A date with Carol and Cosmic Judy (June 15, 1975)

June 15, 1975

Jimmy told me he needed a ride. But not to Quick Chek this time.

Carol wanted to meet him at a bar on Paterson Avenue in West Paterson, and he needed me to drive him there from Passaic.

It was a kind of date, he supposed, although Carol technically was still John’s girl, even though she was living with somebody else near Bleeker Street in the Village.

How she got back to the old digs in West Paterson I didn’t find out until we got to the bar and found Carol waiting with her one-time best friend, Cosmic Judy – a girl I had last seen in an apartment in Verona where Jimmy and had gone to cop pot once or twice. At the time, I was startled by the face that Judy had a swing in her living room, and a switch that allowed her to turn off the volume on the TV set when the commercials came one.

Jimmy cautioned me not to call Judy “Cosmic Judy” since it would like offend her, a description others had for her because she was something of a space cadet – and not from drugs (though she did those, too.)

I had just bought a 1960 Chevy impala, but it had a few quirks.

The dashboard light did not work so in order to check on the speed or the gas gauge after dark I had to turn on the dome light.

That night, I had only an eighth of a tank of gas. But I figured the ride from Passaic where Jimmy and I lived to West Paterson wouldn’t put too much a strain on it, and I could put some gas in the car the next morning.

I wanted to save money to buy drinks and perhaps food, if this was a double date as Jimmy seemed to suggest.

When we got there, we got drinks, but Carol – who was in a randy mood – wanted to go someplace else, only she didn’t tell me where, she said she would direct me as we went and she directed me to drive out Route 80 west, while she had Jimmy cuddled in the back seat.

Cosmic Judy said in the front side passenger seat.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“You’ll find out when we get there,” Carol said.

“I don’t have a lot of gas.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I don’t want to get stuck anywhere.”

“I said not to worry about it,” Carol insisted, sounding preoccupied and I glance in the rearview mirror showed her dark shape cuddling with Jimmy’s.

I turned on the dome light and saw the needle on E.

“Will you stop that!” Carol snapped. “Can’t you see we’re busy back here.”

Jimmy said nothing, but I got the impression from the odd looks Judy gave that he was half undressed.

“It will help to know where you want us to go,” I said.

She mumbled something about Stokes Forest – a regular destination for our gang.

“I don’t have gas enough to get there and certainly not enough to get back,” I said.

“That’s fine with me,” Carol said, voice muffled as she pressed her lips against Jimmy’s neck.

Judy giggled.

I wanted to kick Jimmy for this. Guys are supposed to be the ones coming up with the excuse about running out of gas.

When we got to the exit to Route 15 north, Carol directed me to take it.

Darkness swirled around us, thick with woods that had not yet been cut for development, the narrow lanes plunging under their extended arms.

I kept thinking about running out of gas – about getting stuck out here, having to sit in the front seat while Carol and Jimmy made love in the back, or worse, having to make love with Judy just to occupy ourselves till the police arrived to rescue us or morning came so we could walk to some gas station somewhere.

There were not a lot of gas stations around that part of the county, none on Route 80, and only a handful on Route 15. I didn’t know if we had gas enough to reach one.

We passed a few stations, but they had already closed.

I mentioned the gas situation to Jimmy, he only mumbled back at me.

Finally, I saw a glow in the center island of a still open station and started to turn off.

“Don’t!” Carol yelled.

“I have to. We have no gas,” I yelled back, and then pulled up to the pump, directing the attendant to put the amount of gas in the gas-guzzler I still had money to pay for. When finished, I asked Carol if she still wanted to go to Stokes.

“Never mind,” she said. “Just go back. You ruined the whole mood!”

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A matter of money? (Nov. 27, 1983)

Nov. 27, 1983

Money matters, even when Jimmy pretends it doesn’t.

Our agreement when he moved in with me is that he would pay $40 towards the rent and half the utility – which took me a while to realize doesn’t nearly cover the overall expenses we incur.

At the time, I was working more or less part time at the Fotomat; Jimmy wasn’t working at all. He asked me to get him a job, and then set up shop while waiting for me to accomplish it, sipping his morning coffee or puffing his evening joint.

Finally, I gave him the job I had and went back to baking up in Willowbrook Dunkin, a far harder, but better paying job, but also an increase in costs since I had to pay for gas and upkeep on the car.

Still, Jimmy complained, and somehow managed to shift the bulk of the bills onto me – I guess assuming now that I had a better paying job than he did, I could afford it.

He frequently ran out of money early in the week, asking me for small loans he conveniently forgot to repay when he got paid.

