Tripping Over Akron: Alcoholism & Insanity
By Donna Runeric
Copyright 2011 Donna Runeric
Smashwords Edition
PART I--Genetics
PART II--Demolition
PART III--Reconstruction and Tripping over Akron
Conclusion--Coming down in 2011
Just about 40 years ago I met, but never married Todd Walsh, the father of my only child, Katie. For more than 20 years after meeting Todd my life and decisions were seriously affected by my emotional instability and alcoholism, but my rejection of Todd’s marriage proposal had little to do with my drinking or mental ills. My rejection was based almost entirely on a single incident that he and I would not discuss until 2006 when we began an email correspondence. That was the year Todd and I learned we were about to become grandparents.
The incident, which took place in 1970, could at the very least be classified as sexual assault, but I never reported what happened that day. At the time I was too naïve to recognize the act as criminal behavior; most of the women with whom I was acquainted in that era of drugs and free love were equally naive. I hated Todd for what he’d done, but was still in love with him when I married another man later that same year.
About two months into the marriage I became pregnant as the result of a one-time indiscretion with Todd. Giving birth to a child not fathered by one’s husband was frowned upon even during the era of “free love,” and was the central reason my first marriage failed. I didn’t tell Todd he was Katie’s father until years later. By that time he was married and I was involved in a relationship with my current husband, Ron.
Before I met Ron I prayed, “Dear God, please send me a man who will never stop loving me. Oh, and I want him to be smarter than I am and not bad to look at.” I neglected to ask for someone more interested in amassing wealth than fishing for brook trout. I got the looks and the smart part of my request, but good-looks and a PhD won’t necessarily eliminate life’s complications. In Ron’s case those complications include Obsessive/Compulsive Disorder, depression, and thalassemia minor, a condition Ron sometimes calls “small hemoglobin.” Ron’s blood doesn’t get enough oxygen which causes him to want to sleep a lot, ergo, not much action in the becoming-a-millionaire department.
Ron never wanted children . . . no, it was worse than that; he believed bringing children into this world was a mortal sin, but he accepted Katie into his world and became a better example of stability for her than I was most of the time.
In 1999 Katie moved to Oregon and I decided to begin writing for her a genetic history of the events that brought her into the world. Katie eventually married, and on September 14, 2006 gave birth to her first child, Suzannah.
Prior to Suzannah’s birth, I emailed Todd (Katie’s sperm donor, as Ron calls him) to tell him we were to become grandparents. Our communications led him to asking me why I rejected his proposal when Katie was a baby so I confronted him about the assault. He was shocked and said he had no memory of having perpetrated such a hideous act. Since Todd and I were both survivors of that bizarre era of “sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll,” we determined there may have been drug related reasons for his degenerate behavior and also for his inability to remember the incident. We closed the door on the event and soon recognized we were still in love. We began rebuilding our relationship hoping to construct the family life with Katie that we’d never had. Unfortunately, that plan involved the demolition of both our marriages; his of 35 years and with two nearly grown children, and mine from a man whose mental illness caused some of the worst nightmare scenarios in my life. Added to the difficulty was the resurgence of my own suicidal depression and alcoholism. The dormant memories of my unhappy childhood were brought back to life once again by the trauma of those unexpected events.
As so often happens with these extramarital affairs, apparently even the unusual ones, Todd and I ended up staying right where we were when the whole mess began, all parties involved much worse for the wear. We discovered one is never too old to screw up one’s life. We also discovered the meaning of unconditional love—love neither Todd nor I deserved after we’d thrown so much hell at so many people.
The experience also took me to within inches of taking my own life—again. But the love of my daughter, my best friend, and the undying devotion of my quirky husband brought me back to my senses. It was worth the trip because there was much I still needed to understand about my alcoholism and psychological irregularities. I would have never believed it possible for my demons to resurrect themselves so late in life. Never underestimate the power of psychological demons.
My relationship with Todd is cordial these days. We are, after all, Katie’s parents and Suzi’s grandparents. He’s narcissistic and quite covetous of his property and in the end he didn’t really understand how to handle a psycho like me. Not sure which came first; the “Jesus Christ, Donna is a freaking psycho!” or, “Jesus Christ! If I keep my word to Donna I’ll have to give up some of my stuff!” I suppose if either of us had been billionaires the events would have played out differently, but life might have been even worse; those people with loads of money are always getting into scrapes.
This story is told through emails, journals, letters, pictures, lyrics and dreams. My dreams are pretty weird. No, they’re really weird, and keep getting weirder. Such is the fate of people who live with dysfunction and screwed-up genetics. Some names have been changed in my story to protect the innocent, as well as the EXTREMELY guilty.
Have a nice trip.
This book is dedicated to my amazingly loyal and generous best friend of over 40 years, Carol. And with special note to Katie, without whom none of this would have been written.
“The search for truth is not for the faint of heart.”
--Detective Bobby Goren
©-Cat Stevens
But just remember there's a lot of bad and beware
Oh, baby, baby, it's a wild world
It's hard to get by just upon a smile
Oh, baby, baby, it's a wild world
I'll always remember you like a child, girl
Katie
and me, November, 1976
January 1, 1999
My Darling Katie,
Now that you’ve moved to the other side of the country from us, I suddenly feel compelled to tell you all the details of how you came to be. I don’t know when I’ll give you these details; I don’t know when I’ll finish this journal/history/thing, but maybe someday you’ll be interested, or maybe someday you’ll have children who will be interested. (I can’t believe you got on that plane last night. You know why I sent you off with Tea for the Tillerman, right? Of course you do!)
(You, flying and Carol crying.)
