The Search Warrant

One night in 1991, bored out of my mind, I stumbled upon a fascinating service where I could leave voicemails. I started having fun, leaving edited messages from one machine on others, sharing outgoing messages, and generally getting creative with the system. It was part of a large magazine business.

On another evening, I was reorganizing my collection of tapes—conversations, pranks, and edits. Suddenly, I got a bad feeling. Something was telling me to call Andy and have him make backup copies through the speakerphone. I thought that maybe I should hide the tapes with Kim or disguise them by recording over store-bought ones. I knew that taping over the tabs of unwanted tapes could turn them into blanks, but I didn’t have enough of those to spare. Foolishly, I ignored my gut feeling, convincing myself I was being paranoid. After all, Andy had some copies.

The next morning at 10:30, I was startled awake by a knock on the door. I assumed it was Kim or Peter.

I was wrong. It was Chief B of the local police department, and with him were a detective named Carol and a couple of male officers. They had a search warrant.

“Don’t worry,” Carol reassured me as we sat in the kitchen while Chief B complimented my looks. “It’s not like on TV. They won’t ransack the place.”

That did little to comfort me.

I felt like a child again, watching helplessly as they went through my belongings, just like when my mom would clean out my room, tossing whatever she deemed unworthy, no matter how much I treasured it. I had the same problem with the staff in Brattleboro and Valleyhead.

The officers went straight for my tapes, taking every blank they could find. They even took my journal, which was on the kitchen table, though I got it back the next day.

In the South Deerfield/Greenfield/Northampton area, prank calls were treated like serious crimes, unlike in Springfield, where they were just seen as harmless petty pranks. Still, this was Massachusetts, and it was only a misdemeanor. Jail wasn’t a risk. Instead, I got a year of probation, which included a monthly $10 fee and mandatory counseling.

I connected with a woman named Cassandra from the only agency that made home visits, crucial since I didn’t drive or have access to public transportation. Cassandra was wonderful, and we were mutually attracted to each other, though she remained strictly professional. At 46, she was 20 years older than me at the time.

By late 1991, I was more miserable than when I first moved to South Deerfield nearly a year earlier. Tammy told me that she and Mom were considering moving me to Connecticut, closer to her, which stirred mixed emotions. While Tammy and I were getting along better, our lifestyles and interests were still worlds apart.

Back in the late ’80s, Mom and Tammy had suggested the Norwich Housing Authority, where I could live near Tammy with subsidized rent since I was low income, but I’d refused because I didn’t want to leave Andy. I wouldn’t realize until later, when I finally moved there in early 1992, that it wasn’t the right time back then. Everything has its time, I suppose.

Once I knew I was moving, I ran up a $1,400 phone bill under a fictitious name, and things went from bad to worse.

Much, much worse.

Before the move to Norwich, I had the same bad feeling I’d had when the idea was first proposed years earlier. I couldn’t pinpoint it, but every instinct told me something was wrong—something bad was going to happen.

But what choice did I have? I felt trapped, with no way out. I could stay in South Deerfield, feeling isolated, miserable, and alone, or I could take a chance in Norwich. At least in Norwich, I’d have my nieces nearby, even if Tammy and I didn’t share much in common.

So, I packed my things, and in early February 1992, Bill came to pick up Shadow and me.

Norwich was smaller than Springfield but bigger than the small town of Salem, where Tammy lived. Tammy’s house, a three-bedroom in a beautiful wooded area about 20 minutes from the coast, was a bit cramped for five people, but it was lovely.

The projects where I was moving to were located at the end of a long road on top of a hill. Bill and I met Tammy at the start of the road. We got out of our cars to chat briefly. While they talked, acting as if I wasn’t there, I glanced at the street sign. Beneath the street name, it said “Dead End.” I stared at those words—Dead End. Was it trying to tell me something? Maybe, because the next four months would be a complete nightmare.

“I don’t know how I know this,” I told Tammy, “but we’re making a mistake. Something’s wrong—like really wrong.”

“What’s wrong is that you’re being selfish, spoiled, and negative,” she snapped. “Where else would you go anyway? Back to South Deerfield? Back to Springfield?”

Why did people always confuse realism with honesty with negativity and rudeness?

“Give me enough money to get to Arizona, and I swear I’ll pay you back, no matter how long it takes,” I begged.

But Tammy and Bill ignored me, got back in their cars, and took me down that dead-end road.

I knew deep down that Arizona was the answer to my problems. Most of them anyway. Somehow, I just knew I was meant to be there. Life wouldn’t be perfect there—no place on earth is—but New England had nothing for me. If I’d known at the time what lay ahead, I could have told myself, “Just hang on for 102 days and you’ll be free.”

But I didn’t know, and the feelings of depression, anxiety, and hopelessness only grew stronger as I hit rock bottom.