This week I realized that he arranged for me to do shopping a few days after his payday, managing to put off paying his share of that until the following payday, often paying me less than half on the claim he needs to pay other bills.

If I complain, he looks at me as if I’ve offended him, as if I’m greedy, as if I value cash more than our friendship.

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The emptiness inside (Nov. 19, 1983)

November 19, 1983

Jimmy complains about the cats just the way he used to complain about Clayton before Clayton left, snide remarks about how destructive these beasts were.

I mostly don’t take him seriously though I know he really means what he says, obsessed with creating a world for himself which he can control all the elements – godlike.

Although I often sided with Clayton at times, I always felt sorry for him, and sometimes thought Jimmy went to far in his abuse – even if Jimmy always couched it in sarcasm.

Sometimes listening to Jimmy, I am reminded of the old Biblical story of Eden, and the whispering temptation of the surfant, a kind of playful mean-spiritedness that plays one person against another, in one case, me against Clayton, and once, Garrick against me.

“Look at him,” Jimmy would say referring to Clayton in the other room. “What do you think he’s listening to in those headphones. Not anything good, I can tell you.”

I actually did listen to Clayton’s tapes once when he was out, and Jimmy was not around, hours of dry rhetoric that might have made a communist proud, attempted brainwashing, not political, but religious, making sure that Clayton kept the faith.

Jimmy never actually listened to the tapes and only glimpsed the books out of which Clayton was always reading, building his case against the boy based on what Jimmy supposed the tapes said, though his guess was close to reality since Clayton’s faith was as close to fascism as anything I could imagine, how to control people under his command, how to convince them to dedicate their lives and their finances to the church.

But for Jimmy, Clayton was the epitome of evil, that dark force always on the edge of our lives waiting to swarm in on us – when in fact, Clayton was just one of those helpless saps dragged into a faith that promised to fill a vacancy inside him he could find nothing else to fill it with.

A vacancy we all have, including Jimmy.

We’re all making choices in our lives, some of which turn out to be completely wrong. This does not make us evil – only hapless.

We all seem to be stumbling aimlessly through our lives, an idea that appalls Jimmy who seems to want to have total control over his own reality, and doesn’t, can’t possibly have, and doesn’t even know how impossible such control is for anybody.

Now, he bitches about the cats because they wander through the house at will, sometimes knocking things over, but I think Jimmy needs something to blame things on, people or pets to divert attention from the real situation – a kind of emptiness he seems to feel.

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Jimmy wants a lizard (Nov. 11, 1983)

November 11, 1983

Jimmy told me to meet him at the Fotomat booth so I could drive him up to the mall to buy a lizard.

I knew he was lying – Jimmy always says one thing when he means another – but it was such an interesting lie I agreed if only to find out what he was really up to.

I figured he just didn’t want to have to walk in the dark in the rain and wanted me to drive him to the bank with the night’s deposit and then drive him home again.

The problem is when I got to the booth, he wasn’t there. I drove up the road to the bank, then back, and to the bank again in case I missed him, but didn’t see him coming or going, and so I was shocked to find him at the booth when I got back and hear him complain how little he could trust me to be on time when I was there early.

He was dripping just enough from the rain to convince me that perhaps he had walked to the bank like he said he had, and I had someone missed him in the dark.

When he got into the car, he surprised me by insisting we drive to the mall.

“For a lizard?” I asked.

“Of course, for the lizard,” he said.

I suppose there is something wrong with me, my getting angry at what are Jimmy’s typical antics. I should shrug these off, but rarely do, and so driving, I got into a mood I couldn’t get out of even at the thought that Jimmy needed me to help him buy a lizard – which I knew he really didn’t want, and that he would soon unveil his real intention a moment or so before we reached the place where he really needed to do – in this case Pearl Paint for supplies.

Later, he would try to make up for this deception by giving me the painting of a lizard he said he did just for me – though oddly enough, somewhere down deep in that twisted maze of his mind, I knew he really did want a lizard.

s 
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Sanctuary (Oct. 10, 1983)

October 10, 1983

You can hear the cries of sea gulls above the collage of sound I hear even before I climb out of bed.

Winter comes to the city and the river.

Last week, the geese made their passage through this place, a wedge in the sky honking as they made their way south.

The gulls stay here, braving out the winter with the rest of us.

I am cold, trapped beneath this blanket like a child, filled with memories and hints of the upcoming holidays.

Clayton is leaving tomorrow for parts unknown, Austin for certain, possibly San Francisco before that, in search of peace he cannot find here.