As you already know (but may have forgotten some of these details), I am the third child of parents who met while working at The Diamond Match factory in Barberton, Ohio, in 1942. Your Grandma was born in Hoquim, Washington to parents who met and married in Tennessee. Your great-grandparents moved to Washington after they were married because your great-grandfather did not wish to be inducted into military service during WWI. He was, after all, a McCoy! And the McCoys, at least the ones to whom we’re related, felt that America was literally the land of the free and that a man’s first duty was to his wife and children. Yay, Grandpa! When it seemed safe to return, your great-grandfather brought his family back east, eventually to the Akron, Ohio area.
(Your Grandpa Marks (middle) and his brothers, Albert and Bissell.
WWII)
(Your grandma, my mom, holding your Aunt Carol, around 1945.)
The McCoys, including your grandmother, were hard workers. I remember your grandma telling me that after she graduated from high school in 1939 she went to work as a live-in housekeeper for a large, well-heeled family. One day, after scrubbing floors, doing loads and loads of laundry on a washboard, and various other chores, she was so exhausted she made a bed by pulling two wooden chairs together in the kitchen. She only wanted to recuperate for a few moments before resuming her drudgery. Imagine!
(My grandpa McCoy’s mother, this is terrible Katie, I can’t
remember her name and I can’t track down the record. On the right--
me, my grandpa McCoy, Thomas Houston [or as he would be known these
days, Oscar the Grouch], and Carol around 1953.)
Your McCoy ancestors also sought spirituality, but only of the Protestant variety and your grandma became a member of a Nazarene Church when she was a teenager. When she began working at the match factory she secretly fell in love with a Catholic co-worker named Carl, but in those days, if you were a member of the McCoy clan at any rate, woe be unto you if you married outside of your religion. Your grandma told me several times over the years that had Carl not been Catholic and had he asked, she would have married him. She always adds that had she married Carl your Aunt Carol, Uncle Jon and I wouldn’t have been born, and wouldn’t that have been a tragedy. What a bunch of bull shit. I usually say things like, “You would have had us; we would have just looked more like Carl than dad.” She never agrees with me. Who knows; she could be right. Anyway, when Carl went off to war, your grandma allowed my dad to court her. (For the historical record, or if anyone wants to do any genealogical studies, your grandmother on your mother’s side is Wilda Mae McCoy-Marks-Schaar-McCoy, and your grandfather was Alden Philip Marks.) As your grandma always told the story, she knew she had to marry someone before she got much older and your grandpa asked so she agreed. She made it sound as if it didn’t matter who asked her since she knew she couldn’t marry Carl.
I think grandma believed all men were as industrious, shrewd and level-headed as was her father; she must have been sorely disappointed when she realized your grandpa, while not unwilling to accept his responsibilities, hated the factory grind, and while he did march off to war with his brothers, his political opinions caused him in later years to tell us he was the best potato peeler in the Army--and was proud of it, man! Yes, my dad’s work ethic and political views just weren’t “McCoy” and I truly wonder how two people as mismatched as my parents were ever married.
(My dad, Alden Philip Marks, painting a portrait of your grandma,
around 1953.)
I loved your grandpa so very much. He was an artist, a poet, a thinker, and he suffered (as did many members of the Marks clan) from what used to be called Melancholia. Your grandpa’s mother, Leah, took to her bed at least once in her life when your great-grandfather Philip ran off with one of his students. What a cad.
(Left--My paternal grandparents, Philip and Leah Marks with their
first children, Albert and Juanita around 1900. Right—-My maternal
grandmother, Bertha Edith McCoy taken around 1910. )
Your grandpa Marks’ nephew and my cousin, Roy Allen (as we always called him) died from an overdose of barbiturates after his marriage failed. Another of my cousins, Brenda put a shotgun to her stomach and pulled the trigger with her foot after battling depression when she was barely 16 years-old. Brenda’s mother, your great-aunt Elizabeth, was institutionalized for many months and was administered 13 electroshock treatments before returning to her home. Your grandpa’s sister Murdayne actually managed her depression remarkably well throughout her life thanks to her devotion to her religion, but when she was in her 40’s she was made aware of the concept of chemical brain imbalance and discovered medication which literally changed her life. (Isn’t this uplifting?! Don’t worry; it gets worse.) Your uncle Jon let your aunt Carol and I know for years that the day would come when he’d take his own life, but ironically he died just shortly after finally seeking help for his depression. And, of course, we could write a book about your Aunt Carol’s maladies. Sorry Katie—you may be genetically screwed! Just kidding; I think you’re tougher than the Marks’ when it comes to mental health. Maybe those genetics bypassed you and you got the McCoy-Walsh mental health genetics. Of course, that too could have its drawbacks. Scotch-Irish, hmmm. Might be a problem, especially with Todd thrown into the mix. You shall overcome.
I’m sure that when your grandma (We used to call her “the wildebeest” behind her back!) married your grandpa she was ignorant about the mental health issues which plagued the Marks family. She thought that when your grandpa came back from his stint in the army he’d get a good job, they’d move out of “the projects” into a nice little home and she’d live happily ever after. But by the time your Aunt Carol was 6 years-old and your Uncle Jon was born, they still hadn’t left the East Barberton Homes. A year-and-a-half later I came along. By the time I turned five your grandma had had enough of your grandpa’s inability to fulfill her fantasies of a better life and she told him to hit the bricks. My memories of that period are extremely fuzzy. I loved your grandpa, and as is typical of children faced with such trauma, I began to hate your grandma for forcing your grandpa out of my life.