Florida Vacation

I took my second trip to Florida to stay with my parents in late 1989, having first visited them in early 1988. The visit was as I expected—full of my mother’s demands and bossiness. Their home was gorgeous, though. It burned me up to know that while my parents were living in such luxury, their daughter was barely getting by in the dumps. They were so blessed. They would never know the struggle of scraping pennies, wondering where the next meal would come from, or having to say no to non-necessities. They’d listen to the ocean gently lapping a few feet from their windows, while I’d listen to gunshots and sirens. They were generous enough to give me things and money on special occasions, or when they visited New England, but it wasn’t enough to change my circumstances. It’s not that I minded them living well. I was happy for them. But it was a grim reminder of how unfair life was, and it made me feel like they didn’t really care whether or not I was struggling.

In early 1990, a vicious cycle of asthma attacks began that would last about two and a half years. It was both terrifying and depressing to go to sleep knowing I might wake up with an attack so severe I’d have to go to the ER to survive. The attacks were random and spontaneous. The first one happened while Brenda was with me, and she drove me to the ER. The ten-minute drive felt like it took an hour. I was wheezing so badly that I could only breathe in short gasps. You’d think that would be enough to drive someone off cigarettes, but the addiction held me captive until I quit a few years later. Even after getting better following a breathing treatment, I’d be outside smoking as I waited for a cab or a friend to take me home. Usually, it was a cab because my “friends” often had more important things to do than deal with my problems. Part of me didn’t want to burden them anyway.

One day after an attack had settled, a nurse pulled back the curtain around my gurney and asked how I was doing. She was a 5‘3”, slightly plump girl with short, dark blonde hair and gray eyes. She introduced herself as Kim when she returned with a cup of coffee for me. I was surprised to learn she was only twenty-one; she had the looks and maturity of someone in their thirties but I really liked her.

When I was leaving the ER, I noticed a sign language book in her hand. When I mentioned that I signed, we agreed to get together so I could help her practice. In return, she took me out to eat and gave me some spending money from time to time.

I quickly learned two things about Kim. One, she wasn’t happy with her cop husband, Mark. And two, she was attracted to me, though she had never been with a woman before. As would be my typical luck at the time, I wasn’t attracted to her nearly as much as I liked her as a person.

Kim and Mark lived in an apartment on the third floor of a home lumber business in South Deerfield, about forty minutes from Springfield. Mark was a quiet guy, and his good looks were quite a contrast to Kim’s plainness.

One day, while waiting for a cab at the ER, I realized I didn’t have a lighter for my cigarette. I saw a policewoman sitting in her cruiser smoking, so I asked her for a light, which she gave me. She was brown-haired, brown-eyed, and somewhat attractive, even if she was a bit fierce-looking. I’ve always been drawn to women in uniform, though not just any woman. It would be a while before I learned more about her.

Meanwhile, Andy kept losing jobs. I don’t know if it was discrimination or something else, but by early 1991, he lost his apartment and moved in with me. It was a disaster. All we did was fight—about everything. The stress he put me through was unbearable. I can’t believe that all the fighting didn’t end our friendship, but it didn’t.

Eventually, Andy moved into a rooming house, though he hated it there. He said the landlady was a tyrant. In March, his parents gave him money to drive to Arizona. Despite all the fighting, his departure felt like losing a limb.

Andy knew some people in Phoenix who had lived near him in Springfield. A woman and her daughter Donna, who was a great singer, helped him get set up in an apartment after he found a job at Denny’s.

One month later, it was my turn to leave Springfield. I never saw Nervous, Fran, Jessie, or Paula again, though we talked on the phone occasionally. I missed Steve a lot. He visited once, but I eventually lost track of him.

I moved into a spacious 1,400-square-foot, third-floor apartment in South Deerfield, right next to Kim and Mark. It was a thirty-stair climb instead of sixty, and the place was gorgeous and modern. The bathroom was so large you could fit a couple of twin beds in it, and it had a washer, dryer, and even a Jacuzzi in the tub. The kitchen not only had a garbage disposal and a dishwasher but a trash compactor too. The layout was unique.

There were only two apartments in the small building. The first two floors were occupied by the business that built houses. Toward the back of the building was where they kept the lumber supplies.

Despite having fuel assistance, food stamps, and my checks, it wasn’t nearly enough to cover the $525 rent, plus all my other living expenses. My parents, grateful to Kim for helping me get out of Springfield, agreed to send the owner $150 a month toward my rent. I wasn’t kidding when I said my folks helped me out financially from time to time!

But despite my posh living quarters, I had no life to go with it and was completely miserable. The remainder of 1991 and the first half of 1992 turned out to be the worst part of my adult life in New England.

I was deeply depressed. Kim was hardly ever home, and I didn’t know anyone else in town. The town itself was tiny—no buses, no entertainment. There was a pizza place, a bank, a small convenience store, and nothing else but houses and farms. I felt trapped, isolated, and overwhelmed by despair. It felt like my dreams would never come true, that I would always be unhappy and alone. I began to question what my purpose in life could possibly be.

The phone became my lifeline, the only thing I had to look forward to. I’d gotten it in a fake name. Andy and I would often call each other, billing the calls to Estefan Enterprises—until Gloria smartened up and blocked third-party calls. I thank her to this day for covering so many of our conversations!

