I’ve already mentioned how Lindsey lost all her eight thousand dollars of the first money we made. When she returned our relationship was stormier than ever, but we managed to work together and more than repair her loss. Soon I had triple the cash she did, half in a bank account and half in a safety deposit box. Yet I could never get her to do the same. And sure enough, after we parted with three more transactions under our belts, she bought an old, small, Toyota truck and later moved to ‘Harbin Springs’. That was in June after a disastrous month in a motel with her brother and right before our trip back East.
I visited her in Harbin Springs one Sunday in September on a joy ride with Jim ‘C’ visiting from Boston with his knew girlfriend Lisa, and ‘C’. Lisa wanted to see some redwood trees and we drove North and ‘C’ agreed to come along in one of his rare social moods. Jim drove the rental like a lost, happy tourist and as I looked on our map noticed that Harbin was nearby, mentioned Lindsey was there, so we took the short detour.
We entered, made inquiries and we’re directed to a small cabin where we found her sitting on her bed, penniless, sad and stuck there in a strange sort of slavery. Her truck had broken and needed parts. The people who ran the place let her stay there and fed her leftovers from the kitchen, on condition that she washed dishes and cleaned rooms like a maid at least eight hours each day. This predicament might have gone on forever. She didn’t even have the money to call me or anyone else who might help her out of this strange hole, only one Lindsey could find, (or so I thought). It was a similar embarrassment as when Ali stole all her money five months before and she had to drag her suitcase miles back to my door. It was the same dilemma I found my ex-wife Sanita in four months later.
Stupid me. I couldn’t see the obvious lesson, after multiple, repeated examples almost smacking me in the face. And all with exactly the same disastrous result, happening sooner or later. A woman in trouble is trouble.
Out of pity (once again) I gave here all the money in my wallet, 400 dollars, told her to get her truck fixed and leave. I left her with a hug and a clean conscience and put her out of mind for another four weeks. She didn’t leave, she lost most of the money to a shady mechanic and used the rest on long distance phone calls to me begging for more help. I had to drive there though hurt at the time with a chipped shoulder (my newly acquired Datsun ‘Z’ had no power steering, causing intense pain with each turn) and sneak her out of there like a prison break. But that’s a later story.
By mid-April we knew we’d be parting ways soon. I was working with ‘C’ and rented a room in Berkeley, just a bedroom with a common room and kitchen and several other bedrooms, the top floor of a large house. My friend Louis had a room there. Lindsey had no plans except to buy a used vehicle and live with Ali somewhere. She put most of her stuff in a storage unit. This journal entry captures the spirit of these last days together. Breaking up is never easy, ugly in fact, in a million details because it's a dozen tangled emotions, remnants of love, pity, grief, doubt, sadness, desperate hope all built on the solid foundation of mutual hatred.
“Wens. May 1st, 1985. Revolution upon revolution in my personal life. When will it end? I didn’t mind the arguments so much (though they were violent) when there was a lull between them. But now they come hard on, one after another.
“Lindsey is leaving me by mutual decision. Such a crazy range of emotions filled the last seven months I couldn’t even write about it. In retrospect I may try to draw parts of this in time, but some scenes were too crazy and deserve only ‘oblivion’.
“Besides this relationship gone sour, I’m terminating my career as an electrician this week. (I did quit electrical work for the next four years). I worked a few hours today at it and have a few more to finish up tomorrow. After that I’ll find other ways to exercise, like taking long walks each day, which inspires thoughts.
“I thought today about the value of time and it struck me with a deep and moving significance, more than such reflections have in the past”. This was the week I was helping Maureen rewire a large house. She was still working at the Livermore Lab and took it as a side job. Jim had left and gone back to Boston six months before. The job was a little over her head, so she gave me a frantic call one day to help her out, and I, always a sucker for a pretty face, agreed.
I was reading The French philosopher ‘Montesquieu’ at the time and copied out two very telling quotes: “Tous les maris sont laids”. ‘All husbands are unsightly (or ugly)’. The next : “Il faut romper brusquement avec les femmes”. ‘When you break up with a woman, do it quickly’.