I gradually developed additional reasons for hating grandma. After she dumped your grandpa she brought out all the implements of torture your grandpa refused to use on us while he was still present: switches, yardsticks, hairbrushes, anything she could grab with which to beat us. Sometimes she hit us so hard (across our legs usually), the weapon would break and she’d have to grab another “tool.” And we were too afraid to run; we didn’t know if running might not cause her to actually grab us and kill us—what do children know? Her own father beat his children with a razor strap so she saw no shame in her actions. She screamed at us, swore at us, often barely seemed to be able to stand looking at us, and was the Queen of Sarcasm. But the worst thing (in my opinion) was the way she always let us know she never loved your grandpa. I really hated her for that.
Amazingly, this same woman introduced us to classical music, brought home wonderful library books, always made Thanksgiving and Christmas special, and provided us with food, clothing and shelter without much outside assistance. Of course, I was only able to appreciate those things when I became an adult. Still, the five year-old child who lives in my head and comes to talk to me sometimes says things like, “Why did my mother hate me?” and, “Why did my mother make my beloved father leave?” and, “Man, my mom was really fucked up!” Oops, that slipped.
Getting back to the Marks genealogical data, I think I’m going to add some stuff here about my own battles with depression and suicidal tendencies that might become necessary information someday; I could be wrong, but over the years I’ve found some relief in knowing that my psychological oddities weren’t always “my fault.”
(This is a photo of your grandpa Marks after grandma dumped him. She
probably wouldn’t have dumped Ray Milland.)
Probably the first time I ever thought about suicide I was about 13. I was home alone one day, having convinced grandma I was sick enough to miss school. I was sitting on my bed and staring out my bedroom window, crying and agonizing because I knew there was no way in hell Cynthia Lennon was going to give John up and let me have him. I got one of grandma’s double-edged razor blades from the medicine cabinet, went back to my bed and very cautiously scratched my wrist with it several times before I realized I was too big of a chicken to actually cut. I also knew that if I cut myself, but didn’t die, grandma would kill me for getting blood on the bedspread.
That was in the early 1960’s and I knew nothing about the “cry for help” variety of suicide, but in later years I came to understand the concept quite well.
I also remember being much younger than 13 and, if not actually thinking about suicide, wishing I could erase myself from existence or possibly going to wherever one goes to live with God. I’d sit in grandma’s car during rainstorms and read the bible and sing Jesus Loves Me. Sometimes, in happier moments, I’d sing show tunes! When grandma wasn’t in one of her sadistic moods she’d take us to see movies of (among other things) Rodgers & Hammerstein musicals and I loved them. She had all the soundtracks and we listened to them quite often. I’d sit in the car, or up in my favorite dead tree (there was a big, gray dead tree out in a field near where we lived and I developed some sort of bizarre affinity for the thing) and sing Bali Hai, and Some Enchanted Evening. I had to go places where no one would hear me. I guess South Pacific was my favorite in the Rogers & Hammerstein repertoire. I even got a copy of the manuscript from the library and read it. When I got to the part where Bloody Mary is calling Lieutenant Cable a “stingy bastard” I asked grandma what a stingee (as in bee sting) bastard (emphasis on the tard) was. We were in the car at the time and I was reading the book in the back seat and your Uncle Jon was riding shotgun. Grandma whipped around with a “WHA-WHA-WHAT!?” like Mrs. Brofloski in South Park and nearly wrecked the car. Jon was laughing so hard I’m surprised he didn’t fall out. He was only a year and a half older than I was, but being a boy and living in the projects he’d already been introduced to much profanity.
I also read quite a lot of Edgar Allan Poe. I was a maudlin little thing, Katie, and tended to keep to myself because I didn’t like being teased about my red hair, bucked teeth, freckles and fat.
I’m not sure how I began to understand that grandma also wished I could have been erased from existence, but she did ultimately verbalize that wish when I was 15. I’m sure I told you this story: I desperately wanted to date one of Jon’s co-workers named Ted Jones. God! he was gorgeous. I sneaked out on a date with him and somehow grandma found out about it. That rat Jon probably told her. (I must admit, it’s nice to remember that he didn’t want anyone to touch his sister.) When I came home she slapped me across the face and said she wished I’d died before I was born. (“Bitch, I hate that bitch.”) Of course, just to make sure I was good and screwed up she then hugged me and told me she loved me. I swear to God, that was the only time I can ever remember her telling me she loved me.
But I suspect my date with Ted wasn’t the only reason she wished I’d been stillborn. It seems that after she had the perfect combination of children, i.e., one girl and one boy spaced in age so as to allow the girl to look after her little brother, I came along quite unexpectedly. I understand having two children in diapers can be hellish and back then there was no such thing as disposable diapers (or anything else disposable, for that matter) and she couldn’t afford a diaper service. She, being a clean-freak, must have spent so much time washing diapers (and everything else) that I’m surprised she ever slept. Who knows; maybe that’s why she divorced my dad; she was tired of providing “services” for an adult who related better to his children than to his wife, which is also why I loved him so much. Dad was fun; Mom was not.
So over the years, especially during the worst of my alcoholism, I thought about, and attempted suicide several times, I’m sorry to report. But if the notion ever occurs to you or to any of your descendents who might be reading this, let me just say, it’s a curse! Talk to someone! Oh, wait—remember your Walsh genealogy! Walshs never commit suicide! They love and value themselves far too much. Also, don’t become a drunk! Katie, I’m sure you lucked into the Walsh gene there too; as far as I know Todd wasn’t obsessive-compulsive about anything other than his own image in the mirror. He drank, but wasn’t an alcoholic. When I miraculously stopped drinking in 1992 I, for the most part, began learning how to deal with life’s harsh realities without thoughts of taking the easy way out. And speaking of Walsh genealogy, onto the REAL tragedy--the story of your father’s role in all this:
(Todd Walsh, your sperm-donor. Sorry.)