Kim eventually found out that the cop I had a crush on was named Laurie. One night, I got Laurie’s number from information and called her, not identifying myself. I told her that I’d seen her and found her attractive. To my surprise, she erupted in anger! I thought she’d be curious, or at least indifferent if she wasn’t interested, but she wasn’t flattered at all. In fact, it seemed like she would’ve killed me over the phone if she could. You’d think I threatened her life and her family rather than tell her I was attracted to her.

She demanded to know who I was, but of course, I didn’t tell her because her intense anger scared me. Instead, I crossed calls via three-way with her brother, who lived in nearby Greenfield. Kim had learned he was there, and when I called him, he found the whole thing amusing, asking who would be the dominant one in a relationship. Laurie, on the other hand, was furious.

After a few more calls, I realized it was time to back off before I got into serious trouble. This was a cop, after all. But it was too late. I received a call from Sergeant D, demanding to see me at the Springfield police station immediately.

Kim drove me to the station the next evening. I wore a snug black tank dress with black pumps, and I could tell that Sergeant D liked what he saw right away. That was the goal.

Sergeant D, Kim, and I went into a small office and talked for about ten minutes. I suspected that pictures were being taken so Laurie could see who I was, or maybe she was watching us through a camera somewhere. Although cops are known to be notorious liars, Sergeant D kept his word and let me go, saying it was over as far as he was concerned. He even broke the law in my favor. I had a warrant out for not showing up in court for Jenny, and he should’ve held me until Monday (it was Saturday) and brought me to court straight from jail. Instead, I promised him I’d go to court, and I did. As I said earlier, though, nothing happened.

One day, Kim took me to the home of a couple in their fifties who lived in Greenfield. Their names were Bob and Sandra. Kim explained that she had been Bob’s nurse at one point, just like she had been mine, and that his wife was dying of cancer.

Though Bob stood by his wife, he was infatuated with Kim, even a little obsessed. He was always calling her, buying her gifts, and pushing for visits. I didn’t know it at the time, but Kim once gave him a little more than just nursing services.

Bob was desperate for attention. With his wife dying, he felt like he was already alone. We’d spend numerous nights chatting on the phone.

I knew the feeling. I started crying to my sister more and more about how isolated and trapped I felt. She and I had grown closer and I felt like I could really open up to her. I wished so badly that I could join Andy in Arizona. I’d always wanted to live out west anyway. I begged my parents to send me there, but they wouldn’t.

Though Kim and I went to a few gay bars in Northampton, I had no better luck there than in Springfield. If anything, my luck got worse when I met Maliheh. Despite her petite size, I was immediately attracted to her. I was surprised to learn she was thirty-four; she looked ten years younger. She seemed nice at first and even kissed me after a dance, leading me to believe she was attracted to me too. Wouldn’t most people think that if they were kissed just an hour after meeting someone?

At this point, I was ready to settle for just some fun intimacy. After going through so much drama with Ron, Al, Kacey, and Brenda, the idea of a relationship was becoming less appealing. It seemed like relationships were out, and casual encounters were in anyway. I figured it was best to go with the flow if I wanted to get anywhere.

The next night, I called Maliheh and left a message, making it clear that I didn’t want any strings attached. I just didn’t want there to be any guessing games.

An hour later, the phone rang, and I was about to face another furious and senseless response. It was as if I’d told her I planned to kill her!

“Jodi?”

“Yes?”

“It’s Maliheh.”

“Oh, hello. How are you?”

“Not so good. First, you’re all persistent at the bar, assaulting me with twenty questions, and now you tell me you don’t want to get serious? But I never intended to get serious with you in the first place! Did I do anything to give you that impression?”

“Actually, you did,” I said, wondering if she was too drunk to remember our dance and kiss, though she hadn’t seemed to be at the time.

“You’re alone because of you!” she screamed, and before I could ask why she was alone, she hung up.

I put the phone down, stunned, outraged, and hurt. Had I really been that persistent? I didn’t think so. And what was this about twenty questions? I’d only asked normal, ordinary things anyone would ask when meeting someone.

“Don’t fret, little one,” Bob had said. “Those unfortunate in romance are often greatly compensated later in life.”

But how much later? I wondered. When I was fifty? Better later than never, I figured, but I wasn’t as hopeful as Bob.

Naturally, Maliheh ended up on my calling list. I got a bit carried away, too. I couldn’t help it. Right or wrong, I was just so angry and tired of being jerked around.

The Flaky and the Faithful

Stephan (Steve) was my most memorable neighbor of all in a good way. A 34-year-old Black man, he worked as an engineer at a nearby Air Force base. I would have married him, to his delight, if I had been as attracted to his appearance as I was to who he was on the inside.

Steve and I spent countless hours hanging out, usually at his place across the hall. We talked about all kinds of things. He moved out a year after I did, and over the years, I’ve made numerous attempts to locate him, but without success.

There’s not much to say about Mark and Bruce. Both were in their twenties, and I had one-nighters with them, though I didn’t do much with Mark.

