So then she vanishes for another three months, leaving me in total limbo. I probably doted on her quite a bit in the following days because she did give me little signals that she liked me, from the warm and intimate conversations we’d had in February and this time from her confused looks, half-smiles and as we walked to the station, her taking my arm for just a few seconds, squeezing it tight then letting go. But the next three months of summer were so very eventful and crazy even, from the day I moved into the warehouse, that the whirlwind put her completely out of my mind. I can’t help but leave off with hackneyed phrase, which proved all too true in this case: “Third time’s a charm”.
The two weeks in Bones’ empty pad and the last few months at Chuck’s were a calm, reflective period for me. My notebooks covering that time are filled with quotations from French authors or long descriptions of my own reflections, lengthy re-evaluations of myself and my evolution, as I dimly perceived its progress.
The last two weeks of June I spent with Jim and Maureen. It was their habit to watch television each night so I joined in, doing little else. It was the calm before the storm.
They did throw one big bash while I was there. It was a wild, drinking party with maybe twenty guests. I didn’t record it and I can hardly remember it I was so drunk from mid-way on. But I do remember this. Steve for the last six months had been trying to set me up with his divorced sister Josephine. She was some five years older than me, skinny and with two small children, a three year old daughter and four year old boy, a brat I’d already met one time. She was single and divorced now for a few years from a ‘Carl’ whom I’d met once at his house in the flatlands of Emeryville, a decrepit old house next to a vinegar factory, to score some speed with Jim. He made us wait an hour and gave us such a rotten package of cut speed we never went back.
Josephine was lonely and unhappy and Steve was trying to remedy this by sometimes bringing her to parties and pushing us together, as if that act would make us fall in love. But I wasn’t interested in her, especially the prospect of two kids. I was at my partying peak. One night, a few months earlier he actually did push her right into me and squeezed us together for a minute as we were standing at the bar in ‘Receiving Studios’, an illegal bar that featured punk bands and stayed open till four or five a.m. It was in a ghetto of Oakland near the old W.W. 2 shipyards and the police never raided it. But on this night at Jim’s he brought her along and tried again.
John Seebach was also there and soon very drunk. It was sometimes his habit when inebriated to lose all self-control and make unwanted passes at women, (like Laurel). This night he chose Josephine and by midnight he was chasing her full speed from room to room and floor to floor. It was a huge three-story house (lucky for her) with hallways at both ends so she kept ahead of him. Soon there was another crowd of people running behind John, trying to catch and stop the bull. I went to my room as all this started, too drunk and tired. It was still early, and there was no speed that night to keep me going. I laid down on the bed in my clothes but before I passed out there was a load banging on my door. I stumbled up, in the dark, unlocked it and Josephine slipped in and locked it again. Then she proceeded to undress me and I remember nothing clearly after that.
Three months later, staying at Steve’s, sitting in his living room I got a call from her. She told me she was pregnant and needed three hundred dollars from me for an abortion. She’d contribute the other half.
Besides not having the money (I’d worked very little all summer), I couldn’t remember having sex with her and told her so. I really couldn’t. After half an hour of arguing she slammed her phone down, calling me several nasty names. I felt bad about it, guilty even, and for many days afterwards ruminating, but I couldn’t recall having sex. She told me the place and date but she was gone when I woke up that long-ago morning, with only a terrible hangover to remember.
I relieved that gnawing guilt six months later when I partnered up with Carl, her ex. Until then he was always broke and short on child support, dealing small amounts of drugs, barely able to make rent, never working a job. But she was constantly toiling away at low wage jobs, waitressing, to support their two children and very angry with him. I think she worked long hours at cheap diners. As soon as I partnered with him he became rich. Child support and gifts for the children started pouring in, making up for the barren years. At first she must have wondered at this windfall but a month into his new-found prosperity she happened to be leaving his front porch one morning and spotted me just getting out of my car, heading towards the house. She gave me the dirtiest and yet pained look as we made eye contact and passed each other, saying nothing. From vague remarks from her brother and Carl himself she knew he had a new venture and a secret partner in something obviously illicit. Now everything clicked.
I’d told Steve what I was doing, and Bones and John Seebach. I was incapable of keeping a secret from my best friends. And I’m sure Steve mentioned enough to Josephine to give it all away. The location of his rented house on the edge of town, the vinegar factory next to it, told the rest of the story. She had some agreement with him never to come in. The children exchanged hands on the front porch. She never expected to run into me there, or anywhere. Now her emotions were even more confused. And I didn’t particularly want to see her. Our history was too embarrassed for any talk to remedy. Steve smoothed things over. I never saw her again, but heard that she was happy with Carl’s resumed parenthood.
In his poverty Carl took the kids at most once a month, for an afternoon. He was too embarrassed to show them his dereliction. But when the money began to flow in they started coming over once a week. He’d always have ice cream and treats for them, and presents, so he was just as happy to see them as they were to visit him, unlike his broke days. He was always a would-be father and loved them. So in this strange, roundabout way I repaid Josephine, monetarily at least, and erased my guilt. I even played with the kids once or twice in the living room, with the new toys.
But back again to the end of June 1984. My days of relative calm and sanity were over. I was about to enter the maelstrom, a place called ‘the warehouse’.
