This is the second and final part from the chapter How I Got Over Freddy, from my memoir His Dead Wife. Part one here. This is heavily redacted from the actual chapter.
By the time Freddy came home that night, I was hysterical.
"When were you going to tell me you didn't work at your father's chicken plant?"
"My father doesn't have a chicken plant."
"You fucking asshole! So where have you been and what did you do with all the money you took from me?”
“Well I had to eat and keep myself busy for the eight hours I walked around San Francisco every day.”
His tone implied a big "Duh."
"Did you at least call your parole officer?"
"Yeah, yeah, get off my back."
It's said that without denial, the human spirit would perish. That denial allows our brain and our heart a respite before they catch up with reality and are able to deal. Denial was, and would be, my emotional home for many, many years.
I didn't ask Freddy to pay back the money he stole from me and we didn’t discuss him getting another job. He was now home all day, or all night, but never both. He took money out of my wallet when I was in the shower or sleeping. I never asked him what he did with it or where he went when he disappeared. I was safely at home, 1737 Repudiation Road, Denial, California. USA.
One day Glamaruss called and in a moment of guilt, admitted that Freddy had been using again and was seeing another woman. I was furious at Glam for not telling me sooner, but it’s kind of useless being mad at a drag queen. You can tell them you’re angry and they’ll respond with, “Look honey, I’m over 35, HIV positive and the only person who ever loved me was my foster mom who was killed in a drive-by in Inglewood when I was twelve.”
I hung up and lit a cigarette, pacing the nine by twelve foot cell of my studio apartment like a caged cheetah. I had cut back on bennies and downers and replaced them with a new palliative, Marlboro reds in the flip top box. I called my ex-roommate Celeste. She didn’t like Freddy but she was the only person I trusted to tell me the truth.
“I should leave him, right?”
“You went to the prison?”
“I missed him.”
“What did you miss? The hitting or the peeing on you in our bathtub?”
“Oh God, you knew about that?”
“He used to brag about it when you weren’t home. ”
“Okay, can we just stick to the current facts, please?”
“Sure,” she said, “let’s see; he was in prison, you let him come live with you, he stole money out of your wallet, lied about having a job and was cheating on you with the woman he cheated on you with before. Is that current enough for you?”
All right, maybe Celeste wasn’t the only person I trusted to tell me the truth. Maybe I had other friends who would tell me the kind of truth I wanted to hear. But I didn’t and I knew it.
One day I got a call from Henley. He and I had spent hours on Stinson Beach dropping acid and listening to the Rolling Stones. He was rich and didn't have to work for a living and would die of AIDS in the late 1980's.
“Girl, your boy just broke into my apartment and stole my stereo and all my jewelry.” I rushed over to his house and Henley showed me the broken window in the dining room.
“How do you know it was Freddy?”
“I was home when he did it.”
“Well why the fuck didn’t you stop him, or call the cops?”
“Cause he’s a drug addict and I figured if he got it all, then he wouldn’t come back.”
That actually made sense to me. I went home and waited for Freddy. One day, two days. On the third morning he came home. I was chain smoking and drinking Nyquil since it was the only thing in the apartment that had alcohol in it. Unless you counted the almost empty bottle of Jack Daniels I had drained through a straw.
“Seriously, you’ve got to give Henley his shit back.”
“That queer’s rich; fuck him.”
“Freddy, I’m not kidding, he's one of my best friends. You have to give him his stuff back.”
“Fuck you.” And Freddy was out the door.
Then he started stealing from me when I was out. My passport, a 35 millimeter camera, an ivory cigarette holder and the lowest of all, the diamond ring that I had suspected belonged to his mother. And even though he was disappearing more and more, he must have been stalking me to know when I wasn’t home. When I did see him I asked if he was using again and he lied and said he wasn’t. Even though we weren’t having sex I still hadn’t made the leap from No Sex with Me equals Sex with Someone Else. After all, when he stopped hitting me, did I automatically assume he was hitting someone else?
I got fired from Nickel’s because they told me Freddy had broken in and stolen from them. They didn’t need the extra burden of a salesgirl’s ex-con junkie plus their own heroin addiction to interfere with projected retail sales for the fall quarter.
I was sitting alone in my apartment one afternoon with the shades drawn and a cigarette dangling out of the corner of my mouth. Suddenly I heard a horn honk. And continue honking and honking and honking. It was the Handwriting on the Wall Wagon and it was parked in my head.
As if in a trance, I went upstairs to Glamaruss’s. The front door was unlocked and I walked in. It was drag queen early, about 11:00 a.m., and it was quiet.
“Glamaruss?” I tiptoed through the living room, “Glam, are you here?”
I went to her bedroom and slowly pushed open the door. And there they were, Glamaruss and Freddy, spooning, sound asleep. I inched forward to get a better look and a floor board creaked. Glam stretched out an arm. I froze but she saw me. I don’t know which one of us looked more horrified.
The thing that pissed me off the most about the end of me and Freddy was not that he had lied, stolen my money or cheated on me but in the entire three years, he had never once spooned with me. And that? Hurt.
A week later I packed a suitcase and moved to Paris. Maybe they wouldn't have denial there.
And that’s how I got over Freddy.