Mark lived on the first floor of the building, while I met Bruce on the bus. He had a guitar with him that day, and when I told him I played too, we bonded over our shared love of music. We got together a few times to jam.

Bruce wasn’t in my life for long. He reminded me too much of Al—conceited and always putting me down. He even said he’d be scared if he ever felt attracted to the same sex.

“People with your kind of attitude are what scare me, Bruce. Not who I am,” I told him.

Then there was 40-year-old Tracy. Andy and I met her through Fran. Apparently, Fran had taken her in off the streets, though Tracy later moved in with someone else. Tracy was unattractive and butch-looking in every sense. So unattractive that you almost felt sorry for her.

While Tracy could be funny and had a great voice for our “funny” recordings (she loved being taped and edited), she was also a major con artist. She would use you if you weren’t careful, but my old neighbors from Oswego Street had taught me well. I never left her alone in my apartment, and I always hid my purse when she visited so she couldn’t swipe anything while I was in the bathroom. Tracy didn’t visit much, and that was fine with me—I didn’t like having people over that I couldn’t trust.

During the summer of 1990, I worked at the end of my street at a combination Laundromat and convenience store for a few months. One day, a young woman came in pushing a one-year-old boy in a stroller. She had tan skin, dark, thick, waist-length hair, dark brown eyes, and sparkling white teeth. She was muscular yet feminine. I recognized her right away as the girl who had bullied everyone at the Harley Hotel…Paula. For some reason, she had spared me, but I had always been wary of her.

She won’t remember me, I thought.

But I was wrong.

“Hi, Jodi,” she said with a friendly, white smile. “I remember you from the Harley. I was looking for you at the Red Roof Inn after I left.”

I froze and blinked with shock. “Looking for me?”

Paula nodded. “I heard you worked there.”

I never worked there but was amazed she remembered me and curious why she’d been looking for me. We were never friends.

But that all changed on that humid summer day. Paula and her young son lived just a couple of buildings away, also on the fourth floor, as I would learn. She didn’t have a phone, but we visited each other regularly. I usually went to her place more often because it was easier for her with little Robert to take care of.

I couldn’t believe we had become friends. I never would’ve guessed I’d be friends with someone like Paula, who had mellowed out quite a bit, though she still had an underlying aggressive streak just like I did. We were both on disability and both had ADHD, though hers seemed much worse. She was very accepting of my preference for women, and she had a fondness for Puerto Rican men.

Paula seemed to be just as unlucky as I was—cursed in love, constantly dealing with one problem or dispute after another, always scraping pennies. She wasn’t very bright and she was quite flaky. She was like Fran in the sense that she believed cat burglars stole cats and that the Boston Tea Party was a gathering where people drank tea.

She was miserable sitting at home all day with a child and often told me she regretted becoming a mother. Two years later, she lost Robert for good. They said she was abusive and neglectful. For reasons I could never understand, she later had another son, Justin, and almost lost him too, but somehow she managed to keep him.

Two days after Christmas in 1989, I met twenty-nine-year-old Kathleen at one of the gay bars Andy and I frequented. Her nickname was Kacey. She wasn’t as feminine as I was, but she wasn’t butchy either. She had long, straight, dark blonde hair that reached just below her waist and hazel eyes. She was pretty, though I usually preferred dark hair and eyes. Kacey was 5‘4” and weighed 115 pounds. She lived on one side of a duplex with her small dog and bird. She worked rotating shifts as a chemical operator at a nearby chemical plant.

Kacey and I didn’t have issues when it came to sex, but it seemed she wanted it all the time, and sex was more important to her than the relationship itself. She wasn’t as into being with me (non-intimately) as I was with her, so she broke things off after a couple of months. This was the hardest break-up for me, too.

With thirty-one-year-old Brenda, it was the opposite. She was more into me than I was into her. The sex was just as frequent, though maybe it felt excessive to me because I wasn’t as attracted to her.

Brenda was part Cherokee with distinct features. She was 5‘6”, had dark hair and eyes, and her hair fell almost to the middle of her back. She was too thin from doing crack, something she didn’t tell me at first and I was too naïve to notice. Her drug use, combined with the fact that I didn’t feel she was right for me, led me to end things after ten months, right before she moved away. Brenda wasn’t dumb, but she came across as shy, quiet, and wimpy—not the kind of person who would make me feel safe. And for someone as small as I am, feeling safe with my partner was important to me.

When Brenda and I met, she was living next door with an eighteen-year-old guy. She was bi, not just gay. We crossed paths in the hallway one day in June 1990, and I knew she was attracted to me from the way she stared me down. Soon after, we ran into each other again in the laundry room and things progressed from there. She told me the guy moved out, and her longtime friend Bonnie had moved in.

I hated Bonnie. She was ugly, aggressive, into drugs, and a terrible influence on Brenda. We almost got into a fight once. I can’t remember why, but I called her a bitch as Brenda and I were heading out one day. On the way back, Bonnie lunged at me, but Brenda and Bonnie’s boyfriend stepped between us before I could react.