As you sort of already know, I met your father in 1968 at a coffee house in Akron. At that time the ‘hippies,’ or ‘freaks,’ as some of us preferred to be labeled, sort of picked up where the beatniks left off, I suppose. Anyway, at that time I was working in Akron with a girl who was a year ahead of me at Barberton High School. One day she asked me if I’d ever gone to The Berth (that was the name of the coffee house). I said I hadn’t and she asked me if I’d like to go with her the following Friday, which was September 12th. The reason I remember the date is that when I met your father it also happened to be his birthday. He’d just turned 22 and I was 17.
(One of my favorite albums at that time.)
Todd was working as the doorman that night. As I recall, there was a window in the door, so when he saw anyone through the window he’d get up from his chair and open the door. I think he probably volunteered for the job so he might have first crack at the girls who came in. Underneath his charming veneer he was . . . hmmm . . . a drooling wolf? Oh, hell, I guess every guy in the place was looking to get laid. So he opened the door and, so help me God, I was instantly smitten. I remember it like it happened yesterday. I have no way to explain it, but anytime anyone has ever said to me, “There is no such thing as ‘love at first sight.” my response is always something like, “Let me tell you about love at first sight. . . .”
Anyway, as we went through the door, I unintentionally (I swear!) brushed against him and said, “Excuse me.” He said, “Why? What’d ya do?” Yes, by golly, those were the very first words spoken between your father and me. Isn’t that romantic? My friend Lynn and I then went in and sat at one of the tables.
I don’t remember much about what went on inside the place. I mean, it was sort of a “dry” night club for folk musicians and there was some sort of entertainment happening, but I was focused on Todd, the doorman.
The next thing I remember was being back in the vicinity of the door hoping he’d notice me and say something to me—-anything. He was reading Conan the Barbarian (Jesus! I cannot believe I’m remembering all this crap like it happened last week!). I asked him what the book was about. (Like I cared. I was probably thinking something like, “I didn’t know they actually took comic books and turned them into novels.) So he began to tell me all about the wonderful, fictional world of Conan, while I thought things like, “Oh yes! This man will be spending the rest of his life with me.” and, “Jesus Christ! Will you just please ask me for my phone number?! Please?” I think he finally picked up on my feigned interest (in Conan anyway), and asked me how old I was. I was sorely tempted to say I was 18 because he looked so much older than me and I was afraid he’d shoo me away if I said I was still legally a minor. But for some Protestant reason I told the truth. He then told me it was his birthday and asked me to guess how old he was. Now, Katie, what can I say; the man must have already done a lot of drugs by then because, I swear, I thought he was 45, but to be nice I said, “35?” He nearly fell off his chair. He said something like, “God damn! Do I really look that old? I’m only 22.” (What could I say? Maybe, “No, you don’t really look that old; you look older.”) But I was relieved that he was nearer my age. As it was, I knew your grandmother was going to have a fit if she ever got a look at him. But I was TEERULY smitten at first sight.
I must reluctantly admit (because it sounds so. . . icky), that looking back, he did possess some characteristics which reminded me of my father and my brother. I certainly wasn’t thinking about that at the time. But I don’t suppose there’s anything wrong with being attracted to someone who looks like a member of your own clan. And he was just so outrageously self-confident and cute in his hippy garb. He was a little like a peacock, I think. And I suppose I was a little like a peahen; I felt I had nothing to strut, but I was certainly attracted to (and maybe envious of) his plumage. Man this is too vivid, so maybe I should stop for now. I love you and miss you.
January 2nd, 1999
I’m back. Ron is downstairs watching The History Channel, or as we call it, The Hitler Channel. I cannot believe they’ve made so many programs about Adolph Hitler and still keep coming up with new ones. Why are so many people (like Ron) so fascinated? “Tonight on the History Channel: Hitler’s favorite pair of shoes.” They never run out of stories to tell about that Nazi.
Back to The Berth. I’m not certain about this, but I think your father eventually asked me if I wouldn’t like to write my phone number down on the inside cover of his book so that he could call me and continue telling me why I should be interested in Conan. I’d had a few boyfriends by then, but I’m sure I didn’t feel capable of flirting with someone as worldly as Todd seemed to be. I don’t know; I think I was naively in awe of him, so I was probably thinking that if he called me at all it really would be to discuss that damn book. That’s about where my memory of that night ends, but I’m sure I went home and stayed awake half the night imagining what it would be like to be alone with that fool. I probably hovered close by the phone the following week. That was back in the days when most people had only one phone and possibly one extension phone. And I’m not talking about a separate line, but an extension off the original! Girls would hold their breath every time the phone rang, hoping it was---“HIM!” Back then, girls who called boys instead of waiting for boys to call them were considered ‘fast’ and potentially ‘loose,’ so I couldn’t call Todd. I didn’t become fast and loose until much later! Snark.
But he called, and we started up a sort of routine dating schedule which, if I recall was something like the following: Friday nights were ‘sometimes’ nights because we each often had other things going on. Saturday nights we’d maybe get something to eat (I, of course, being in love usually just watched him eat.) and often times we’d go to a movie. Sometimes we’d visit his strange (to me) friends, and go to the Berth or one of the coffee houses in Kent. Wednesdays we might go to the Berth or visit friends; if memory serves, Wednesdays and Saturdays were sort of ‘set’ days for us to see each other, and occasionally he’d take me to his parents house or pick me up to go with him if he had to do some errand or other.