Showing posts with label His Dead Wife. Show all posts
Showing posts with label His Dead Wife. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Monday, June 11, 2012
Breaking (Up) Bad 8
This is one of my breakup stories. There were so many I wrote an entire BOOK about them. I can hear you laughing from here. So this is part 1 of this story, from my book His Dead Wife. It's a chapter called How I Got Over Freddy. Second part on Wednesday.
Freddy was doing time at Tehachapi for burglary and possession of heroin, and when he was discharged he asked if he could live with me. He gave me his parole officer’s number and I called. He said Freddy had been in and out of prison his entire life and it was doubtful he would ever make it on the outside without some serious support. I also learned that Freddy had had a wife once, and that she had divorced him after the first time he went to prison. He also had two sons, but Freddy didn’t know where they all lived now. Freddy’s parents knew but had agreed with his ex-wife to keep him out of his children’s lives because they knew nothing good could come of it. They were fed up with him because he had robbed them so many times that they had decided not to let him back in their house. His parents wouldn’t let him visit, he couldn’t see his kids ever again, and his wife had left him. Somebody had to help this guy. And of course I was just co-dependent enough to sign up for this tour of duty.
I told Freddy he could live with me but only if he never hit me again. And he didn’t. I wondered if I had said that when he was hitting me if he would have stopped then, too.
Freddy didn’t talk, rarely ate and was gone a lot. I was angry when I realized that he had paid more attention to me when he was hitting me. The physical abuse was easier to handle than the mental abuse. At least I could see the damage.
Freddy needed a job but what he really needed was to clean up. He had used heroin the entire time he was in prison but now that he was on the outside, he didn’t want to continue because it was an expensive habit. Freddy said it was cheaper and easier to get dope in the joint than it was on the streets and he had the track marks to prove it.
“You have to help me kick,” he said calmly.
“Ok.” I replied, also calmly, only I was pretending.
“You have to hide the knives, lock the doors and no matter what I say, don’t let me leave the apartment or call my dealer.”
That would really not be a problem since his dealer had showed up at our door only two days before. He had handed me a bag with a dead rat in it and said, “Tell your fucking boyfriend this is the only dime bag I’ve got for him until he fucking pays me. Got it, bitch?” So, hide knives, lock doors, dead rat in bag. Done. So done.
Freddy took all the knives and the phone and put them in a trash bag and gave them to our upstairs neighbor, a drag queen named Russell Richardson who went by the name Glamaruss. Then he made Glamaruss rope tie him to the bed. Freddy said it would take at least three days to detox, which was perfect because that’s how long it would take me to figure out how to untie the knots. A Maxwell House coffee can was Freddy’s new toilet.
He begged, he sweet-talked, he threatened my life but I didn’t untie him. At one point I got bored and asked him how exactly did he think he was going to kill me since he was tied to the bed? He called me a 'fucking whore' but based on my previous sexual encounters that had zero effect, obviously.
I didn’t leave the apartment for two days, afraid that he would die without me there. On the third day he stopped nodding off and sweating through his clothes and asked for orange Hostess cupcakes. At that point I knew he’d turned the corner because who the fuck would eat the orange ones except a cleaned up junkie?
Freddy started a job at his father’s chicken plant and checked in with his parole officer once a week. He would write me notes each morning and leave them on the kitchen table. “Dear Baby, I am going to pluk chikens. I took twenty dolars out of your walette to by chiken pluking gloves.”
Yes, I know; Love Is Blind and Has No Spell Check.
About three weeks after our homemade detox, I went to a pay phone to call Freddy at the chicken plant. Our phone had been temporarily disconnected since I didn’t have enough money to pay the last month’s bill. Freddy was taking more and more of my boutique paycheck to buy things for his new job.
“Freddy? Freddy who?” the woman asked.
“Freddy, the guy who plucks chickens for his father.”
“Sorry honey, no Freddy here. This is a car dealership.”
(to be continued)
Freddy was doing time at Tehachapi for burglary and possession of heroin, and when he was discharged he asked if he could live with me. He gave me his parole officer’s number and I called. He said Freddy had been in and out of prison his entire life and it was doubtful he would ever make it on the outside without some serious support. I also learned that Freddy had had a wife once, and that she had divorced him after the first time he went to prison. He also had two sons, but Freddy didn’t know where they all lived now. Freddy’s parents knew but had agreed with his ex-wife to keep him out of his children’s lives because they knew nothing good could come of it. They were fed up with him because he had robbed them so many times that they had decided not to let him back in their house. His parents wouldn’t let him visit, he couldn’t see his kids ever again, and his wife had left him. Somebody had to help this guy. And of course I was just co-dependent enough to sign up for this tour of duty.
I told Freddy he could live with me but only if he never hit me again. And he didn’t. I wondered if I had said that when he was hitting me if he would have stopped then, too.
Freddy didn’t talk, rarely ate and was gone a lot. I was angry when I realized that he had paid more attention to me when he was hitting me. The physical abuse was easier to handle than the mental abuse. At least I could see the damage.
Freddy needed a job but what he really needed was to clean up. He had used heroin the entire time he was in prison but now that he was on the outside, he didn’t want to continue because it was an expensive habit. Freddy said it was cheaper and easier to get dope in the joint than it was on the streets and he had the track marks to prove it.
“You have to help me kick,” he said calmly.
“Ok.” I replied, also calmly, only I was pretending.
“You have to hide the knives, lock the doors and no matter what I say, don’t let me leave the apartment or call my dealer.”