Brenda had been in an abusive marriage with the father of her two kids. The children lived with her sister and brother-in-law, which indicated to me that her instability and drug problem went back further than she was willing to admit. I had never been with a crackhead before, so I had a lot to learn.

Although Brenda was on disability, she worked under the table as a taxi driver.

A few months after we met, Brenda surprised me with an orange and white tabby kitten. I named him Shadow because he followed me everywhere. Shadow was a loving, friendly little guy, but he could also be quite destructive. He grew into one of the biggest cats I had ever seen, too.

Just before meeting Kacey in October 1989, I finally managed to wean myself off of Navane. The tardive dyskinesia had gotten out of hand—my facial and neck muscles twitched constantly, and I occasionally had spasms in my shoulders. It took four months of trying before I was able to successfully pull myself off the medication, but even today, the twitching remains, though it seldom occurs.

Around the same time, I discovered that I could draw. It was the strangest thing. I had a “feeling” I could draw, and it had been nagging at me for some time. So one day, I took a picture of Gloria Estefan and drew it. It wasn’t great, but it was better than what most people could do, and drawing became a hobby for a while.

Mischief and Mayhem

Andy and I often went to gay bars, but I didn’t care much for the people. Like in most bar scenes, many were into drugs and heavy drinking. A lot of them also felt phony and immature. The women, in particular, weren’t as feminine as I liked.

I looked my best between twenty-three and twenty-nine—thin, fit, and confident in short shorts and miniskirts. But despite my perfect makeup and long, flowing curls, gay women often ignored me, assuming I was straight. Andy tried to comfort me, saying I was too attractive and intimidated people, but I didn’t buy it. Did people want unattractive partners? I believed I was ignored because I was so feminine. Plus, I often heard that short women weren’t desirable in the gay world. Getting a man, on the other hand, would’ve been no problem if that’s what I’d wanted. All I’d have to do was snap my fingers, and they’d flock to me like pigeons after breadcrumbs.

I did have some luck in 1990. First, there was a one-night stand with a plump Puerto Rican/black girl named Diana, and later, one with a skinny white paramedic named Lisa. I didn’t plan on these being one-nighters—it just turned out that way.

I also competed in karaoke contests, singing in both English and Spanish, and won a couple of times. It came at a perfect time since I was out of both cigarettes and money, so the $125 I won at two places in one night really saved me.

One day at a Dunkin’ Donuts in a section of Springfield called the X, I struck up a conversation with two young women. When I mentioned wanting a roommate, one of them—Crystal, who was twenty-three—said she’d like to move in.

Crystal turned out to be quite troubled. She cut her wrists, was in an abusive relationship, and had lost her kids due to neglect. She said she was too broke to care for them and once nearly threw her son out of a fourth-story window in frustration.

She was also a lousy roommate—she wouldn’t do her share of the chores, and I had to hound her for her share of the rent. She spent most of her time getting fired from jobs or being kicked around by her boyfriend.

Eventually, she turned into a kleptomaniac, stealing mostly clothes. When I kicked her out a few months later, I knew she had duplicated the key, so I changed the locks. Just in time, too—a neighbor saw them trying to get in when I was out. They would’ve robbed me blind if they’d gotten in.

Then there was Mary, whom I met through Crystal. Mary was twenty-nine, lived with her twin sister and her husband, and really hoped I’d want to be with her. She wasn’t my type at all—short, plump, homely, with too-short hair—but I was too kind to tell her that. We hung out a few times, but eventually, she started canceling plans on me.

One night, annoyed with her, I prank-called her, saying nothing. She knew it was me, though. The next day, she came over to pick up a record she’d lent me and, without warning, suddenly flew into a fit of rage and toppled a piece of furniture over. We ended up fighting until she got bored and left.

I filed a police report, but nothing came of it, and I never saw her again.

Around that time, I met all sorts of people through random phone calls. One night, I called a cab company and told the dispatcher I’d heard she was gay—just to mess with her—but it turned out to be true! We chatted and later became friends. Her name was Linda, and although she was hideously ugly, we stayed friends for a while until she started hinting at wanting more than friendship.

I also randomly called a young woman named Tammy. She was barely nineteen, tall and slender with long red hair, and looked just like the singer Tiffany. The single mom was pretty but also immature, angry, and had issues with her alcoholic mother. Eventually, Tammy became unstable and unpredictable, and we stopped talking.

Al was another mistake. He was a twenty-four-year-old accountant who didn’t look a day over sixteen. He was negative, acne-riddled, and a sexual misfit with premature ejaculation. After a few months of hearing him criticize me, I ended it.

Then there was Nissa, and she hurt the most. She was a gorgeous, bisexual bus driver I met through another driver. We talked, laughed, and sang together on her bus. She even gave me money for snacks when I’d run errands for her. I thought she liked me, even though she had a girlfriend and told me so upfront. But when I wrote down hints I at least thought she dropped suggesting she may like me, she stole the notes when I ran into the store for us and was not flattered. She seemed offended actually, and I felt terrible and totally not worthy of anyone. I never saw her again after this, of course.

