took off my coat and hat and called my girlfriend to tell her I was too late to meet her at the cemetary. I mean, in my condition, strolling through the avenues of mouldering death at Père-Lachaise didn't appeal to me any more. Fuck Jim Morrison. I've already seen his grave anyway.
I didn't look at that box for a couple of days. When I finally did open it, I was stunned.
A few months ago, my oldest friends from Marple Newtown junior high in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania had found me online. One of them, whom I'll call Dina, had been my bestest buddy. But when my parents moved me to Scottsdale, Arizona when I was 15 years old, it began a gradual separation between me and Dina. It was purposeful on my parents' part. They never approved of Dina, or any of my other friends. Those girls weren't Catholic. They were 'publics.' They were hippies and whores and such. The interesting thing is that they are now all normal humans with husbands and kids, and I'm, well, not married and I have no kids and I'm a dirty socialist...and such.
But be that as it may, after Dina and I exchanged a few emails, she asked me for my mailing address. Then she boxed up and sent me every letter I had ever written to her - from the letter I wrote on the plane from Philadelphia to Phoenix on the day we moved - July 1, 1971 - through my three years at Xavier high school in Phoenix, through my short and tragic time at University of Arizona in Tucson, through running away from home, through my love affair in Guadalajara, Mexico, through my time with David the drug smuggler. At one point I had asked her in one of my letters to save them all for me. In a note Dina wrote to me that she slipped on top of the letters in the box, she copied my letter and circled that sentence. She said in her note that she saved them not just because I asked her to, and not just because she's sentimental, but mostly because she thought that they would make a great book one day.
I think she's right. I just need to get my arms and head and heart around it all, and figure out how I want to approach it.
I cried salty tears and laughed out loud as I read every letter. It took me two days. I smiled or cringed sometimes at my naivety. I was surprised at my insights. I was sad for the girl that I was, who missed her best friend so much, stuck in what I thought was a cowpoke town, wishing I was back home. My parents strung me along with a promise that they would send me back to Philadelphia to visit my friends if I saved my plane fare. I was washing cars, cutting people's hair (shag!), and had my friends in Philly sending me dollars and quarters in the mail! I saved the money, and my parents reneged on the deal. In desperation asked Dina's mother to write a letter to my mother, inviting me to come and stay, and reassuring my mother that I would be safe. My mother's reply letter was in the box. She was gracious, but said that "these are different times, and these are different children," and she worried about me, and needed me to be where she could keep an eye on me.
Trust me, I managed to get in way more trouble on my own in Arizona than I ever would have gotten into with Dina in Pennsylvania. Let that be a lesson to parents out there - while you're locking the kid's bedroom door, she's sneaking out the window. Control isn't the answer, communication is.
And I don't remember any of this drama. I don't remember working for the money. I don't remember my never-ending longing to be back in Pennsylvania. I don't remember my deep disapointment when my sister told me that my mother laughingly told her that they would never let me go. There's an amazingly big gap in my memory, across the board. I professed love for a couple of different Bills so many times. I only remember one gorgeous, Jewish Bill. (THAT must have delighted my parents.) Who were all the rest? I don't know why, but there are events and people in those letters that I have no clue about.
There were two guys that I dated pretty seriously in high school that I actually do remember, one of whom was Glenn Keane, the son of Bil Keane, author of the syndicated Family Circus cartoons. But I never remembered how that relationship ended. After reading the letters, now I have some idea, but still not the whole story. Glenn is head of animation now at Disney. He went to work there directly out of college and never came back to Arizona.
Almost every envelope I sent, almost every letter inside, was illustrated. Once when my parents took me and my brother to a friend's cabin in Heber, Arizona for a week, I bought a Son Of Big Chief writing pad and vowed that I'd fill the whole thing up while I was at the cabin. And I did! And that whole Big Chief pad was in the box that Dina sent.
I wrote long letters in it, full of my adventures and thoughts, copied my favorite poems and song lyrics in there. There were line drawing portraits of my mother on the couch reading a book. Her one leg was tucked up under her like it always was, her other leg on the floor, her hair in a flip, with her reading glasses on. My Dad was sitting in a chair reading the paper, with his legs up on a hassock and his feet crossed at the ankles, the way he still sits even now, at 85 years old, in his home in Scottsdale. My brother had surprisingly long hair (how'd he get away with that?) and he was sitting in a chair reading Mad Magazine. I captured them all, in simple, quick line drawings. I was such an artist then. What happened to that part of me?
My letters were 20 pages long! (Shocking, I know.) Looseleaf sheets, every line filled, both sides of the paper. I guess I was a writer all the way back then. I wonder why I didn't follow that path? I had even started a book called Available Men And Where To Find Them (I was 16!). I had typed up (and mimeographed - remember that smell?) a questionaire for the guys to fill out, and I'd sent the questionaire to all my friends and told them to go and get single guys to fill them out so they could be listed in the book. I even had a legal release for the guys to sign. Wow.
With this blog, I've regained the writer in me. I'm also now making money from my writing. I will be forever grateful to Blogger for giving me this space to express myself, so I could finally realize my dream.
Perhaps it's time for me to start drawing again too, n'est-ce pas?
In the next few weeks, as I sift through the slips of paper and doodles that constitute my past, I'll scan some stuff in and post it for your pleasure, and mine.
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