That would really not be a problem since his dealer had showed up at our door only two days before. He had handed me a bag with a dead rat in it and said, “Tell your fucking boyfriend this is the only dime bag I’ve got for him until he fucking pays me. Got it, bitch?” So, hide knives, lock doors, dead rat in bag. Done. So done.
Freddy took all the knives and the phone and put them in a trash bag and gave them to our upstairs neighbor, a drag queen named Russell Richardson who went by the name Glamaruss. Then he made Glamaruss rope tie him to the bed. Freddy said it would take at least three days to detox, which was perfect because that’s how long it would take me to figure out how to untie the knots. A Maxwell House coffee can was Freddy’s new toilet.
He begged, he sweet-talked, he threatened my life but I didn’t untie him. At one point I got bored and asked him how exactly did he think he was going to kill me since he was tied to the bed? He called me a 'fucking whore' but based on my previous sexual encounters that had zero effect, obviously.
I didn’t leave the apartment for two days, afraid that he would die without me there. On the third day he stopped nodding off and sweating through his clothes and asked for orange Hostess cupcakes. At that point I knew he’d turned the corner because who the fuck would eat the orange ones except a cleaned up junkie?
Freddy started a job at his father’s chicken plant and checked in with his parole officer once a week. He would write me notes each morning and leave them on the kitchen table. “Dear Baby, I am going to pluk chikens. I took twenty dolars out of your walette to by chiken pluking gloves.”
Yes, I know; Love Is Blind and Has No Spell Check.
About three weeks after our homemade detox, I went to a pay phone to call Freddy at the chicken plant. Our phone had been temporarily disconnected since I didn’t have enough money to pay the last month’s bill. Freddy was taking more and more of my boutique paycheck to buy things for his new job.
“Freddy? Freddy who?” the woman asked.
“Freddy, the guy who plucks chickens for his father.”
“Sorry honey, no Freddy here. This is a car dealership.”
(to be continued)
Monday, November 16, 2009
The Ghosts Are Back
The bizarre and the unusual will happen to me two times. When the TV in the bedroom first turned itself on in the middle of the night, I freaked out. By the time it happened again I just turned over and went back to sleep. I started calling these events The Twos.
These strange occurrences happened for many years but I never told anyone. Who would believe me? Even when I ran them privately through my head they sounded insane. I didn't feel crazy but I didn't know what crazy felt like. Maybe I was losing it.
One day at a party I struck up a conversation with a guy and I asked him what was going on in his life and he replied, "The Twos." He hesitantly started to explain it to me and when he was done I said, "You're not the only one; it happens to me too." He looked relieved.
Last week I got the pictures of me and my dog Kiko, sent by Paul, the photographer who had tested with me back in NY. Less than a week later I got the video from Mack that I linked on Friday, and there was my dog again.
After Kiko died and I moved to L.A. a year later, he started walking on my bed. I would feel his little paws stepping over me and pacing back and forth. The first time it happened I was so incredulous I lay in bed and felt the paws go over my body and around the bed. At first I was afraid to acknowledge it but I finally sat up and ran my hands over the bed. No dog. It happened on and off for years. Once I had to go to an emergency room in Santa Monica and they checked me in overnight. As I lay there trying to go to sleep, the little paws started walking all over me again. The paws were always little. I knew it was him. I sat up and felt the covers. Still no dog.
I was in therapy then and shared these stories with my shrink, who didn't seem surprised. I asked her why not and she calmly replied, "Similar things have happened to me." Then Kiko stopped walking on the bed and I've never felt him since. There have been nights when I've missed those paws. Like a lot of things in life, you only miss it when it's gone.
So when Kiko recently appeared twice in one week, once by video and once in a picture, I immediately thought it was a coincidence, although there's no such thing. I didn't realize it was a precursor.
Friday night I had the air-conditioning on because Los Angeles cannot decide what weather to wear to the prom. At 5:30 a.m. I was lying in bed, stuck to the sheets like tongue on metal, and knew I had to turn off the a.c. I got up, walked to the living room and turned it off. I went back to bed.
The next morning I noticed the stereo was on. My stereo has a flap that pops up and then turns a rainbow of colors. If you read this blog, you know this has already happened twice before.
I sat at my desk staring at the stereo opposite me and knew someone had turned it on and it wasn't me. It hadn't been on at 5:30 when I got up to turn the air conditioner off.
I looked for the stereo remote. I kept it in a basket, on a shelf a foot down from the computer. I took the basket out and fished around for it. There was nothing heavy sitting on it. So I pressed power and the stereo didn't turn off. I put it level with the stereo and pushed power again and it didn't turn off. I have a Chinese screen about 8 inches taller than my desk sitting directly in front of me so I had to pick up the remote, lift it over my head, angle it down and then push power.
The stereo went off. And then immediately turned itself back on. I turned it off again and this time it stayed off. There was no way I had done all that without remembering it.
I'm not sure why these things follow me around and have for so many years, going on 20 now. I am open to them but I have no ability to interpret their meanings. So when they happen, and you can click on the label below this post to read about the other experiences, I know I have visitors.
I just don't know what they want.
End of chat.
These strange occurrences happened for many years but I never told anyone. Who would believe me? Even when I ran them privately through my head they sounded insane. I didn't feel crazy but I didn't know what crazy felt like. Maybe I was losing it.
