My Bio - Part 14

As I grew older, my frustration with people and many aspects of my country increased. I was tired of seeing money sent to other countries while people here struggled. I became fed up with conservatives who couldn’t accept others for who they were, the flawed laws, and the lack of laws where they were needed. I was frustrated paying taxes for hospitals I’d never use and schools where I had no children attending. Hypocrisy, lies, control freaks, and intolerance became things I couldn’t stand.

Shortly after moving to Oswego Street, my friendship with Jenny ended. We both had our reasons for cutting ties. Jenny was selfish; when I went through tough times, she couldn’t handle it. She was the kind of person who stuck around during the good times but disappeared when things got hard. Her bossiness wore me out—we could only ever do what she wanted. It got old fast. She wasn’t a true friend, so I let her go, but not before tormenting her a little first. That’s just how I was back then.

I called Northeast Utilities, pretending to be her, and had her electricity shut off. Then, I bombarded her with prank calls. When she called my cousin Philip to tell him she was taking legal action (as if he needed to know), she somehow got my number and called me one night.

“You’ve got a lot of nerve, Jodi. I’ll see you in court,” she said before hanging up. Naturally, she didn’t answer when I tried calling her back.

Soon after, I received a subpoena. By then, I had moved back to Woodside Terrace in 1990. I completely ignored it. After the court date passed, my downstairs neighbor told me Jenny had apparently tried to get the authorities to arrest me. She lied, claiming I was beating up an elderly woman who didn’t even exist, hoping they’d run my name, see I had a warrant, and arrest me.

In late 1991, after I had moved to South Deerfield, we finally had our day in court. It turned out to be nothing more than a waste of my time, just as I suspected.

In early 1989, I reconnected with Jessie after nearly a decade. I called her mother in Longmeadow, who gave me her number. Jessie was living in a tiny one-bedroom apartment in Agawam with her young son, Wyatt. His father wasn’t in the picture.

Jessie and I often talked on the phone, but we didn’t see each other much. I was shocked to learn that she knew about me jumping out of a window. The only way she could’ve known was if my mother had spread the story. Was my mother really using my traumas for attention and sympathy? Probably knowing her.

By early 1992, Jessie and I drifted apart again.

Then there was Andy. Our friendship was a rollercoaster of laughter, pain, and frustration. I learned a lot from him, but he also brought me plenty of mental anguish. We first connected over the phone. He was 27, still living with his parents in Springfield. I called him and his aunt, leaving messages reminding them of the time our parents became enemies, followed by my signature evil laugh, which gave me away. The laugh was my trademark, just like my eyes and hair.

One night, after leaving those messages, I called again, and Andy surprised me by answering, “Hi, Jodi.”

“How’d you know it was me?” I asked.

He recognized my laugh, and from there, our friendship took off. We’d spend hours on the phone talking about everything—being gay, music, our beach memories. We had so much in common. I wanted to be a singer, and so did he, though he was a waiter at the time. He also wanted to play keyboards in a band. Although he was good at keyboards and a great songwriter, he wasn’t much of a singer. So we decided I’d handle the vocals, and he’d do backup if we ever made it big.

Though the guitar had always been my favorite, I was playing it less and less and learning more on the keyboards. I was getting into Gloria Estefan, a popular singer in the late ’80s and early ’90s, and even had a crush on her. She and Linda both had songs in Spanish and English that I loved to sing.

We’d go to gay bars together and participate in karaoke contests, which I won a few times. Andy often impersonated Stevie Nicks, his favorite singer.

In 1987, I had a strong feeling that 1994 would be a great year, like perhaps we’d somehow break into the music business. I turned out to be right, though not in the way I had imagined. I’ll get to that later.

Andy and I were bad influences on each other, I’ll admit. We spent hours making prank calls, egging cars, throwing snowballs, and more.

We also pulled pranks by mail, sending things like little sequin showers in business envelopes marked “no postage necessary.”

Once, when I was bored and lonely, I dialed a random number and ended up talking to a woman who thought I was someone she knew from college. We had a long, intelligent conversation for over an hour. Eventually, I felt guilty.

“Lady, you’re too nice for me to keep kidding you like this. I’ve got to tell you the truth.”

“What’s that?” she asked.

“You’ve been talking to a total stranger for the last hour.”

I’ve never heard anyone hang up a phone faster!

Then there was the local telethon. I don’t even remember what it was for, but I – uhem – disrupted things. I called the operator, saying, “I think our lines are crossed. I’m operator number 24, sitting just a few seats away from you. Can you see me waving?”

I actually saw her looking around on TV!

“No, but I’ll take your word for it,” she said.

After a few more calls, the telethon host announced that New England Telephone was investigating the “problem.”

My life would have been far less adventurous without Andy, but we also had our share of arguments. We often said we were like lovers without the sex. In the early days of our friendship, Andy wasn’t very empathetic. He even admitted he couldn’t handle other people’s problems.

He didn’t always trust me, either. He’d heard from someone—his gossip-loving mother or my aunt—that someone was making prank calls to Norma, a distant cousin of mine, who we both knew. When I told him it wasn’t me, he didn’t believe me.

“Andy, think about it,” I insisted. “Why would I lie? What would I gain? I’m an adult now. No one can punish me. You can’t send me to Valleyhead or take my most treasured things away.”

He eventually saw my point, but it was too late. He’d already told Norma he thought I was harassing her.

Andy often got high on pot, despite knowing I couldn’t stand the smell. Eventually, he kept it away from me, but I still hated how flaky and forgetful he became when he was stoned.

He had a car and wasn’t thrilled about having carless friends, though he learned to live with it. I tried to contribute, giving him gas money when I could, or cleaning his apartment and cooking us spaghetti dinners.

During the summers, Andy and I would go to the beach. Charlotte was kind enough to let us use her bathroom and offered us sodas to refresh ourselves.

One off-season, we stopped by my parents’ cottage before it was sold. Andy had never liked my mother, having witnessed her abuse when we were younger. He was even afraid of her.

“Want to vandalize mommy and daddy’s place?” he asked, as we pulled up in front of the old cottage.

I grinned. “Let’s do it!” We hopped out of the car.

As I studied the words “WHO CARES” taped with black tape to the front of their cottage I thought, what did you mean by this, Mom? Was it your way of saying you didn’t care about anyone but yourself?

I peeled off the “C.”

Andy returned from the shed. “Looks like it says, ‘Who ares.’ Would’ve been funnier as ‘Ho cares.’”

“Oh, well,” I said.

Andy often complained that I talked too much, something my family had pointed out as well.

“That’s because I don’t care what people think,” I told him. “I’m me, and that’s that. The good and bad things that have happened to me are all part of my life, whether we like it or not. I’d even tell a complete stranger my life story. I just don’t care, though I do become more cautious around people I really like.”

Andy and I often included Nervous and Fran in our conversations, usually to make fun of Nervous. Fran would tease him relentlessly, and I’d record these conversations and make “edits,” cutting and repeating the funniest parts. Sometimes, it wasn’t what was said but how it was said.

One of the funniest moments was when Nervous left the post office to work for a small business delivering leather goods. Somehow, I ended up putting some clips of Nervous cursing out Fran on his boss’s answering machine, and it became the outgoing message! Instead of hearing his boss ask callers to leave a message, you’d hear Nervous telling Fran to “fuck off” and “go flush his head down the toilet!”

As my friendship with Andy grew, I saw and heard less from Nervous. He was jealous of the attention Andy gave me and saw him as a rival he couldn’t beat.