Last days with Suzanne 1981 Jan. 6, 1986
I go through this every holiday, looking back at what I did around
this time at another time, a backwards time machine.
Now I’m looking back at 1981 and realized that it was
another one of those bad dreams that eventually led me into real trouble.
I was with Suzanne then, and jobless, having just finished a
seasonal stink with Toys R Us during its Christmas rush.
I understood even then that whatever Suzanne and I had had no
longer existed.
Suzanne was never attracted to any individual person, but
always to a group, a dynamic, to me because of my association with Pauly, Garrick,
Hank and Rick, to her previous boyfriend because of that group he hung out with
during college, most of whom were part of the college’s theater department.
Me and my friends apparently were to serve as the replacements
after her graduation.
I resented it; so, on New Year’s Eve I refused to take her to
the navy base in South Jersey where Pauly’s band was playing.
This was not at all fair since Suzanne had let me – no insisted
– leave her on Christmas Eve so I could spend the traditional night with those
very friends.
Forced to see in the new year in her parent’s living room infuriated
Suzanne, a feeling that carried over after that night, and she felt abandoned
when I took a night job at the Dunkin Donuts on Union Avenue in Paterson.
I remember my car breaking down on the highway on my way to
work, forcing me to call her to rescue me. She showed up with her mother, and a
warning that this would be the last favor she would do for me.
On Easter, everything fell apart, the remoteness so obvious
I could not ignore it.
But it got worse, when she agreed to have dinner with me on
my birthday – although it was the last time. She didn’t want to spend time with
me. She wanted me to take her to meet with Pauly and the gang in Towaco. I got
angry, recalling an earlier visit during which she spent the whole time
flirting with Pauly in front of me.
I did not intend to repeat that humiliation. The whole thing
sent me into an emotional tail spin. I quit school; I quit my job at Dunkin,
only to later take a job at another Dunkin in Willowbrook.
In the middle of this, I inherited my suicidal uncle, who after
being thrown out of his apartment in Clifton, came to live with me. He had no
place else to go. None of the other relatives would have him.
I hated his living with me, feeling imposed upon, recalling
all those painful nights when I was a kid and he verbally abused me, a drunk
then, now gone psychotic, driving me just as crazy then as he had when I was
younger. He would wander off for days at a time; by Christmas, he had
completely vanished, and I spent the better part of the winter searching for
him, delving into every homeless encampment, though I secretly suspected he had
finally completed his act of suicide he had tried so many times before.
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