One day at a party I struck up a conversation with a guy and I asked him what was going on in his life and he replied, "The Twos." He hesitantly started to explain it to me and when he was done I said, "You're not the only one; it happens to me too." He looked relieved.
Last week I got the pictures of me and my dog Kiko, sent by Paul, the photographer who had tested with me back in NY. Less than a week later I got the video from Mack that I linked on Friday, and there was my dog again.
After Kiko died and I moved to L.A. a year later, he started walking on my bed. I would feel his little paws stepping over me and pacing back and forth. The first time it happened I was so incredulous I lay in bed and felt the paws go over my body and around the bed. At first I was afraid to acknowledge it but I finally sat up and ran my hands over the bed. No dog. It happened on and off for years. Once I had to go to an emergency room in Santa Monica and they checked me in overnight. As I lay there trying to go to sleep, the little paws started walking all over me again. The paws were always little. I knew it was him. I sat up and felt the covers. Still no dog.
I was in therapy then and shared these stories with my shrink, who didn't seem surprised. I asked her why not and she calmly replied, "Similar things have happened to me." Then Kiko stopped walking on the bed and I've never felt him since. There have been nights when I've missed those paws. Like a lot of things in life, you only miss it when it's gone.
So when Kiko recently appeared twice in one week, once by video and once in a picture, I immediately thought it was a coincidence, although there's no such thing. I didn't realize it was a precursor.
Friday night I had the air-conditioning on because Los Angeles cannot decide what weather to wear to the prom. At 5:30 a.m. I was lying in bed, stuck to the sheets like tongue on metal, and knew I had to turn off the a.c. I got up, walked to the living room and turned it off. I went back to bed.
The next morning I noticed the stereo was on. My stereo has a flap that pops up and then turns a rainbow of colors. If you read this blog, you know this has already happened twice before.
I sat at my desk staring at the stereo opposite me and knew someone had turned it on and it wasn't me. It hadn't been on at 5:30 when I got up to turn the air conditioner off.
I looked for the stereo remote. I kept it in a basket, on a shelf a foot down from the computer. I took the basket out and fished around for it. There was nothing heavy sitting on it. So I pressed power and the stereo didn't turn off. I put it level with the stereo and pushed power again and it didn't turn off. I have a Chinese screen about 8 inches taller than my desk sitting directly in front of me so I had to pick up the remote, lift it over my head, angle it down and then push power.
The stereo went off. And then immediately turned itself back on. I turned it off again and this time it stayed off. There was no way I had done all that without remembering it.
I'm not sure why these things follow me around and have for so many years, going on 20 now. I am open to them but I have no ability to interpret their meanings. So when they happen, and you can click on the label below this post to read about the other experiences, I know I have visitors.
I just don't know what they want.
End of chat.
Friday, June 12, 2009
His Dead Wife Moves In With Me
I've gone through my novel, His Dead Wife, and parsed out the rest of the story and just strung together the freaky events, of which there are many more. But you'll have to wait until my book is published by some REALLY INTELLIGENT AGENT WHO I DON'T HAVE YET to read the rest.
So the story jumps forward, after the VCR incident.
I've always been a terrible sleeper. Earplugs, night mask, blackout shades, a sound machine and 2 Unisom a night sometimes all kick in and I can finally sleep.
One night I got up to pee in the middle of the night and saw a pinkish glow coming from my living room. More curious than fearful I walked towards the pink light and realized the stereo was on and since it rotates colors when it's on, blue, red, orange, pink, it was on the pink cycle. As I got closer, I saw that it was not only on but the lid was open.
So the story jumps forward, after the VCR incident.
I've always been a terrible sleeper. Earplugs, night mask, blackout shades, a sound machine and 2 Unisom a night sometimes all kick in and I can finally sleep.
One night I got up to pee in the middle of the night and saw a pinkish glow coming from my living room. More curious than fearful I walked towards the pink light and realized the stereo was on and since it rotates colors when it's on, blue, red, orange, pink, it was on the pink cycle. As I got closer, I saw that it was not only on but the lid was open.
Closed Lid
Open Lid
What's so weird about that?
I hadn't left it on. I can barely sleep so if there's a pink glow coming from my living room I would have noticed. The buttons on this cheap $100. stereo are behind the CDs so you have to move them to turn it on. When I found the lid open, the CDs were all flush against the stereo. I thought maybe I had absent-mindedly used the remote. I keep it near my desk, opposite the stereo. I found the remote in the bottom of a basket 2 shelves down. It took me 14 seconds to even locate the "Open Lid" function. It was definitely not me. It was comforting to know Alzheimers had not moved in.
I turned it off and went back to bed. I woke up the next day and still couldn't figure out how the stereo had turned itself on.
A few months later I was in a deep sleep. Suddenly I heard talking. In my bedroom. I opened my eyes and saw that the TV had turned itself on. This time I was scared and sat bolt upright. I searched for the remote. Had I rolled over it? Where the hell was it? In a drawer in one of my side tables. If I tossed and turned I would have had to launch myself 2 feet in mid air to get to that remote. In a drawer. I'm pretty sure that would have woken me up.
I walked into the kitchen and got a hammer. Not a little hammer but a full grown huge manly man hammer. I have no idea why I didn't grab a knife but I thought, a knife will produce blood and then I'd have to clean up AND go to prison. But I reasoned a hammer would just produce a huge hurty hole in the body of...of... of WHO?
