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| My drawing of Jimmy from my journal |
Christmas Eve, 1971
I found out about the event only when I got back from Portland, because Frank
was peeved about his not having the chance to send the tape.
They had partied at Jimmy’s house in Parsippany,
with me as a focus, and I came back before they could find a stamp to mail the
result.
Frank had always had an obsession with tape,
recording everything on his reel to reel that he could, from TV commercials to
radio broadcasts, he believing that without his effort these things would cease
to exit. He was wrong. The world had become obsessed as well, bent on putting
our whole generation in a bottle.
What was valuable came from us, these private
moments, but he did not think to record them until Jimmy began by recording
their trip to Nova Scotia made the previous summer, a tape he withheld for
years just because he knew how much Frank wanted it, and how Frank hoarded
these moments as if he might forget them if he didn’t have proof they actually
transpired.
I don’t know who all came to that Christmas Eve event, except for those
I recognized on the tape, Jimmy, Alf, Frank, Garrick, Ginger, Rob, and a few
others whose names and faces have faded into memory.
I don’t even remember all that occurred.
I remember Jimmy leading a perverted version
of the 12 days of Christmas, and his recording of a Christmas version of Neil
Young’s “Southern Man,” with lyrics like: “I hear bullwhips snapping” and
“Santa Claus, won’t you...” I remember also Jimmy screaming about the cat that
had just knocked down his brand-new Sony color TV.
While they were recording this event, Louise
and I spent our last Christmas on the road, in the North Lombard apartment in
Portland, Oregon, after having lost our last good friend from our Los Angeles
days, and were fearful of the police who we now knew were watching us. We had
made the mistake of allowing two 16-year-olds to use our apartment for the lovemaking
only to find out later the girl was the daughter of the police captain.
By Christmas we had already made up our minds
to come East again, after less than a year living in Portland for our second
time. Frank had written previously to tell us that he was thinking of buying a
diner and that if we came back, we could work there, and that he would find us
a place to live, both wondrous attractions that proved later false hopes.
Joe’s Diner went out of business just after
Christmas, and Frank had no more money to buy it than we did and was eventually
knocked down to make room for a bank.
Perhaps I just wasn't thinking clearly enough,
or I might have seen the trap. But I had just given up speed, after giving up
LSD the previous spring, and still hadn’t brought myself into a reasonable line
of thinking, still fooling myself with the idea that I might yet make something
of myself -- without first coming back to face the music with my family, from
whom I had taken a quantity of money in 1969.
I believed foolishly that we could travel east
and live without fear of my uncles. This idea evaporated by January when we
actually made the trip east and found ourselves without home or money, and no
prospects for a job. Coming back to New Jersey meant traveling familiar
streets, always with the possibility I might meet a member of my family at any
turn.
But at Christmas, sitting in the Portland
apartment, I didn’t know anything about that, and felt rather empty, as if
three years of running had gotten me nowhere, and it hadn’t.
Links to xmas tapes
1971 Xmas Tapes Part 2
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