I feel more than a little guilty for the way Jimmy and I have treated him during his brief stay here.

We should not have given him such a hard time about his beliefs.

Jimmy has a tendency to decimate anything that interferes with his personal plans, and I was his willing accomplice, even though I got nothing out of it in the end except grief.

I was once a victim of this tactic back in 1975 when I was Clayton trying to live with Jimmy and Garrick here, and Jimmy orchestrated a similar scheme to drive me out.

I hear the gulls again, reminding me that I must soon rise and face the cold day, and the approach of winter – still reveling in Fran’s visit yesterday, and our hours of love-making, before we ventured out and made the trek to Bear Mountain to glimpse the first sprawl of changing leaves, yellows and reds that have not yet had time to reach here, contrasted against a backdrop of evergreens and the sharp shimmering surface of an almost pristine Hudson River, the glimpse of other lakes between the sprawling limb whose names I did not catch from the road map.

Neither one of us thought to bring a camera so the image must remain fixed in memory instead, finding peace closer than Clayton can, although a bit alarmed by the sound of gun fire as hunters made their way through the woods not far from where we stood.

We saw deer fleeing below us, trapped in the sanctuary of federal preserves.

Sometimes I feel trapped like that, pursued by realities I am helpless to otherwise cope with.

Standing there on top of that mountain made me realize just how Jimmy must feel having been cast out from his garden of Eden in Towaco where he had puttered around in his own private sanctuary, only to return to Passaic where he had to confront a harsher world.

Perhaps this is why he is so bitter and so angry at Clayton, envying Clayton’s ability to carry his own sanctuary on his back, hiding in his books and tapes the way the deer do in the federal lands, while Jimmy and I live on the edge of a world where there is no sanctuary.

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All bets are off (1974)

(1974)

We drive down from Hamburg, New Jersey on a road nobody’s heard of except for Frank, Jimmy bitching at me in the back seat from his usual soap box in the passenger seat, warning me not to distract Frank while he’s driving or we might wind up in Oshkosh, wherever that might be.

Jimmy says the last thing he needs is to have a giggling Frank driving in this remote place, and that if anything sets him off, he’ll murder Frank to shut him up.

Jimmy, as usual, is in a hurry, although today he might actually have a good reason, since he hopes to reach his sister’s house before she leaves for work.

He’s broke again and needs to borrow some money.

But Frank, who Jimmy’s once described as “the most careless careful driver in the world,” takes a route where he rarely as to exceed 25 milers per hour and seems particularly attracted to 20, pumping up Jimmy’s outrageous with each painful mile.

We all know that when we get to Jimmy’s sister’s place, she’ll be gone, and Jimmy will be so pissed he won’t be able to speak the whole trip back.

We only pretend like we might get there until Jimmy gets pissed thinking about it and yells for to pull over, and when Frank does, Jimmy gets out and starts to walk.

We have to beg him to get back in the car by which time, he’s come up with a new scheme and tells Frank to give him $50.

This puts an abrupt halt to Frank’s giggling.

He sees nothing funny when it comes to money and demands to know why he should give Jimmy anything.

Jimmy’s say Frank owes him $100 and Jimmy being a kind soul is willing to settle accounts for half if Frank pays it right away.

Naturally, Frank asks how Jimmy came up with such a debt, and frowns even more when Jimmy mentions the bet the two of them made at 16 that suggested the sickly Frank wouldn’t survive until age 25.

A relieve Frank giggles again, and points out that he isn’t 25 yet, but 24.

At which point, Jimmy says that’s why he’s willing to settle. Jimmy doesn’t trust Frank to leave the $100 in his will when he does kick the bucket next year.

Things are about to get ugly between the two of them when I point out that we are lost.

Jimmy blames me for distracting Frank, then orders Frank to pull into a gas station where he might get a map and make a phone call. He says he’s got to have his sister check the news paper’s obituaries to see if Frank’s name is in them yet.

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Jimmy: man of habit (Oct. 1, 1983)

Oct. 1, 1983

Jimmy is a man of habit – and faith.

Faith not n the ordinary or traditional way – the quiet paganistic motivations of the world, relying on mother earth or Gaia to give him support.

Remarkably, Jimmy is not dramatically different from Clayton who he despises (or appears to), and by habit, I mean, he and Clayton both do things in specific ways, and that the universe – as in Medieval times – tends to revolve around him.

(Here I need to be careful as to not project onto him characteristics which are not really his and I suppose some measure of example is in order here.)