I was shaking. Who was in the bedroom? I crept slowly back to bed, turned off the TV and kept the hammer and a flashlight in the bed with me. Not cuddlers, I can tell you that.
What the hell was going on in my apartment?
And then the TV turned itself on again in the middle of the night almost 2 months later. And they were talking about Los Angeles Mayor's Anthony Villaragosa's divorce. If that was a clue, it was lost on me. And then the stereo turned itself on again.
End of chat.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
His Dead Wife Loved TV's
UPDATE: ALL THE STORIES IN MY NOVEL ARE TRUE.
Less than a year before my Dad died, I was seeing a great guy. His wife had died and because we were friends for about 10 years, the inevitable happened. We kept it a secret for his sake because even though she'd been sick for a long time, his wife had only recently died and he was so sad and miserable that I didn't want to hurt him further by not doing as he asked.
Having sex with a person you've been friends with is very strange when you've only known them with their clothes on. What if we got naked, had sex and it was all a big mistake and we both knew it and now we had to go back to a fully clothed relationship? How was that ever going to work? You could never even glance below their waist for the rest of your life, even if their legs were on fire.
With alcohol, that's how it's done.
How do female movie stars agree to nudity in front of an entire crew? I wonder if that’s why male actors rarely do. You'd think men would, since every body part is multiplied by the multiplex, not to mention the camera puts on fifteen pounds. Everywhere.
The first time I went to his house I was overwhelmed. Did he look around and still see his wife? Were there pictures on the wall or clothes in the closet that belonged to her? Could I move something without him saying, “Please don’t touch that.” I walked around like a tourist. Oohing and aahing and feeling like an interloper in Ozzie and Harriet’s house. Only Harriet was dead and I was the whore of Babylon.
Afterwards, I was in the kitchen rinsing dishes while he dried. The TV in the dining room was on a sports channel and he was watching out of the corner of his eye and talking to me at the same time. All of a sudden the TV shut down, went dark. He walked over to it, picked up the remote, clicked to another channel and it went on. Then another channel and it went on. But when he clicked back to the sports channel it was still blank. He fingered the remote and and then locked eyes with me.
“I know who this is.”
“Who?”
"It's obviously my wife."
I knew it too but if I said something, would he think I was crazy? He believed it, surely I could too? He was convinced it was her because he watched sports all the time and what better way to get his attention? And it had never happened before she died.
I was at my house one night, sitting on a chair watching a rental movie. I didn’t have the energy to do anything else. I kept wondering if our relationship would go anywhere. I was, after all, a rebound and I was terrified he'd figure that out and move on. And as I watched the movie, the VCR stopped playing and the noise of a television show blared through. The VCR then turned itself off. And I knew at that moment that there was someone else present. Pushing STOP and then pushing OFF were two different movements and I was nowhere near the remote or the TV. I’d had the VCR for seven years and it had never done that. And of course it never did it again.
Was his wife visiting me? Checking out my place, noticing if I was neat or messy? Looking at my shoes? I knew some spirits moved objects around, even threw things. Did they steal overpriced shoes still collecting interest on my Amex card?
A few days later, back at his house, we were upstairs in the master bedroom, standing in front of a large cabinet that housed a television. We were hugging and swaying and looking into each other’s eyes. We had a chemistry I'd never had before and will probably never have again. We could not keep our hands off each other.
Suddenly the television started to inch forward. Inch by calculated inch. It was on one of those wooden platforms that glide in and out. We stopped swaying and watched as the TV became fully extended on the platform and then stopped right in front of us. He pushed it back into the hutch and didn't say a word.
One night I was ironing his suit jacket and he was in the bathroom shaving. I had the TV on and when he came out of the bathroom he switched the channel to a ballgame. He did that all the time. I could have any station on and be seriously into it and he would just walk over and turn it back to his channel, or pick up the remote and switch it. It never bothered me because when he was near me, everything else drained from my agenda. I was more than just in love. I'd never felt that way about any man before. I was in serious trouble and I knew it. So we watched the ball game for a while and then he went back into the bathroom to dry his hair.
I changed the channel back to whatever I was watching and continued to iron. After a few minutes I heard the blow dryer stop. He came out of the bathroom and walked over to a chair and picked up the remote. He switched the TV back to his game. He looked over at me and I smiled at him. He smiled back.
Suddenly the TV went dark. Stopped. He tapped on the remote and looked over at me.
“Seems this keeps happening to us," he said, laughing a little.
“Looks that way.”
“You know who this is too, don't you?” he asked.
I couldn't breathe but I nodded yes.
“I don’t think it’s good; not a good thing at all.”
But I knew it was. If it hadn’t been, she would have thrown the TV at our heads. I was suddenly glad I hadn’t told him about the VCR turning itself off in my place. I knew she was trying to get our attention, or tell us something, but what? And how could I tell the love of my life that it was a good thing? How could his darling wife being dead ever be good in any lifetime and on any planet?
And especially with me saying it?
This entire week's posts are excerpts from my novel on reincarnation, His Dead Wife. It has been truncated and some of the names have been omitted for this online version.
Less than a year before my Dad died, I was seeing a great guy. His wife had died and because we were friends for about 10 years, the inevitable happened. We kept it a secret for his sake because even though she'd been sick for a long time, his wife had only recently died and he was so sad and miserable that I didn't want to hurt him further by not doing as he asked.