He drove a tiny, red Austin Heely, which my mother considered a ‘death trap,’ and she was correct. That was also back in the days when seat belts were optional and had we ever been in an accident, I’m sure we would have been dead or horribly mangled.
Your Grandma never actually said she hated Todd, but I knew she did and I suppose she realized I was getting to the age when she wouldn’t be able to tell me things like, “Forget it! You’re not going out in that car with that beatnik!” She was so good at sending me mixed signals, i.e., “I wish you’d died before you were born!” and, “Please don’t get in that car with that boy; you’ll be killed.” Jesus Christ, make up your friggin’ mind! (God! I just remembered wondering why you wound up disliking your grandma when you got older. Duh! Did I really tell you all those things? I’m truly sorry for that. She loved you with all her heart. She was just, you know . . . fucked up! Oh hell, we all were.)
But Todd was quite gentlemanly; he opened doors for me, held my hand, put his arm around me at the theater, phoned me on a regular schedule, and after about two weeks of non-sexual conduct in which I thought I would LOSE MY FREAKING MIND, I said something to him like, “Do you think that . . . any of your friends who, you know, have their own apartments might ever allow us to, sort of, you know, use their apartment at some time when they’re not, you know . . . AT HOME?” Had I known anything much about the gay lifestyle (I really don’t think I did!) I might have started to have suspicions about his preferences. God in heaven! How times have changed. But he did seem to recognize my question as an invitation to move our relationship to another level, and quickly made arrangements with his friend Mike. It never occurred to me he’d be breaking any laws, and believe me, grandma would have gleefully seen him thrown in the slammer for statutory rape. Jesus! 17 and 22, by today’s standards we’d be considered slow-witted geeks.
(How I finally got my message across.)
Todd had no idea he’d been chosen as my ‘intended.’ In other words, I didn’t confess to being a virgin. He was so sweet, and cute, and startled when he realized what was happening. I knew I had more or less tricked him and told him it was okay. I didn’t know that much about the way men thought, but I somehow suspected that relieving a girl of her virginity was not something most boys took lightly.
He treated me like a fragile treasure. Oh my, oh my, I was so very much in love with him. This is really getting kind of creepy remembering all these details. How could someone so sweet turn into such a bastard? Time changes people? People change with time? People don’t age well? Shit happens? But I digress (and I hope I’m not embarrassing you. Hey, we’re all adults here.).
Saturday nights became the nights we pretty regularly ended the evening at the infamous Steve’s Motel. As far back as I can remember, everyone, and I mean everyone, knew that Steve’s Motel was where couples went if they wanted to have sex---period. Steve’s was just around the corner from the Massillon Road Motel, which also developed the ‘rooms by the hour’ reputation but was a little bit nicer. I think Steve’s was $4 a ‘night,’ and Massillon was $6. And honestly, winding up at one or the other of those cheap little dumps became the focal point of my life. We went a lot of places, did a lot of fun and interesting things, but it seemed like all I could think about was getting your dad into the sack. (Sorry Katie. Well, maybe I won’t give this to you after all.)
What can I say about Todd in bed? Experienced for sure. Inventive? Yes. Mostly I just wanted to kiss him and have my arms around him . . . mostly. And . . . well, never mind.
Yes, this is definitely creepy, and I’d better end for now before Ron comes up and looks over my shoulder and says, “Hey! How come you never felt that way about me in bed?” or asks me why my face is beet-red at the moment. And I’m not in the mood for our annual go-round about why I don’t want to participate in the sexual Olympics with him, and I don’t feel like asking him AGAIN if he wouldn’t find it odd for me to suddenly be fawning over him like some goofy school girl might. I do feel kind of bad because he’s told me about at least one of his students who probably would crawl all over him, given half a chance. Of course then she’d find out how impossible he is to live with and toss him back to me, damn it. Okay, so I’ll continue as soon as I regain my composure. I love you.
January 3rd, 1999
Okay, where was I?
Todd and I ‘went steady’ for nearly a year. He wore my class ring on his pinky finger. We talked about getting married. He said he wanted to wait until I was 19 for some reason. (And I was 19 when I married Joe, come to think of it.) I absolutely believed that God had blessed me by handing me my soul mate. I wasn’t just ‘in love’ with Todd; for some reason, as I said, I was in awe of him.
Since he was a musician of sorts, he was acquainted with much of the local talent at that time, you know, some of the musicians from the Akron/Canton/Kent/Cleveland area who actually made some money in the music business. I do remember one night when we went to a coffee house in Kent and Peter Yarrow was there (you know; Peter, Paul and Mary?) and Todd . . . jammed with him? Is it called ‘jamming’ when it’s folk music? It couldn’t be. There must be another term. Folking? Whatever.
The picture in my mind of our relationship at that time was of Todd being in charge of everything in the world and I just tagged along. Where we were or what we were doing didn’t matter to me so much; I was just glad to be with him; it was like being a bit player in the Todd Walsh Story. God! I was such an idiot.
As you know, in the 60s and 70s, people were struggling to “find themselves.” What that meant, Katie, was that we were self-indulgent, hedonistic and used a lot of drugs. Todd dove right in. Unfortunately for me Todd’s indulgences included sex—-lots of sex, with lots of partners. Shortly after I graduated from high school I got a call from a “friend” who had been a student at St. Mary’s School for Girls, and she asked, “are you going with a guy named Todd Walsh?’ I said I was and she, being a friend and feeling it was her duty to tell me (please!), told me that Todd was sleeping with many of her classmates. Katie, I felt like someone hit me across my middle with a 2 x 4, and I just knew she wasn’t lying. I called Todd immediately and confronted him with the information. Under those circumstances it was permissible for the girl to call the boy. After a few seconds pause, which felt like two hours of having a sword stabbing me in my eyes, heart, and stomach, he said it was true. When I asked him why he talked to me about marriage he said he knew it was what I wanted to hear. (Jesus Christ! I think I’ll go over to his house and kick his ass!)