Perhaps the most annoying of these habits is how Jimmy manages to obtain rides. Years ago, when many of the Garley Gang lived in this apartment complex in Passaic, Jimmy made a point of contacting each and every one of us, getting each of us to promise to give him a ride (usually to Quick Chek), lining us up just on the off chance one or more of us crapped out at the last moment.

This might seem like a reasonable precaution, except for the fact that each of usually went out of our way to accommodate him, assuming some urgency to his request – especially when at times he “needed” to go the library (we assuming he would pay some late fee if we did not rush him there.)

On one such occasion, Jimmy arranged for a ride to the library and as it happened, I was the only one available, and he made it clear it would be a terrible trek to take the ten block walk in the icy rain. Since I knew Jimmy often had little money to spare, I assumed that if I did not bring him, his pile of books would be overdue.

After nearly a half hour scraping the ice off my car, I drove him the ten blocks to the library. He did not have books to bring back, and he took none out when we got there.

I’m still uncertain as to why we went at all.

But I believe this may be his need for attention.

Last week, James refused to go to work 15 minutes early in order to accommodate my schedule, even though he’s the one begging me for the ride, the result of which, he arrived on work at time, and I arrived at my jobs 15 minutes late.

Most often, he has another purpose for his rides, often getting me to take him to John Ritchie’s house on Totowa Road in Paterson for the purpose of getting pot – John is kind, always trading pot for a painting Jimmy has made, and perhaps has the largest collection of anyone.

Sometimes, we go to Patty Joyce’s house in Little Falls for the same purpose, although he prefers John to Patty, because Patty wants cash.

Jimmy has habits in the apartment that so resemble Clayton’s that I sometimes confuse who is whom if I only hear them moving around, each caught in a strange dance, as one does this and the other does that, but always with the same gestures and steps, putting this here or that there, putting on or turning off music, mumbling about this or that, or about me or each other.

They could be twins. Perhaps in another life they were.

But from the way Jimmy feels about Clayton, I suspect they might have been Cain and Abel in the previous incarnation.

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Just for sport (Sept. 9, 1983)

                                                                

September 9, 1983

Jimmy and I spend too much of a free time figuring out ways to upset Clayton.

It has become something of a hobby with us, seeking new and novel ways to offend him, or shake the foundations of his beliefs.

Clayton is a born clay pigeon, abused in and out of school as a child. His father was a drunk and something of a madman who liked to play mind games on his kids.

Like the game he played the first time I met the man when I went over to the house and Clifton and watched him intentionally vomit in my plate.

I don’t know how much influence Clayton’s mother had on him, but the father apparently was so full of self-pity it tainted Clayton as well.

To say his growing up was traumatic is an understatement.

It left him unable to deal adequately with the physical world, forcing him to rely on other people for assistance.

Then, he got religion, and not some sensible religion the way Ginger did (Buddhism has its merits) but a whacko religion called Scientology that is more cult than faith and relies largely on brainwashing its members. He has risen into the ranks of the faith so that he is considered a leader and has a host of books around him that tell him how to manage people (which the manuals call units). But when he is very stressed, he puts on headphones and listens to propaganda tapes that calm him down by dragging him back into the weird reality – this driving Jimmy craziest, though nearly everything about Clayton, especially his habits.

Clayton is a meticulous man, insisting on taking two long showers daily, and has amazingly precise methods of grooming himself – something that annoys both me and Jimmy, yet we can’t stop watching him with a morbid fascination.

Clayton is full of contradictions. Fanatically religious, he is obsessed with war games and insists on playing the role of the Nazis. He and his friend, Rich, are constantly speculating on the possible ways Germany could have won the war.

From what I gather, Clayton – who is about our age – is a virgin and has never even had a relationship with a woman (or anyone else for that matter).

We don’t pick on him in that way – since any one of the Garley Gang might have ended up like him. Bob almost did.

But we do other things, like move something he put down somewhere and goes crazy looking for, since he puts everything in precise places and expects to find them there.

He gets extremely upset when either of us touches his tapes or looks into his religious control manuals. So, sometimes, we switch tapes. I put a tape of rock music in his player once and thought Clayton was having a fit when he put the headphones on and started to listen. He sputtered so much; Jimmy actually had his hand on the phone to call for an ambulance.

Sometimes, I go into the bathroom just when I know Clayton intends to take a shower and stay there, picturing him fidgeting outside the door in his impatience to use it.

We both play music we know Clayton doesn’t like, forcing him to take refuge in his tapes.

Clayton gets most upset when Jimmy engages in a theological discussion, always asking “You really believe that? I mean, really?”

Eventually Clayton runs back to his tapes, totally shaken.