Having sex with a person you've been friends with is very strange when you've only known them with their clothes on. What if we got naked, had sex and it was all a big mistake and we both knew it and now we had to go back to a fully clothed relationship? How was that ever going to work? You could never even glance below their waist for the rest of your life, even if their legs were on fire.
With alcohol, that's how it's done.
How do female movie stars agree to nudity in front of an entire crew? I wonder if that’s why male actors rarely do. You'd think men would, since every body part is multiplied by the multiplex, not to mention the camera puts on fifteen pounds. Everywhere.
The first time I went to his house I was overwhelmed. Did he look around and still see his wife? Were there pictures on the wall or clothes in the closet that belonged to her? Could I move something without him saying, “Please don’t touch that.” I walked around like a tourist. Oohing and aahing and feeling like an interloper in Ozzie and Harriet’s house. Only Harriet was dead and I was the whore of Babylon.
Afterwards, I was in the kitchen rinsing dishes while he dried. The TV in the dining room was on a sports channel and he was watching out of the corner of his eye and talking to me at the same time. All of a sudden the TV shut down, went dark. He walked over to it, picked up the remote, clicked to another channel and it went on. Then another channel and it went on. But when he clicked back to the sports channel it was still blank. He fingered the remote and and then locked eyes with me.
“I know who this is.”
“Who?”
"It's obviously my wife."
I knew it too but if I said something, would he think I was crazy? He believed it, surely I could too? He was convinced it was her because he watched sports all the time and what better way to get his attention? And it had never happened before she died.
I was at my house one night, sitting on a chair watching a rental movie. I didn’t have the energy to do anything else. I kept wondering if our relationship would go anywhere. I was, after all, a rebound and I was terrified he'd figure that out and move on. And as I watched the movie, the VCR stopped playing and the noise of a television show blared through. The VCR then turned itself off. And I knew at that moment that there was someone else present. Pushing STOP and then pushing OFF were two different movements and I was nowhere near the remote or the TV. I’d had the VCR for seven years and it had never done that. And of course it never did it again.
Was his wife visiting me? Checking out my place, noticing if I was neat or messy? Looking at my shoes? I knew some spirits moved objects around, even threw things. Did they steal overpriced shoes still collecting interest on my Amex card?
A few days later, back at his house, we were upstairs in the master bedroom, standing in front of a large cabinet that housed a television. We were hugging and swaying and looking into each other’s eyes. We had a chemistry I'd never had before and will probably never have again. We could not keep our hands off each other.
Suddenly the television started to inch forward. Inch by calculated inch. It was on one of those wooden platforms that glide in and out. We stopped swaying and watched as the TV became fully extended on the platform and then stopped right in front of us. He pushed it back into the hutch and didn't say a word.
One night I was ironing his suit jacket and he was in the bathroom shaving. I had the TV on and when he came out of the bathroom he switched the channel to a ballgame. He did that all the time. I could have any station on and be seriously into it and he would just walk over and turn it back to his channel, or pick up the remote and switch it. It never bothered me because when he was near me, everything else drained from my agenda. I was more than just in love. I'd never felt that way about any man before. I was in serious trouble and I knew it. So we watched the ball game for a while and then he went back into the bathroom to dry his hair.
I changed the channel back to whatever I was watching and continued to iron. After a few minutes I heard the blow dryer stop. He came out of the bathroom and walked over to a chair and picked up the remote. He switched the TV back to his game. He looked over at me and I smiled at him. He smiled back.
Suddenly the TV went dark. Stopped. He tapped on the remote and looked over at me.
“Seems this keeps happening to us," he said, laughing a little.
“Looks that way.”
“You know who this is too, don't you?” he asked.
I couldn't breathe but I nodded yes.
“I don’t think it’s good; not a good thing at all.”
But I knew it was. If it hadn’t been, she would have thrown the TV at our heads. I was suddenly glad I hadn’t told him about the VCR turning itself off in my place. I knew she was trying to get our attention, or tell us something, but what? And how could I tell the love of my life that it was a good thing? How could his darling wife being dead ever be good in any lifetime and on any planet?
And especially with me saying it?
This entire week's posts are excerpts from my novel on reincarnation, His Dead Wife. It has been truncated and some of the names have been omitted for this online version.
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
His Dead Wife Was In The Pool
Arthur and his wife were friends of my Dad's. They lived in an assisted living facility, not because they needed help, they were just tired of cooking for themselves. Their new place was a glorious two bedroom with private gardens and a patio full of flowers. There was a doctor's office in the compound, a pool, tennis courts, and did I mention a medical facility? And 3 meals a day. Don't think I didn't consider moving there myself. But I can't do Florida, lightening capital of the U.S. and me all full of metal. And the humidity is just wrong.
This loving couple was married for over 50 years. Madly crazy in love. When she died of a heart attack in her 80's, he was devastated beyond repair. He was a bear of a man, a daily swimmer who had easily recovered from 2 knee replacements. But his emptiness over his wife's death was so huge that it took him weeks to even be up for a walk. No one could cheer him up. After four months he finally got back into life and even took up his daily swimming ritual. He was often found poolside reading the newspaper.
Arthur was a very neat man. Everything in its place kind of guy. So he was sitting by the pool one day when he noticed something out of the corner of his eye. He put his paper down and saw one piece of newspaper floating in the pool. He hadn't noticed it when he sat down; how did it get there? Had it been there all along and he hadn't noticed? He knew that wasn't possible since he knew exactly where the walnuts and the cashews were and they were in identical canisters on the same shelf in the left kitchen cabinet.