Towards the end of the two years I lived on Oswego Street, reality hit hard. I felt depressed. I had no idea what I was going to do with my life. Money was always tight, and my asthma and allergies were a problem. At twenty-three, cigarettes had already taken a toll on my lungs.

I was lonely and believed I’d never find the kind of relationship I longed for with the type of woman I was attracted to—both inside and out. Andy would tell me the chase was better than the capture, but there wasn’t even anyone to chase. I started to wonder if I’d have had the same bad luck if I were after men.

Although my friendship with Andy had its good points, one day I had to sit down and ask myself a hard question: If I were suddenly stranded somewhere, who could I call?

The answer was no one. Absolutely no one. I realized, more clearly than ever before, that the people I considered “friends” were either too unreliable or too self-centered to be counted on in times of need. When I was depressed and needed a shoulder to cry on, I knew I couldn’t turn to Andy—he just couldn’t handle it. Fran and Nervous were the last people I would have considered reaching out to. Fran was too messed up and Nervous was obsessed with me.

For years, I blamed myself, thinking I wasn’t good enough for good, decent, honest people. Then, one day, I asked myself—why not? Why shouldn’t I be? Sure, I wasn’t perfect, but I was kind, giving, and a good listener who tried to be honest. Maybe the problem wasn’t me after all. Maybe it was just that people, in general, didn’t fit with me because I wasn’t like most of them. As I got older, I began to think differently—maybe most people just weren’t worthy of my friendship. I became more selective about who I associated with. After being burned so many times, I was afraid to trust people. I couldn’t even trust my own parents and if you can’t trust your own parents, who can you trust?

So, unlike others who usually trust someone unless given a reason not to, I was the opposite. I wouldn’t trust anyone until they earned my trust. For the most part, I was a good judge of character—perceptive and observant—so I could usually tell who was trustworthy and who wasn’t.

In short, I was broke, alone, couldn’t breathe, and had no idea what my purpose in life was. But in four years and 3,000 miles, I would begin to find out.

In early 1989, Jo told me that the Locust/Woodside building was now owned by Russell, an older man, so I decided to call him about moving back. This was just before Jo and Eddie bought a condo, where Eddie soon passed away.

I was tired of life on Oswego Street. One time, I had nearly been run over by kids fleeing from the cops in a stolen car. That was just one of many scares. When I spoke to Russ, he informed me that my old apartment was empty. My parents agreed to help by sending him about $100 a month toward the now $440 rent. Russ had a couple of maintenance men help me move, and I agreed to clean his house once a week. He and his wife, a librarian I never met, lived in a huge house just five minutes away. But I didn’t work for them long since I couldn’t stick to a schedule.

My only complaint with Russ was that the apartment was freezing in winter. Unlike at Oswego Street, tenants couldn’t control their own heat. We even ended up seeing a mediator over it. Russ wanted me to move, but I wasn’t going anywhere until I was ready, which wouldn’t be for just over two years. Meanwhile, the guy who lived below me figured out how to access the temperature control box for that side of the building—it happened to be in my apartment.

The apartment itself had a few changes done to it while I was on Oswego Street. The bathroom had been modernized, with the old footed tub and white porcelain sink replaced by a new sink with a cabinet and a large mirror. The old indoor-outdoor carpet had been swapped for linoleum.

The changes outside were more dramatic. Jo wasn’t exaggerating when she said the neighborhood had gone downhill. It was rapidly becoming like Oswego Street—where there used to be the occasional summer brawl, now the streets were filled with negative activity, day and night, year-round.

In the summer of 1989, Andy and I both took third-shift jobs as a waitress and waiter at Denny’s. It wasn’t fun, though it was not without adventure. After just two months, I quit. Waitressing wasn’t for me—I just wasn’t a people person.

Not long after leaving Denny’s, the performing arts school I attended closed after one of the owners had a stroke. Bill, who was gay and lived with his boyfriend in Northampton, needed a place to teach his Springfield students. I offered my apartment, and he used it a few times a week. In exchange, I got free voice lessons and twenty dollars a week.

This time around, I had better luck with my neighbors, though I started off on the wrong foot with one of them—until I set them straight. Actually, another neighbor ended up doing that before I could.

I had just unpacked the last of my boxes and was heading out back to take them to the dumpster when I noticed the back door open of what used to be Nancy’s studio. A guy sat at the kitchen table.

“Hi,” I said.

The guy jumped, startled.

“Sorry,” I quickly apologized.

“No, that’s okay,” he replied and introduced himself as Jai.

Jai, a 27-year-old aspiring doctor, was pretty smart, and we had a lot of conversations over the next couple of years. He moved out shortly before I did. Although he was attracted to me, we never acted on it, and his girlfriend Jenny—a sweetheart—wouldn’t have liked that anyway. Jenny used to tell Jai she was worried about me because I was “gorgeous.”

On my first evening back in the apartment, I was exhausted and ready to relax after all the unpacking and setting up. But relaxation was not in the cards.