I don’t know what we’ll do for sport when Clayton moves out – as he has promised to do many, many times. I guess Jimmy and I will have to pick on each other.

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Jimmy as a Michelangelo work of art (Sept 1, 1983)

September 1, 1983

Oh well, Jimmy is in, and it strikes me for the first time how lonely he really is.

Our temporary roommate, Clayton, too.

Last night, Jimmy and Clayton – like 17-year-old boys – discussed the finer points of women.

Jimmy seems unaware of his ability to love and be loved. This might explain his problems with Ginger.

Of all the men in the world who can win the heart of a woman, Jimmy can.

Sometimes it is only for a brief moment in time, that tick of the clock when he seems the wonder of all wonders.

There are one or two who came close, but none it would seem had the same impact as Ginger. No one else won more than a token sign of affection from him.

Now, approaching the age of 34, he suffers the anguish all men do, frustration and doubt, the uncertainty of his own appeal.

After years of people like me, Garrick, Ralph, Frank and others envying his self-confidence, Jimmy appears remarkably vulnerable, making us fools for believing he was any different than we are.

This is the same mistake we make about women, assuming those we are attracted to are more confident than we are. We foolishly believe others control their emotions better than we do.

I suspect Jimmy like the rest of us lives with the idiotic notion that we must present a stoic front, playing roles intended to give the impression of self-confidence while behind this mask we struggle.

In my case, I play the role of a semi-intellectual. Clayton hides behind a mask of silence.  Jimmy wears a mask of the genius hermit, a very successful stone wall through which I could rarely glimpse the real James.

But inside, Jimmy is no more stone than either of us are. He quakes with the idea of failure.

Clayton admits his weakness; so, he shows his true self more easily.

I have tougher skin, cemented with bricks of ego, pride and stubbornness, which takes an emotional earthquake to reveal – which has happened a few times.

But how does one get to the truth inside Jimmy without damaging the Michelangelo-like façade he has built around himself, without cracking the artwork?

Ginger helped, creating tiny wedges through which we can glimpse the real Jimmy, cracks he’s desperate to repair to keep his exterior intact.

Last night, he could not keep these closed, speaking frankly and bitterly about life and romance, creating a new façade made out of anger that would keep us from seeing just how vulnerable he really is.

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Melody Lake (1975)

Erik Lemon at Melody Lake

This is my favorite performance of the band, an outdoor concert at a bikers' picnic in August 1975, which I recorded. I left some of the sidetalk in this version that is not included in some of the other versions I gave out over the last few years. 

Part1

Part2

Part 3

Part 4

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Jimmy's practice sessions

As recently as last December, Jimmy sent me files of songs he was working on. Since some of them duplicate those posted on the Erik Lemon Milk Band youtube site I've not included those here. Some I had to give names to because Jimmy did not.


Truely

Lost my touch

Please Shut up

Could it be magic

You'll always have me

Sensible

I Want to say

Instrumental

I hear

Orchestra

guitar stuff

A lot to learn

b-flat

Stranger

Jam

In my dreams

Jam 2

Disco Jane

Country jam

More guitar

Out my window

Dream more

Something with space


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The end of paradise (Aug. 26, 1983)

August 26, 1983

Good morning.

The day begins with the quiet before the madness of customers: a container of OJ, a glimpse at The New York Times, and a moment of reflection.

We seem to have arrived at yet another great moment in time, a conjuncture of importance that comes with Jimmy’s return to Passaic.

It hardly seems as if three and a half years have passed since his last being here.

He seemed to live in Towaco for an eternity.

This has much to do with his infatuation with Ginger.

A huge portion of Jimmy’s soul inhabits that large house, like smoke rising from its chimney into its wooden rafters, embedded permanently along with the scent of burning wood.

Jimmy and I spent a number of evenings seated in front of the stone hearth, talking, playing guitars, listening to classical records.

It was the earthiest of places, full of last century’s wholesome feelings, and yet close enough to civilization to seem practical.

In fact, too close, with civilization creeping closer inch by inch, hemming in that little hill so that you could not go a mile in any direction without running into walls of concrete.

I remember one Christmas climbing up that hill with rain at its bottom only to find the top covered with snow, making me realize that each visit there was traveling into another time and into another world, a magical world that somehow defied the temptation of civilization during those years when Jimmy was there, and is perhaps part of what attracted him there.

And for those three or so years, I often found Jimmy puttering around outside, digging the earth with his hands, painting in one of the remote rooms upstairs, tending gardens, clearing stone and glass he found buried in the slanted back yard.