He looked right and left. There was no one around. There were also no other loose pieces of newspaper anywhere on the grounds. Annoyed, he waited to see if a gardener or pool man would wander by and pick it out but he was all alone on a beautiful sunny day.
After a while, the wet newspaper bothered him so much that he decided to get it out himself. He walked over to the pool office, retrieved the pool net and with the long pole he gingerly edged the paper towards him. He laid it on the concrete and looked at the date.
It was the date his wife's obituary appeared in the paper. Four months earlier.
And her picture was staring back at him.
This entire week's posts are excerpts from His Dead Wife, my novel on reincarnation. Some of the names have been changed or omitted to protect the people who got on my nerves.
This loving couple was married for over 50 years. Madly crazy in love. When she died of a heart attack in her 80's, he was devastated beyond repair. He was a bear of a man, a daily swimmer who had easily recovered from 2 knee replacements. But his emptiness over his wife's death was so huge that it took him weeks to even be up for a walk. No one could cheer him up. After four months he finally got back into life and even took up his daily swimming ritual. He was often found poolside reading the newspaper.
Arthur was a very neat man. Everything in its place kind of guy. So he was sitting by the pool one day when he noticed something out of the corner of his eye. He put his paper down and saw one piece of newspaper floating in the pool. He hadn't noticed it when he sat down; how did it get there? Had it been there all along and he hadn't noticed? He knew that wasn't possible since he knew exactly where the walnuts and the cashews were and they were in identical canisters on the same shelf in the left kitchen cabinet.
He looked right and left. There was no one around. There were also no other loose pieces of newspaper anywhere on the grounds. Annoyed, he waited to see if a gardener or pool man would wander by and pick it out but he was all alone on a beautiful sunny day.
After a while, the wet newspaper bothered him so much that he decided to get it out himself. He walked over to the pool office, retrieved the pool net and with the long pole he gingerly edged the paper towards him. He laid it on the concrete and looked at the date.
It was the date his wife's obituary appeared in the paper. Four months earlier.
And her picture was staring back at him.
This entire week's posts are excerpts from His Dead Wife, my novel on reincarnation. Some of the names have been changed or omitted to protect the people who got on my nerves.
His Dead Wife Shows Up For Dinner
This is my favorite picture of my Dad and his 4th wife.
When she died my sister and I flew to Florida that night to be with him. My sister flew in from L.A., I flew in from Flin Flon, Saskatchewan, Canada. I can hear Canadians laughing from here. I WAS ON THE ROAD IN FLIN FLON, population 6, not counting the comedians.
The next morning I was sitting on a couch trying to wake up before I went to make coffee. I didn’t especially like Dad’s last wife but I really missed her in that moment, mainly because she always made the coffee.
I got up and went into the kitchen and noticed that a little placard was missing from the entrance wall of the kitchen. The little plaque above it was still there and I wondered if Dad had removed the other one to keep by his bed. I made the coffee and didn’t think another thing about it until a few hours later, when Dad and I decided to go to the post office. As we walked down the long corridor that led to our front door, we passed the kitchen and I noticed the missing plaque was back.
“Did you put the plaque back?”
“What plaque?” I stopped and turned back towards the kitchen. I motioned for him to follow me.
“This bottom plaque here, did you put it back?” I asked, pointing to the piece of wood.
“Put it back from where?” my father asked. I explained to him that I had been in the kitchen earlier and noticed it was missing. Standing with my father gazing at the itinerant plaque, we said nothing. Which if you know me, is unusual. My Dad? Could have passed for a statue at any point in his life.
Something was happening, as it often did around me and the dead. All I knew was that the placard was missing and now it was back. I just didn’t know why.
That night at the Yacht Club the remaining family and friends sat at a round table and put an empty place for the dearly departed. I find it creepy when people do that but so many people do it that maybe I’m the creepy one.
I had already been through the drama with Dad in the foyer of our apartment, so when we got to the Yacht Club, I repeated the story to the others. Family remained quiet. Friends, not so much.
One of Dad’s friends, Gracie, was an Electronic Voice Phenomenon tech who recorded the voices of the dead for a living. She and I exchanged looks. Suddenly my stepbrother turned to his youngest daughter and told her to stop rocking his chair. “Dad, I’m not even touching your chair,” she answered.
“Well someone is rocking my chair,” he insisted. Again Gracie and I exchanged a look.
“Hey, stop rocking my chair,” my father suddenly said to me.
“Dad, I’m not touching your chair, look.” My father looked down at the seat of my chair, which was a good seven inches away from his. “Dad, it’s your wife. Your DEAD wife, she’s saying hello.”
The chairs stopped rocking. Gracie and I rolled our eyes at each other as if to say, "Humans. Why don't they get it?"
After dinner Dad and I walked across the street to our condo. He looked so old at that moment, all eighty-six of his years engraved on every ridge of his face. His sadness scared me.
“Really, you weren’t rocking my chair?”
“No, Dad. Your wife never believed in reincarnation or the soul and I used to tell her she was wrong, that one day she would see.”
“Yeah, she really didn’t believe, did she?” he said with a small smile.
