Looking back at 1982 Jan. 5, 1986
Looking back, I realize 1982 began with a dream coming out
of the wreckage of school and a job.
I had the foolish
notion I could make a living as a writer rather than a baker, truck driver, Fotomate
or warehouse worker.
It was the same dream I had back in November 1978 after I got
fired from the wine import company (a whole story in itself) and looked ahead
to a life as an artist.
But in 1982, things were even more miserable. I had just
come off a horrible Christmas season. My always suicidal uncle, Rich, had disappeared
– something possibly predictable after his antics on Thanksgiving when I forced
him to come south with me to Toms River because I didn’t trust to leave him
alone and he tried to run away – leaving his brother’s house without shoes or
jacket, cops catching him walking along the highway perhaps for home.
When I finally brought him home, he ran away again, and I
couldn’t find him. I thought he was dead, although I searched and searched the
riverside where he might have camped out among the homeless, only to eventually
get a call from Graystone Hospital and learned he had been admitted there after
another suicide attempt near the river.
The cops found him perched on shore apparently contemplating
a repeat of his suicide attempt from a year or so earlier, and they got him
into the patrol car before he could make the leap.
My career as a freelance writer lasted all of one month as college
fell apart and I was forced to take up a job at Fotomat.
About a month later, I met Safire for the first time, without
a clue as to what the future between us would bring.
For the most part, the year seemed positive especially in
regard to my relationship with my ex-wife.
A year earlier, I had called Scranton phone information on a
whim, and discovered Louise had returned from the West Coast. After sweet talking
the operator, I got her to call the unlisted number and give Louise my number
for her to call back. In January 1982, I sent her and my daughter a check since
they seemed to be struggling. We were on reasonably good terms after years of
disharmony, and we communicated pretty often over the first few months of the
year. And yet, I got strange sense of desperation from my ex-wife, something she
was not telling me. So, on July 4, 1982, I drove out to Scranton meet up with
them after a decade separation. We had met during that decade but always on
hostile terms, my insisting on visitation rights Louise did not want to give
me, and when a court finally awarded them to me, Louise took off for the west
coast, making visitation impossible. Now, in 1982, she seemed open to seeing me,
and in fact, when we met, they agreed to come back to Passaic with me, and then
back to Pennsylvania for a camping trip.
But I kept getting the feeling Louise was scared of
something, not me, something else. We stopped at Bertrand’s Island on the way to
Passaic, where Pauly and Rick held a party, then continued on to Paterson to
meet with Mary Ann and Johnny.
It was during a second trip a few weeks later, I discovered
the ugly truth, and why Louise was so scared. She was working as a prostitute
and faced serious issues with the law as well as her pimp. She was terrified
she would lose our daughter.
At one point, I confronted the pimp, and he apparently left
her alone after that. Somehow, she managed to get out from under the thumb of
the law, so by September when we took a trip to the Renaissance Festival in New
York State, things had calmed down for her again.
After this, I met Fran and made less frequent trips to Pennsylvania.
Earlier in the year, while still estranged from Louise, I
attended the wedding of a college friend, Cathy, where I met Doreen, who became
a brief sexual interest, nothing romantic, yet certainly intense, voiding the
need to find satisfaction in trips to New York City.
Or as Paul Simon once put it, I sometimes took some comfort
there.
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