Each time I visited him; Jimmy was up to something there.

Yes, he and I both understood that it would not last – everything came to an end eventually.

But at the time, the end of dreams such as this were hard to visualize.

Jimmy appeared to have found his place in the world, becoming the Merlin character he so envied from the Mary Steward books, the aging Merlin who was learning the arts of the earth.

I thought the end would come differently than it did, that Mrs. Fennelly would finally come to realize that the place was just too much to handle for her to keep up alone and would sell it back to civilization and the tide of progress – which always tends to ruin thins like this in the supposed journey onto better things.

I think this is why Jimmy worked so hard, struggling to delay that inevitable day, knowing down deep in his heart, even he couldn’t keep it back forever.

And even though he had minor victories, it was always a losing battle.

But even the struggle was a delight: the smell of lilacs in season, the grinning faces of the orange button marigolds, the gray faces of the dusty millers, and for three seasons, he struggled to grow radishes, carrots, pumpkins and tomatoes, stirring them up out of the soil like children, green umbilical cords clinging to them as he gave them birth.

He hoed up the thick black soil, dug, planted and even begged for those plants to grow, raising them from seedlings in the kitchen when it was still too cold outside to plant, even after the thaw, they hanging in pots from every window, he petting them like pets, their green limbs overflowing their pots, like green rain, sweeping down, creating veils throughout which he could squint out at the world beyond.

The sunlight through these veils alone created a kind of magic.

But there had to be a price for all this, and part of this was watching the woman he loved drift away.

For much of what he did in this magical world involved her with the presumption that if he created paradise, she might be enticed, he always assuming that paradise required two people.

Jimmy made Ginger into a goddess long ago, and I fully believe that he thought of her when he tended his flowers and plants, she the greed buds he prayed would blossom into something grand, her face in each of the flowers he tenderly caressed, he holding her at each stage, at 17 when he met her, and 22, when she left him at Pine Street, and on and on, each a growing monument to a magical time we all knew could not last.

I like to think he tried to protect her from the inevitable pain. Oh, yes, there had to be pain – for in the end, even Eden came to an end, and in fact as much as Jimmy wanted this to be Eden, it was not.

He and she were two souls with differing visions of the world.

Jimmy was essentially a mystic with a hazy view of the real world. He was not a dreamer the way many were. He understood the darkness and evils that could work their way into the deluded dreamer. He simply avoided the whole issue, pretending such things did not exist when he knew they did.

To me, early on, it was Ginger who attempted to blind herself to what the real world was about, making awakening all the more painful.

In Eden, it was knowledge that devoured Eve – ambition for something more. Ginger seems to want to be something more than she is, and wants Jimmy to be something, too – and seems to see Jimmy as wasting his talents.

Jimmy could have become president had he wanted it.

Ginger seemed to learn from Jimmy the rudiments of survival, but having learned them, began to grow beyond him and away from him, using Buddhism to obtain something Jimmy could not provide, meeting others who could help her.

She would be something someday with Jimmy or without him.

Now, Jimmy returns here, devoured by Beowulf’s dragon, learning for the first time that Ginger is not a goddess at all, but a dark queen whose sin – the need to be more than she is – cannot be erased merely by Jimmy’s love.

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Jimmy’s return to Passaic (Aug. 22, 1983)

August 22, 1983

Jimmy and I are roommates again.

A bitter Jimmy blames Ginger for his getting tossed out of Towaco.

This time there is no reprieve, only anger.

Jimmy’s, Ginger’s even mine – only mine comes from depression and hatred of having bad things happen.

How do you look closely at the faces of the people you love who are hurting?

This is just one more thing gone wrong lately, my car, my finances, my uncle, things for which I have become irresponsible.

I suppose the first lesson I need to learn is how to take those things in stride.

I need to develop routines that allow me to accomplish what I must.

I know this all sounds vague.

What exactly must I do?

I should find serious work rather than try to live the life of an artist.

How does Jimmy survive? (or our temporary roommate Clayton?)

Or even my lover, Anne?

How come my relationships always seem to fall apart when I need them most?

I find myself at a loss as what to do, where to go, what to aim for.

I have, of course, my writing, but even this suffers.

I have let myself fall for another heartache (this oddly reflected in the one I see Jimmy suffering, too.)

I am a victim of my own life’s patterns and I am uncertain how to change them.

 

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He heard she's getting married (Dec. 30, 1982)

Dec. 30, 1982

Maybe cutting his finger on Thanksgiving had nothing to do with the news that Ginger is getting married – to someone other than Jimmy.

But it took Jimmy a long time to come out and tell us.