“Remember how I told her once, years ago, that when she died she would see that I was right and to send us a sign?” Dad mulled that over for a moment, his eyes suddenly filling with the memory as he stopped walking and turned to look at me.
“You told her to send us a sign when she made it to the other side!”
“That’s right.”
“You think it was her rocking the chairs?” he asked.
“Yes Dad, it was her, that was the sign; there’s something on the other side.”
Dad looked happy in that instant, knowing she had come to him. I never saw him that happy again.
When dead people come back to you, it's never bad, it's always good.
Dad died two years later and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
Monday, June 08, 2009
I Really Haven't Changed At All
People always ask me how I can believe in reincarnation when I haven’t made the round trip myself. I don't know; I just do.
This is me when I was 4. I look the same minus the pigtails and plus a nose job.
When I was 3, I started telling my parents that Cincy, Cindy and I were going out to play. That would have been fine by them only I didn’t have any friends named Cincy and Cindy. Cincy? What kind of a name was that? I'd never heard it and to this day have never known anyone named Cincy. My parents grilled me like a shishkabob over those two people. My answer was always “I don’t know; they are just MY FRIENDS you big stupid heads.”
Sidebar: If I really had said that I would be writing you from my grave right now.
Naturally I out grew Cincy and Cindy and as I aged my Dad talked to me about reincarnation. He believed in it and I think I believed in it because I guess he had a good explanation. Like, Believe in it or you’ll never get your own car.
Sidebar: I did believe in it and I never got my own car because my parents were big stupid heads and I'll write from my grave IF I WANT TO.
It wasn’t until years later that I read when children are under the age of four and start talking about people with names you don’t recognize that you should pay close attention, that these were probably people they had known in a previous life. I used to call my sister Dorothy when she was 2 and tell my parents we were moving to California. My Dad's 3rd wife was named Dorothy, her son lived in California and I ended up here THREE separate times in my life before settling here. And my sister Lindy moved here first.
When I was age range 36-43, (that’s how we give our ages in Hollywood) (That is, if you ever want to work again) I received a letter one of our distant uncles on my father's side sent my father and me. He had hired an assassin to work for him and the media was all over his place. I don't tell anyone who it is because this man assassinated a very famous person and homey don't play no witness protection games. In this letter was a diagram of our family tree. I gave it a cursory glance and filed it under Who Cares They're All Dead Now.
A few years later I was working on my first novel 'His Dead Wife" and I foraged the letter out from my files and in the many branches and offshoots of that tree I found the name ‘Cinzie,’ a woman who had died roughly twenty years before I was born. I stared into space thinking about how I had known her on the other side. Whoever she was to me then, she clearly had been very important so I dragged her into this lifetime.
I called my Dad. He totally flipped out. True, I haven't made the round trip but have MILLIONS more stories like this in my life. Research on reincarnation suggests that children under 4 remember names and places and then when they're fully verbal around 5 and "get stuff" it all disappears for them.
For me? Cinzie never disappeared because I found her in a family tree and never forgot the strange name. I still wonder if she's the one who said, "For God's sakes, child, never get married."
End of chat.
This is me when I was 4. I look the same minus the pigtails and plus a nose job.
When I was 3, I started telling my parents that Cincy, Cindy and I were going out to play. That would have been fine by them only I didn’t have any friends named Cincy and Cindy. Cincy? What kind of a name was that? I'd never heard it and to this day have never known anyone named Cincy. My parents grilled me like a shishkabob over those two people. My answer was always “I don’t know; they are just MY FRIENDS you big stupid heads.”Sidebar: If I really had said that I would be writing you from my grave right now.
Naturally I out grew Cincy and Cindy and as I aged my Dad talked to me about reincarnation. He believed in it and I think I believed in it because I guess he had a good explanation. Like, Believe in it or you’ll never get your own car.
Sidebar: I did believe in it and I never got my own car because my parents were big stupid heads and I'll write from my grave IF I WANT TO.
It wasn’t until years later that I read when children are under the age of four and start talking about people with names you don’t recognize that you should pay close attention, that these were probably people they had known in a previous life. I used to call my sister Dorothy when she was 2 and tell my parents we were moving to California. My Dad's 3rd wife was named Dorothy, her son lived in California and I ended up here THREE separate times in my life before settling here. And my sister Lindy moved here first.
When I was age range 36-43, (that’s how we give our ages in Hollywood) (That is, if you ever want to work again) I received a letter one of our distant uncles on my father's side sent my father and me. He had hired an assassin to work for him and the media was all over his place. I don't tell anyone who it is because this man assassinated a very famous person and homey don't play no witness protection games. In this letter was a diagram of our family tree. I gave it a cursory glance and filed it under Who Cares They're All Dead Now.
A few years later I was working on my first novel 'His Dead Wife" and I foraged the letter out from my files and in the many branches and offshoots of that tree I found the name ‘Cinzie,’ a woman who had died roughly twenty years before I was born. I stared into space thinking about how I had known her on the other side. Whoever she was to me then, she clearly had been very important so I dragged her into this lifetime.
I called my Dad. He totally flipped out. True, I haven't made the round trip but have MILLIONS more stories like this in my life. Research on reincarnation suggests that children under 4 remember names and places and then when they're fully verbal around 5 and "get stuff" it all disappears for them.
For me? Cinzie never disappeared because I found her in a family tree and never forgot the strange name. I still wonder if she's the one who said, "For God's sakes, child, never get married."
End of chat.
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