That was my first ‘adult’ bad emotional experience. He didn’t tell me he wanted to ‘break up’ with me, but I guess I instinctively knew I was required to break up with him, so in the terminology of today’s 18 year-old girls, I told him to “fuck off.” I don’t remember much about the timeline after that. Amazingly it still pains me to remember that day, and I remember it vividly. I’m sure I spent a lot of time in emotional agony.
My ‘get even’ plan pretty much ended up being to allow myself to become a big drunk and to imitate Todd’s sexual behavior, whether he knew about it or not. Pretty slick, huh? I guess I somehow thought that when the news of my newly acquired promiscuity reached him he’d see that he’d caused me to fall into a life of depravity, come rushing to my side, and beg me to forgive him. Yeah--that worked. Fortunately for me, AIDS hadn’t surfaced yet, and God blessed me (extremely) in not allowing me to get any other diseases or become pregnant! Well, until I became pregnant with you, that is. If you didn’t already know some of the details, you’d surely be thinking, “How in the hell did all this lead up to Todd becoming my father?” Let me sing you a little song children; it might clear things up. No, I’d better stop again. Ron and the doggies need my attention, as does this filthy house. And you know Ron’s attitude about the house, “What mess?”
Love, Mom.
(Me, during my “getting even with Todd” phase.)
January 10th, 1999
It’s been a while since I wrote, but there is always so much crap going on at work and with Ron, and I’m also trying to keep up with my art projects. Too many irons in too many fires.
Back to the story of how in hell Todd Walsh became your father.
As you may recall from previous stories, after I broke up with “that bastard,” I moved into the upper floor of a house on Harvard Street with your Aunt Carol. The house was located in one of the seedier neighborhoods in Akron. Haven’t been down there in a while, don’t know if it’s still seedy. Carol embraced the “hippie lifestyle” after her divorce from her extremely straight husband, Jim. He was a lot like Mr. Macky in South Park, except that Jim had a more rigid pole up his ass. Imagine? And Carol MARRIED HIM! Hysterical. Anyway, your aunt and I became fast friends, even though there was a seven year difference in our ages. She and I were both perfect candidates, I suppose, for abandoning the ‘normal’ world for one filled with drug experimentation and ‘free love.’ We both felt screwed over by men we loved and the home in which we were raised was dysfunctional to say the least.
We were especially anxious to use LSD, and we did . . . often. Our door was never locked and it was not uncommon for us to go to bed and wake up the next morning to find total strangers sleeping on the living room floor, sort of like the “guy on the couch” in that movie Half Baked.
Yes, the apartment was a real roach motel, but we didn’t allow the use of needles; we had our standards, after all. Anyway, from the time I told Todd I couldn’t see him anymore until January of the following year, I had no idea where he went or what he was doing. I continued to tell people he was a bastard, and I lied and said I was well rid of him. Your Aunt Carol knew the truth, which was that I would have done nearly anything to salvage or repair my relationship with the idiot.
One of the jobs I had during that period of time was as a sort of live-in babysitter/housekeeper for a woman who lived in Cuyahoga Falls. I stayed there during the week and came back to Harvard Street on the weekends. On one particularly snowy night I got a call from Carol excitedly telling me that she’d been contacted by Todd. He’d been living in Boston, but returned and asked her if she would mind, and if she thought I would mind, having him move in for a while. Katie, at that moment I thought, “There must be a God, and he truly loves me.” Of course Carol told him there would be no problem and I hurriedly made arrangements with my employer to go home immediately, practically in the middle of the night. As I recall, the weather made the roads nearly impassible, but, by God, I was just about ready to walk the entire distance. I got to the apartment and in the living room sat Carol, looking truly upset/sad/mad/crushed, and Todd was nowhere in sight, but I knew he was there. I asked her what was wrong and she told me that she misunderstood Todd when he asked if he could stay with us; she assumed he meant he wanted to resume his relationship with me, but when he got there he immediately took his stuff into the attic and she didn’t know what to say to him. I truly loved my sister at that moment for sincerely sharing my pain.
I foolishly allowed myself to think that maybe Todd didn’t want to just jump into my bed without our having some kind of discussion about what a jerk he’d been. I think Carol knew that wasn’t the case, but didn’t want to tell me so, and she didn’t try to stop me when I went up to the attic to find out what was happening. He was asleep, or trying to go to sleep, as I recall. (Holy crap! I’m crying as I’m writing this.) That son-of-a-bitch managed to break my heart--AGAIN. Bastard!
I don’t remember what he said exactly, but it may have just been, “Oh, hi.” And I probably said something like, “Aren’t you going to be staying in my room?” And he probably said something like, “Uh, no. Wanna fuck?” And I probably cried, and he probably petted my head and hugged me until I . . . well, you know. And then he probably said something like, “Okay. Good-night. You can leave now.” And I did. And I’m sure I cried all night knowing he was upstairs, knowing I was unbelievably stupid, and knowing I was still in love with him. Jesus Christ! What the hell is wrong with your fucking father?!
Must stop again and attend to other crap. Love you, miss you, miss you, miss you!
January 15th, 1999
Hi there. Okay, back to Harvard Street.