He said that it didn’t affect him at all.

“It’s only Ginger getting married,” he said. “It had to happen sooner or later.”

He said she told him over the phone on Thanksgiving, an apparent slip of the tongue that required her to come north to explain.

Happiness has a way of bubbling out and not likely meant to cause hurt.

Jimmy, however, IS very hurt.

Something is being taken out of his life, if not love, then someone he considers hugely important.

And he can’t quite bring himself to like this “new” fellow of Ginger’s.

He tells me he thinks the man is beneath her.

But Jimmy has made a goddess of Ginger and that’s the problem.

No one ever be good enough for her – not even Jimmy.

Jimmy said Ginger claims this “new” fellow is a lot like Jimmy – something Jimmy clearly didn’t want to hear.

I keep recalling the tale Jimmy repeatedly told about how he stole Ginger from the clutching grasp of Ralph.

He says he remembers the exact day and time and the things they did together.

He also remembers the failed attempt to live together and the sense of failure he felt when she said she had to leave.

She’s all grown up now, hardly the 17-year-old Jimmy first swept up, and in growing up, Ginger has developed her own philosophy of life. She lives in the real material world while Jimmy seeks some existence less physical.

“It had to happen,” Jimmy told me, the pain in his eyes so obvious I almost have to cry just looking at him, but a controlled pain, and that, too, is part of the problem.

Maybe if he had begged her to stay one of those previous times. Maybe if he had cried like a normal human being might in the same situation.

But his pride seems to make him resist showing the kind of emotions the rest of us would show.

He keeps the worst for himself, giving everybody else his wit.

Now, the year ends on this long, sad note.

The song which ten years ago had been one of joy is joy again, but not for Jimmy.

Now, he is alone again.

Now that special hope which had been in the back of his head all along is shattered, and he sits on a mountain, a nowhere man with no blue meanies to blame, not unless these meanies are the ambiguous feelings which he has felt since his first meeting Ginger back in 1970.

He doesn’t have anyone else to whom he can turn, upon whose shoulder he can cry, or anyone he can cast hate at, or even a place where he can hide.

There is only the sad call of age and the empty years ahead.

Ginger has grown up, and grown away from him, and part his ability to mature is to learn how to accept the fact of it.

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Three red vans (1975)

Outwater Plastics

Just why we kidnapped Frank Quackenbush that day in 1975 I don't think any of us know even all these years later.

Perhaps Jimmy suggested it. Or we have since talked ourselves into believing Jimmy did.

At first – when we were all sitting in Louis’ living room at 86 Passaic Street concocting the plan to dump him in the middle of the Tappan Zee Bridge and leave him there – Frank thought we were kidding.

None of us were if he could make it back on his own and we bet against each other as to whether he could or not

Had Frank thought we were serious he would never have gotten into the van with us.

He didn’t figure it out until a few blocks later at which time he started to complain, and a few blocks after that when we reached Clifton, he begged us to stop, and finally, he simply started to moan.

We would have done it, too, had not the inevitable question arisen as to who was going to pay for gas and tolls, at which point we turned and went back to Passaic to get high.

This was a period of time I still envy when Garrick, Jimmy, and Lewis had built an impromptu artist community in an apartment complex owned by Garrick’s aunt. Louis, a photographer, and his girlfriend Jewell were still in school. Louis and Garrick were supplementing their income by making jewelry in some sweat shop in Hawthorne. Jimmy was both artist and musician. I figured they needed a writer like me to make a full set. But Jimmy, me and Garrick in a very small space did not mix well, and I eventually made my way uptown to what Jimmy later called “the fancy apartment,” and when I went broke there, I moved back to the rooming house in Montclair.

Jimmy had moved into Passaic after leaving Pine Street (late 1974 or early 1975) at a time when red vans were all the rage in the Garley Gang.

Louis had one, which he used as a roadie for the band.

I drove a red van starting in June 1974 when I left the card company for the cosmetic warehouse.

Jimmy actually got a job driving a red van for Outwater Plastics on River Drive in Garfield in early 1975.

Sometimes, Jimmy and I would pass each other on the road. We kept telling each other we should meet up on the road somewhere, but never did.

Jimmy got obsessed with finding the headquarters of 84 Lumber company whose signs he kept seeing everywhere along the road. He never did find it. I found one of its New Jersey facilities much later during a trip to Cape May and kept meaning to tell him, and regretfully never did that either.

Garrick moved out of the apartment with Jimmy in the place Louis previously lived in, briefly living in 84 Passaic Street before moving onto a larger apartment at 82, while Jimmy moved into 84, and some Latino family took over 86.