Thump! Thump! Thump!

Someone was banging in the apartment below me. For some reason, I went down and knocked on the door. Maybe I thought someone needed help. Or maybe I was just curious.

A woman answered, and I asked if everything was okay. “I don’t live here. He does,” she said.

The “he” turned out to be a blitzed 31-year-old named James. After I returned to my apartment, the banging continued for another half hour. Fed up, I called the cops. When they arrived, I stepped out into the hallway. From what I overheard, Rita—the woman who thought I was prank-calling her—wasn’t too happy with the situation either. She lived beneath Jimmy, which was the name James preferred as I’d later learn.

“I just got in,” I heard Jimmy lie to the cop. But after they left, he did quiet down.

The next day, Jai and I were heading down the back stairwell to get some groceries. Jimmy happened to be out back, looking over the balcony.

“Hey, you got a problem with me?” he asked in a confrontational tone as soon as he saw me.

I started to tell him that I certainly did if he was going to bang on his ceiling for hours at a time, but Jai intervened. I don’t remember what Jai said, but I do recall him telling Jimmy not to use the word “crazy.” I guess Jimmy had called me crazy, but I didn’t care if he thought that—as long as he stopped the ceiling thumping.

From that day forward, we got along. We even played music for each other, and sometimes I’d be the one banging. If Jimmy overslept, I’d stomp on the floor to wake him up, if I happened to be up when he was supposed to be. I could tell he was awake by the sound of running water below me. He gave me rides a couple of times and respected the fact that I wasn’t interested in men.

Cutting Ties

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.

The Slums

In June 1987, I moved to Oswego Street, a far cry from Woodside Terrace, though it was just a few minutes away. This area was a rundown, predominantly Puerto Rican section of the city, with vacant, dilapidated, partially boarded-up buildings covered in graffiti and litter. Most of the neighborhood was like this. Funny too, as it was known as the “Hollywood” section.

You couldn’t leave anything outside because it would quickly be stolen. Nervous, who visited one snowy night, left his shoes outside my back door to avoid tracking snow and slush into my kitchen. When he went to leave, his shoes were gone. The poor guy had to run to his car in just his socks through the cold and snow! And his car wasn’t parked close, either.

Unlike the Woodside and Locust apartments, these apartments were more modern. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the neighborhood wasn’t plagued with honking horns, loud music, and clusters of people loitering about, even in the dead of winter. I knew they were up to no good, and the area was infested with drugs. Fortunately, the psych meds I was on helped me sleep through the neighborhood chaos. It was a good thing, too, because after leaving Woodside, I was desperate to find a place, and this was the only one I could afford. The agency that owned the building had its own subsidy, so I was now paying $132 in rent instead of $325.

My cousin Philip and my father helped move me in. My parents were horrified when they saw where I was moving to. They had bars installed on the windows accessible from the outside and changed the locks.

As we were moving in, a Hispanic couple, José and Nellie, greeted me as they left their apartment two doors down. José introduced himself and extended his hand to my father, who shook it while eyeing him suspiciously. Nellie quickly assured me she was Italian, but I knew she wasn’t. Many Hispanics who were insecure about their race claimed to be Italian.

José and Nellie turned out to be the worst neighbors I had at that place. Looking back, I’m embarrassed by how naïve I was in dealing with them. I wasn’t just naïve—I was downright stupid! While they were kind and generous to my face, they were robbing me behind my back and, being too trusting and too nice, I forgave them time and time again, falling into the same cycle of their deceptive bullshit.

One night, I was in the living room talking to Nervous who was visiting when we heard the screen door open and shut. We both rushed into the kitchen, but no one was there. That’s when I noticed my little boom box, which had been sitting on top of the refrigerator, was gone. A few days later, I realized they had also stolen a check from the middle of my checkbook. They used it to write out $50 to someone I had never heard of.

The day after I discovered the stolen check, I went to the bank to see if I could identify the thief on film. Sure enough, there was José, brazenly cashing the check while wearing an old baggy T-shirt I had given to Nellie.

The day before, naïve little me had cashed a personal check for Nellie. As it turned out, the check was stolen and the account was closed. I was stuck paying the $200 the bank had given me to hand over to Nellie.

I filed charges against Nellie, who promised to pay me back in installments if I dropped the charges. I dropped them, and she did pay me back, though it took several months.

They even tried to rip off Nervous by loosening some wire in his car so it wouldn’t start.

“If you give me twenty bucks, I can go get you a new one,” José told him.

But Nervous, who knew better, simply tightened the wire himself.

The only other neighbor I disliked there was Hank, an older man who lived below me and sometimes got drunk.

Most of the other residents were older and very nice.

When I moved from Woodside Terrace to Oswego Street, I changed my phone number. I felt a new apartment called for a new number. After a while, I grew curious to know if anyone had called my old number, so I dialed it and asked the guy who answered. At first, he was friendly, but he quickly turned rude, earning himself a spot on my prank call list.

“You’re talking to a cop, lady,” he said.

“Yeah, they all say that. And I’m the president’s daughter!”