Todd didn’t hang around the apartment much. I knew, or strongly suspected, that at least part of his income was derived from the sale of marijuana and other drugs, so when I was at the apartment and he wasn’t, I guess I figured he was off dealing or screwing other women who were as goofy as I was. And you know, I never went to his room and set up any booby-traps. Shit! Hindsight.
One day he waltzed in with Mary (you know; the woman to whom he is currently married?) and it was obvious they were “a couple.” I thought,”What in God’s name did I ever do to deserve such sadistic treatment from this man?!” So I asked him to step into the kitchen and said something like, “You know, the very least you could do is not throw your new girlfriends in my face.” As I recall, he (I shit you not) said, cheerily! “Oh. Okay.” And they left. Shortly thereafter Todd and his belongings were gone. He moved out sometime during the week when I was at my job. He didn’t so much as leave a note.
Life, so-to-speak, went on at Harvard Street: more drugs; more alcohol; more indiscriminate sex (sorry). When Todd left in March of that year, I hadn’t a clue to his whereabouts. I think I did a pretty fair job of pretending I didn’t care.
Sometime around May 4th, 1970 (This I remember for the obvious reason. You know--Kent State?), one of our Harvard Street ‘regulars,’ John Mack, or Chops as he was known (short for Pork Chop. Why? No man can say.) came to the apartment accompanied by Joe Finnegan, the man named on your birth certificate as ‘Birth Father.’ The first thing Joe said to me was, “Hey, Red.” I wasn’t the only ‘Red,’ mind you; any and all women with red hair were automatically dubbed ‘Red’ by Joe Finnegan. He was tall, cute, sweet, funny, Irish, and seemed to be interested in me. He’d just hitch-hiked his way back from California and Chops brought him to Harvard Street because our apartment had turned into a do-your-own-thing-as-long-as-it-doesn’t-involve-guns-or-needles flophouse. I guess I thought Joe seemed a good enough candidate for helping me to stop thinking about Todd so I let him flop with me.
(Couldn’t find any photos of Joe, but this’ll do, and one of
Joe’s favorite albums. Had to listen to this over and over and over
when I was pregnant with you.)
Joe and I became ‘exclusive,’ which was fine with me since I figured the only man I’d ever want to be with was gone for good, or so I believed at that time. But during the summer of 1970 I began discovering that many of the people I met were acquainted with people I already knew. It is said that people travel in karmic packs and I have no reason to disbelieve that theory, but Todd and Joe somehow knew each other. Todd would occasionally show up at Harvard Street during that summer, usually to furnish us with dope. I think I pretty much stayed in the background unless the opportunity arose for me to try and give Todd the impression that I didn’t give a flying fuck about him anymore, and allow him to see that I was madly in love with Joe. Brother!
Anyway, Todd had a knack for showing up when I was alone at the apartment (a karmic knack perhaps?). We never spoke of our former relationship at those times. He usually seemed cold, distant, and just gave the air of someone who was there strictly to conduct “business.” He showed up one particular day and . . . well, he was vicious and cruel to me for no apparent reason and I told him I never wanted to lay eyes on him again. Obviously, since you’re on the planet, I did lay eyes (and other parts of my anatomy) on him again. It seems the passage of time even allows me to make jokes about that summer, but it still amazes me that I could allow myself to become pregnant by a man who was capable of plunging me into the worst emotional turmoil I’d experienced up to that point in my bizarre life.
Perhaps I became somewhat forgiving of Todd’s behavior because on another of his visits to Harvard Street he may have saved my life. I was acquainted with a member of a motorcycle club (the Outlaws)—well acquainted. Okay---really well acquainted! Anyway, this biker showed up at Harvard Street one day and he was stoned out of his mind. He was carrying a hand gun, a big revolver, actually, and in his drug induced state he began talking about why he should kill me and then himself; he made it sound like he’d be doing us both a favor. As you can imagine, I was scared shitless, and suddenly Todd made another of his out-of-the-blue appearances. The biker and I were on the porch of the house. Todd strolled up and I looked at him with completely bugged eyes, and through clenched teeth said something like, “Todd, this is Steve. He has a gun and I have been begging him not to kill himself or me with it. Can you help?” Todd didn’t look the least bit upset and he seemed to be ignoring what I was saying and the gun Steve was holding. I think he told Steve he needed to talk to me for a minute and just sort of, led me off the porch. He may have said it had something to do with a dope deal. When we were out of Steve’s earshot Todd said something to me like, “The only reason he’s keeping up this babble about killing you is that you’re obviously scared. We’ll just go back up and I’ll start shooting the shit with him about drugs and his bike and he’ll forget about it. Just quit acting scared.” So we went back to the porch and Todd started talking to him about Harleys and guns and drugs, and gradually Steve became less manic and left. Todd left too. I don’t remember what, if anything, he said when he left. No doubt he left rolling his eyes and thinking, “Women!” You know what I mean? Like I had come running to him to kill a spider I’d found in the bathtub! But Katie, no matter what Todd thought, I know Steve was quite capable of killing all three of us that day. It’s possible that the incident took a little of the edge off of my hating him for prior bad acts.
Well, that episode took a little too much out of me emotionally so I’d better stop for now. I love you and always miss you.
January 18th, 1999
Katie, I had no idea where this would take me when I started writing. I’ve been seriously amazed and disturbed by a lot of it. It makes me laugh and cry and I do hope it’s important to you someday. I know your aunt Carol has commented at times that she wished our ancestors had kept journals.