When Jimmy lost his job with Outwater and could not pay his rent for a year, Garrick’s aunt evicted him. He moved back to his father’s house in West Paterson and lasted there until his father told him he had to get a job – after which he came to Passaic again, and lived in Garrick’s attic. I moved into 84 Passaic Street on March 1, 1978

By that time, Jimmy and Garrick already planning moves of their own. (Jimmy would later return briefly in 1984-85 but it wasn’t the same. I had lost my job as driver and by that time, all three red vans were consigned to history.

I don’t know why this means so much to me or why I felt such joy waving to Jimmy when I saw him on the Parkway, he coming while I was going, and yet both of us caught up in some strange magic – he would later call synchronicity – one of those silly coincidences that make life interesting.

And to this day, I wonder if Frank would have made back from the Tappan Zee Bridge had we had the money for gas to get him there.

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Bird of Paradise (1974)

As much as Jimmy depended on Frank to get him around, calling him at all times, all seasons to get him from one place to another, these journeys were fraught with frustration --  especially in the early 1970s when Frank was apt to take Jimmy the long way around to get any place.

At some point when the three of us were in Haledon and needed to get some place near Oakland either to meet Garrick or Ginger, Jimmy insisted that Frank take well known highways to get where we're going.

Jimmy was naturally in a hurry as he always was to get some place most likely we were seeking pot first and then seeking to make the meeting later

Frank insisted he knew a shortcut, something that would get us to the first meeting first and then on time for the second meeting -- and despite Jimmy's protest, Frank took off in a direction completely opposite the one Jimmy wanted.

 I had been on this trip with Frank before and knew where it ended up eventually. Since we had often taken it to get to where Jimmy intended but I was uncertain just which was quicker and so seated in the back seat as I always was, I generally kept my mouth shut.

I let the usual dialog take place in the front seat where Jimmy insisted that Frank hurry and Frank insisted he was with Jimmy asking every few minutes: “Are we there” and Frank saying “not yet, Jim -- soon though.”

 Jimmy of course then pressed Frank to drive and Frank told him “no way.”

This restriction on Jimmy's driving came after two unfortunate accidents which were not Jimmy's fault, but which Frank blamed on him.  Both of these occurred in West Paterson and both on the exit ramp off Route 46 and in both cases I was in the backseat when the car was rear ended.

In both cases, Jimmy had stopped for a stop sign near Browertown Road and the car behind wanted him to advance through the stop sign and did not stop.

Prior to these, Jimmy always insisted on driving partly because he suspected Frank was always trying to get us lost in what frank called “A Magical Mystery Tour.”

In some cases, Jimmy was right.  Frank ache for the carefree days the summer of 1972 when we all eligible bachelors rejected by the women we loved and wandered around the landscape enjoying each other's misery.

Jimmy distrusted Frank's driving as much as I did.

Frank and I had been in at least three accidents together one of which left Frank with a broken neck and me with a mashed-up face.

Frank was the only person I ever knew that while learning to drive managed to get involved in a multiple car accident with six parked cars and managed to nearly knock down his own front porch.

Jimmy's minor fender-benders we're nowhere near as serious but had dented the bumper of Frank's relatively new car.

After the first accident Frank was cautious but allowed to drive again after the second heat put a ban on it and insisted on becoming Jimmy's chauffeur.

Such was the case this time but as in all of these trips that Jimmy insisted Frank take Frank went his own way.

“Are we there yet?” Jimmy would ask.

“Not yet, Jim,” Frank replied, “but soon.”

 After a particular long stretch of trees Jimmy glanced back at me in the back seat inside then looked at Frank then looked out the window and said, “This is very scenic but I've scenic all before.”

We eventually did arrive at both meetings and relatively on time. The real frustration came when it was time for Frank to drive Jimmy home.

Jimmy wanted to be dropped off first even though he lived Jimmy wanted to be dropped off first even though he lived in Passaic at the time and I lived in Montclair and we were coming from the direction of Verona.

Frank said it was easier for him to get home from Passaic then to have to come all the way back to Montclair to drop me off second.

So, Frank did with Frank always does and went where he wanted which in this case was to my house in Montclair.

When we pulled up to the curb Jimmy looked over the seat at me nodded said goodbye then looked at Frank and said: “ I am going to go call up your mother to have her pray to St Jude so that St Jude can talk to God to have the bird of paradise fly over here and shit on your head.”

 Jimmy was still fuming when they pulled away Frank nearly burst his gut laughing which only pissed off Jimmy more.

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