Unfortunately, he was telling the truth. I found this out when a couple of cops, Peter and Shaun, came to arrest me.

I had seen them around the neighborhood before and exchanged hellos with them. Once, after one of my court appearances for prank calls, a mix-up occurred, and the court issued a bench warrant for my arrest, even though I had shown up. The warrant was out for three months without my knowledge, and I only found out about it the next time I was in court.

“You know there’s a warrant out for your arrest, don’t you?” Peter asked one afternoon as he passed by in his cruiser while I was returning from the convenience store with a few groceries.

“No, there isn’t. It was recalled,” I told him, explaining the mix-up.

“Okay, you’re a trustworthy woman. I believe you.”

In October 1987, after I started writing journals, my buzzer rang while I was at the kitchen table. “Who is it?” I asked through the intercom.

“Police.”

I let them up, recognizing Peter and his partner right away.

“This is the neatest apartment I’ve ever seen,” Peter said as he walked in. Then he told me that Corcoran (fake name), the guy I had been prank calling, was indeed a cop.

Oops.

“Do you have $15?” he asked.

I checked my purse. “Yes.”

“You’ll need it to bail yourself out, but for now, I’m afraid you’re going to have to come with us.”

Without handcuffs, they took me to the police station where Peter and I waited by a solid metal door with a couple of scraggly-looking guys.

“Who are they?” I asked.

“Just a couple of our local druggies.”

“Oh.”

“I hate to do this, but I have to put the cuffs on you now, at least loosely, so my boss won’t give me a hard time.”

He put them on loosely enough that I could have easily slipped them off. In fact, I had to bend my wrists slightly to keep them from falling off.

After we passed through the door, the sergeant asked me some general questions, and I was led to a small holding cell where I waited alone. About an hour later, an unfamiliar man approached the barred door.

“Do you know who I am?” he asked angrily.

“You must be Corcoran.”

I was right. He then threatened me, saying how lucky I was that he didn’t know where I lived at the time, which, of course, was perfectly fine for him to do since he was a cop and I was just a low-income nobody.

I paid the $15 and got out of there. I regret not reporting his threats to his superiors, even if it wouldn’t have made a difference—at least it would have been on record.

Not long after, the phone calls began, many of which were of a sexual nature. If Corcoran himself wasn’t behind them, I’m not short. Still, he was a cop and I wasn’t, so I was the one who had to go to court. As usual, though, and much to my relief, nothing came of it. On my way out, I confronted him, telling him I knew he was behind the calls. He denied it, of course, but the calls coincidentally stopped that day.

Before meeting this psycho—whose name I can’t even remember—I had met a guy named Mike. I can’t recall where we met, but even though he was upfront about having a girlfriend, we spent a night together, and then I never saw him again.

The lonely days and nights dragged on. I found myself spending more time on the phone, desperate for any form of attention despite being a loner who preferred solitude. I liked my space but craved companionship.

One night, I dialed a very unlucky random number. The guy on the other end sounded nice enough, but I didn’t know he was a rapey cocaine-fueled lunatic.

I took a cab to his place, which he paid for. It was a tiny guesthouse behind his parents’ larger home. The guy was short, stocky, and ugly. His place was cluttered and filthy, but he seemed polite and respectful of my boundaries as we sat chatting at his kitchen table. After a while, I was ready to leave, but as I stood up, he lunged at me, knocking me down and hiking up my skirt.

“I have AIDS!” I screamed, trying to stall for time. “Trust me, you don’t want to do this.”

He hesitated, giving me time to think.

“I’ll get you off by hand,” I offered, desperate for more time to assess my surroundings and find a weapon. At ninety pounds, I was easy to pin down.

To my relief, he suddenly came and then appeared to pass out. I grabbed the phone, called a cab, and ran outside to wait. I was still in shock, wondering how I had managed to survive.

Then, out of the shadows, he emerged, apologizing profusely. “I’m so, so sorry. God, what’s wrong with me? Every time I meet a girl, I screw up.”

He rambled on while I kept calm, determined not to fall apart until I was safely home. Each minute felt like an eternity until the cab finally arrived.

When I got home, I collapsed on the floor, sobbing. I was furious at myself for being so naive, enraged at the near-rapist for what he had done, but also grateful to have escaped unharmed. This guy could easily have been a serial rapist or killer for all I knew. The fact that he admitted to “screwing up” every time he met a girl sure suggested so.

I called the West Springfield police, but the psycho had already beat me to it, trying to cover his ass.

“But he says you’re the one harassing him,” said the cop.

“Fine. Don’t believe me,” I replied and hung up. I was alive, I’d made my report, and that was the end of it—at least, I thought it was. However, he managed to track me down by calling everyone with my last name which he found in the phonebook, as I later learned from my cousin Phil.

Around this time, I began seeing a therapist named Trisha. She was nice, but I didn’t appreciate how she bribed me into seeing the center’s shrink and threatened to stop our sessions if I didn’t comply. I was both physically and psychologically dependent on the meds, so I agreed.