By the end of the summer of 1970, we had all pretty much deserted Harvard Street. Joe and I moved in to a sort of commune on South Street. We had only been there for a short time when I began feeling the need to communicate with your grandmother and confess to her that I was living in sin with Joe. Seriously! Sexual partners living together these days is as common as dirt, but when I decided to announce to your grandmother that Joe and I were co-habitating I had to write her a letter, and I didn’t know if I’d ever hear from her again! I’m not sure why I cared, really; she had been such an evil bitch at times when I was growing up. But by the time Joe and I moved away from the cockroach infested Harvard Street/opium den, I may have become so mentally and physically unhealthy that my little psyche was screaming, “Mommy! Help me!”
Now, you and I have had long conversations about your grandmother, so I’m sure I must have told you how puritanical she seemed to be while I was growing up. Well Katie, imagine my reaction when she shows up at my doorstep, all hugs and kisses and asking when Joe and I are going to be getting married! Oh Man! I had no thoughts about marriage to him, but his reaction was pretty much Joe’s reaction to everything,”Sounds good to me.” I mean, everything sounded good to him . . . well, except staying sober. So the next thing I knew, I was agreeing. I’d accepted the idea that Todd would never marry me, and I guess it didn’t matter to me who I married. (We were at the tale end of the societal norm that said girls out of high school or college should be looking for a husband—-any husband.)
(Your grandma, 1970.)
It might help if I elaborated a little on the way life was at that time—or at least my theory on why life was so crazy.
You might think that when you hear stories about the 60’s and 70’s that the “hippie” lifestyle was not dissimilar from the way many of your friends live today, i.e., polygamy, communes, marijuana, loose morals, etc. But I think the difference in the 60’s was that what we were experiencing was--evolutionary? We were experimenting with everything; I don’t just mean drugs, though obviously there was a lot of that, but those of us who embraced this lifestyle also embraced the mottos: live and let live; do your own thing; if it feels good, do it., etc. Pretty much today’s equivalent of ‘it’s all good.’ Our parents were absolutely appalled! They were at an utter loss as to what to say or what to do. I’m not kidding; adults, including your grandmother, were just flabbergasted. Sometimes I think the only thing that kept them from having their children locked up is that most of us seemed to be so happy and full of love for everything and everyone. I mean, what do you say to the police? “I want you to arrest my child. He loves me and gave me a flower!” For a while anyway, we really allowed ourselves to bask in the glow of loving everyone without prejudging them, including the adults and straight people (“Straight” back then meant: not a hippy). Anyone who walked into our apartment on Harvard Street was automatically loved and trusted and we always assumed the feeling was mutual. And we really believed we were invincible. No kidding, Katie; I had some acid experiences back then that truly made me feel that I could ‘discorporate,’ and that we could ‘go into the light’ at will.
(One of my more memorable acid experiences; I turned into a
blastocyst for a while. Quite exciting.)
As time went by I suppose the ‘glow’ wore off and many of us started becoming hardened to the realities of living in a larger part of society; you know--the part that says you have to punch a time clock and show up at a specific location 40 hours a week. And gradually we seemed to stop feeling that bliss; we became confused; sometimes we were cruel and thoughtless. Some of us did things to each other that by today’s standards would have landed us in jail. Maybe we became angry because our never ending life of “peace, love, and rock & roll” was crumbling away. Christmas morning was over; time to throw away the wrapping paper. It was during those last days of the counterculture that your biological father became someone I hardly recognized. He was quiet and angry, but I kept on believing I might still be able to find the boy I fell in love with hiding inside him. The night you were conceived was one of those nights.
You know, especially by today’s standards, I was extremely naïve back then. Well, now wait a minute! It wasn’t just me; a lot of girls were naïve back then. In those days (Jesus, I sound like Grandma Moses.) we accepted sexual behavior that we may have suspected was inappropriate or even believed was downright wrong, but we didn’t talk about it. And I think most of us were afraid if we shared our feelings about the way a boy treated us sexually the listener might laugh, or say, “What? Why are you making such a big deal over that? Everybody does it.” So I suppose a huge difference between then and now is that we really didn’t always communicate well enough. Hell, I think the only ‘talk’ show was Phil Donahue, and the topics were WAY controlled; like, Should You Allow Your Child to Have a Phone in His Room? But, anyway, I hope that gives you a better idea of the way things were—-for me, anyway, and I hope my description of what was happening 30 years ago allows you to take some pity on me for being such a moron.
And with that, I’ll stop for a while. This is really hard work remembering all that crap! But you’re worth a lot of hard work. And, as you’ve heard from me all the years I’ve been sober, I owe you. And I love you.
January 21st, 1999
I’m back. Ron’s been sleeping nearly all day. Jesus, I wish he’d take his ‘small hemoglobin’ and do what he does best—-go fishing somewhere. My bad! I love him! I swear to God! Why? Again, no man can say.
Okay, back to South Street and Joe.
So your grandmother said, “Here’s $20. Go get married.” Well, I guess it cost a little more than that, but believe me; things were a lot cheaper back then. It makes me sick to think about it. Anyway, Joe barely had a job; I had no job, but I guess your grandmother didn’t care as long as I was married to the person with whom I was ‘shacked-up.’ I’m really not sure what her motives were, to tell you the truth. I mean, Joe was the next best thing to a bum. I can’t believe I didn’t appear to her at that time to be someone who was horrified to put one foot in front of the other; that’s the way I felt at the time. But she picked us up and took us to the court house to get a license.
By that time Joe and I had moved two houses up from where we’d been living. We were occupying the 2nd story of a house on the corner of South and Brown. (I know I’ve already told you a lot of these things but, hey, you might forget, and when you’re 105 you can read it to your great-great-grandchildren. You can say, “Gather ‘round children, and hear the story of my fudged-up mother.”)