My Bio - Part 12

Six months after moving into my own place on Locust Street, one of the owners informed me about a fourth-floor apartment available around the corner of the building that faced Woodside Terrace. I was impressed with the spacious apartment, especially since it was being offered at the same rent as my current place. The sixty stairs I had to climb to get to it didn’t bother me at all.

Seven months after moving out on my own, Tammy decided to marry again, this time to a man named Bill. They tied the knot in the back of the Longmeadow house. I never liked Bill; he always struck me as insensitive with a bit of an aggressive streak. Still, Tammy and Lisa moved into his small three-bedroom house in Salem, Connecticut, about an hour from Longmeadow/Springfield and twenty minutes from the coast.

In 1987, Tammy had a second daughter named Rebecca, and in 1990, a third daughter named Sarah. While Tammy and my mother would often say all three girls loved it when Aunt Jodi visited, it was Lisa and I who became the closest. We both loved singing and shared a lot in common, some of which wasn’t great, but that’s a story for later in the book.

Even in my twenties, I felt like the black sheep of the family, constantly seeking the love, approval, and acceptance I had never received. I tried everything—being pretty, smart, or talented—but nothing seemed to work. My family always criticized my singing until my mid-twenties, and to be fair, I wasn’t that good until then. But with the help of a very good teacher, I became a decent singer—not spectacular, but sufficient.

Though I wasn’t cutting myself, I began abusing the Navane more frequently, sometimes taking several when stress or insomnia hit. A particular psychiatrist, Debbie, actually told my father and me that it was okay. Neither of us believed it was, but by that point, I was dependent on the drug both mentally and physically and I didn’t care.

That first winter on my own, my parents started spending their winters in Florida. In 1989, they sold their store in Springfield, along with the house in Longmeadow, and moved to Florida for good. They held onto their Connecticut beach house for another year or two before selling that as well.

After settling into the fourth-floor apartment, I gave the stray dog I’d taken in to an elderly couple, Josephine (Jo) and Edward who lived on the second floor. They seemed to need the dog’s company more than I did, and besides, I had my guinea pigs. Jo and Eddie were in their seventies and initially very kind. I always felt bad for Jo because Eddie had Alzheimer’s and could get feisty. One day, his temper flared at me. I don’t know what triggered him—he didn’t need a legitimate reason. He was so far gone he’d do things like stop his car in the middle of a busy street to scream at people. After nearly two years of friendship with Jo, I was leaving her apartment after a knitting lesson she’d given me when I ran into Eddie in the hallway. He was returning from walking the dog who was barking more than usual. After I commented on the dog’s unusual behavior, Eddie suddenly charged at me, threatening to break my neck.

Startled by the shift in his behavior, I ran up to my apartment and slammed the door shut. He reached my door a few minutes later, banging on it and yelling obscenities before tiring out and heading back downstairs.

After that, Jo and I kept in touch by phone, exchanging Christmas and birthday cards, but I never visited her apartment again. A few years later, they moved to a condo before Eddie passed away. Jo followed him a few years later.

Boredom brought out my mischievous side and I had made prank calls to the couple who had lived next to me on Locust Street. Somehow, they knew it was me because the landlord confronted me about it.

There were two other neighbors I didn’t like. Rita, the lady on the first floor Whom I found to be a bit rude, and Grace, the woman below me, who often complained about my loud music.

But Nancy, who was twenty-seven and lived in the studio next door, was very nice. Over the years, I would learn that in the Northeast, neighbors wouldn’t tolerate noise from others, while in the Southwest, neighbors wouldn’t tolerate being complained against for being noisy.

One day on the bus, I met Emily, a forty-year-old who lived in a building owned by the same brothers who owned mine but further down the street. For twenty bucks, she’d sweep the back stairwells of the cluster of buildings on Sunday mornings. Sometimes, I’d help if I was up early. Emily also worked at a nearby drugstore. She couldn’t have kids and often told me how cute I was, joking that she should adopt me.

We shared some common ground. Like me, she had a rocky relationship with her family and had been in the state hospital. She had also struggled with suicidal thoughts and attempts. I admired her for how she had turned her life around and looked up to her as a sort of role model, wishing I could handle my own life like she did.

Emily and I stayed in touch for a few years, visiting each other and chatting by phone, but eventually, we drifted apart.

Although I still kept in touch with Jenny, I lost contact with Jessie between the ages of fifteen and twenty-three. Nothing bad happened—we just went our separate ways.

In June 1986, I met Ron. He ended up being a five-month mistake.

Ron was a twenty-eight-year-old short, stocky guy who looked older than his age. He admitted to having had problems with cocaine in the past but claimed he had beaten it. Naïve as I was, I believed him.

He worked as a maintenance guy at McDonald’s, then moved on to a flower shop. He was flaky, immature, and irresponsible. I was never attracted to him, and to this day, I don’t know why I got together with him. I guess I was just too nice to say no.

I not only had a problem with being too nice and trusting, but I was also too forgiving. Ron and I broke up and got back together multiple times before I finally ended things for good. I don’t know if he cheated or did drugs during our time together, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he had.

One day, Ron and I were at my parents’ house discussing marriage when my mother said she wouldn’t be happy if I got pregnant within six months to a year after marrying. I should have told her it was our decision to make, but instead, I stayed silent and listened to her opinions. She had a right to her feelings, but I wish she had said, “If it makes you happy, I’ll be happy for you.”

Ron’s family had its own issues. His sister wasn’t very nice, and his alcoholic mother would call in the middle of the night demanding he come home. Yes, at twenty-eight, he still lived with his mom. This was uncommon in the 80s. His father, the captain of the West Springfield police department, was something he loved to brag about but he didn’t live with his mother as they were divorced.

One day, as I was walking back to my apartment, I ran into Stuart, a gay guy who had been in a few of my classes at Longmeadow High. He, like me, was on disability. He lived in a studio apartment nearby, and throughout the late eighties, we’d occasionally visit and chat on the phone. But there was only so much of Stuart I could handle. He was always depressed and talking about killing himself. I sympathized with him, but I had enough of my own depression to deal with, and he was just too much for me to bear.

I met twenty-five-year-old Fran in early 1987 while walking up the street after a grocery run or a doctor’s appointment. At first, being the naïve twenty-one-year-old I was, I saw him as a big brother figure. But in the end, Fran turned out to be quite a headache. He was delusional and a liar. To say I had poor taste in friends throughout most of my twenties is an understatement!

Fran would visit every few months, occasionally crashing on the living room couch. We mostly watched TV or made prank phone calls, though I was never much of a TV person. Fran was on disability, slightly mentally impaired, and prone to mood swings. He was also delusional at times, claiming he ran into people we both knew, which often turned out to be false.

Once, he even pressed charges against me for prank calls when he was doing the exact same thing to me. He later dropped the charges, and although I should have ended the friendship right then and there, I chose to forgive him and move on, as I often did back then. I once called and spoke with his social worker who agreed Fran didn’t have a full deck of cards.

I met Kevin, perhaps the strangest of them all, in the spring of 1987. He lived next door to Fran. One day, while the building was being fumigated, I was outside carrying my guinea pigs in a box and it started to get cold. I saw Kevin by his car and asked if I could hang out with him for a bit, and he agreed. Kevin, who was forty-five and on some kind of veteran’s disability, would come to be obsessed with me. He told me I resembled his ex-wife, with whom he had two sons. He wasn’t seeing his kids because he was avoiding child support payments.

Kevin had a noticeable nervous disorder that earned him the nickname “Nervous.” When he was upset, his body would stiffen, he would make these jerky movements with his head, and his fingers would curl and uncurl like he was squeezing something invisible. He tried to hide it at first, but I eventually realized it was a chronic condition. Despite this, he often appeared like an ordinary man.

He became a bit of a pest, spying on me and frequently hanging around. Knowing he was harmless, however, I made a game of it and pulled some pranks on him, like calling cabs and ordering pizzas to be delivered to his place. Petty stuff like that.

One of my favorite pranks was pretending I had faulty call-waiting. I’d click the receiver and pretend to talk to an imaginary caller, making comments about how weird Kevin was, knowing he could hear me. Sometimes he would even respond, believing I couldn’t hear him.

Although Kevin often annoyed me with his clinginess and his homophobic comments, I later felt a bit guilty for taking advantage of him.

After my landlords illegally evicted me, I saw my neighbor Nancy one last time before she got married and moved to Connecticut.

During my five years in Springfield, I occasionally ran into Tony, an older cop who was pretty cool, as were Peter and Shaun, two other officers—but that story is for another time.

Throughout my time back east, I frequently called the local crisis center when I felt a panic attack coming on. They usually helped, but one time when I went to the center in person, they wouldn’t let me leave, even though I wasn’t suicidal. I was around twenty-one at the time, and I’m still unsure if they genuinely thought I was a danger to myself or if it was just a power move by a control freak. Either way, I was stuck there for a couple of days.