Part 1: New Jersey to California and Back
17th Street, Newark, NJ: family home, September 1941
We live on the third floor of a three-story house. I only remember the back yard and the front stoop. When we get chickens for pets one year, we drop one out the window to see if it can fly. In the summer we take excursions down the shore. My father teaches me to ride my first two-wheel bicycle.
21 Beechwood Place, Irvington, NJ: family home, 1949
My father sells his car and takes the bus to work in order to buy this two-story house with three bedrooms, one bathroom, a basement and an attic for the eight of us to live. I play school with my two little sisters. I learn ping-pong, tennis, and cards from my older brothers. I take my dog Lucky on long walks in the woods with my best friend, Anne. She and I take oil-painting lessons from a local artist.
University of Southern California, Los Angeles: dormitory, 1959-60
I start out as a math major the first semester and then switch to art. My painting teacher asks me, “Where did you learn to paint like that?” I lose my virginity and get drunk. I fall in love and see Tijuana and Disneyland.
Irvington, NJ: family home, summer 1960.
I come home for the summer and show my parents a photo of the 31-year-old man back in LA that I’m planning to marry. I get a job as a secretary at a law firm in Newark. I meet up with an old friend, Ray, who is home from Brown for the summer. Ray and I hang out and fall in love, but I don’t tell the man I am supposed to marry back in LA.
Los Angeles, CA, September 1960
Ray goes back to Brown in the fall and I go to LA because I have said I would—not to USC, which I have quit because it isn’t my kind of place—but to live in an apartment with two other girls as I’ve promised to. Ray calls me every day. The man I was supposed to marry asks me to sleep with him once for old time’s sake, and I don’t know how to say no.
Irvington, NJ: family home, October 1960
One of my brothers lends me the money to fly home to NJ. I get my old job back at the law firm. Ray comes home from Brown for the holidays and we break up. I start dating Joe, who works part time at the law firm. Joe’s best friend is John. We hang out all the time with him and his girlfriend in John’s parents’ basement.
Cheap furnished apartment at the Jersey shore with 2 girlfriends, summer 1961
Before I move down the shore, I invite John to come visit me there. I try three different waitressing jobs and fail at all of them. John comes to visit and spends the night. I go home to my parents’ house on the back of his motorcycle on Sunday morning for Father’s Day. My mother throws me out of the house.
East Orange, NJ: cheap furnished studio apartment, August 1961
I find a temp office job and use my first paycheck to buy sheets for the bed. One morning a cockroach falls on my naked body when I pull the shower curtain aside to step into the tub. I have my last bad sex with Joe on that bed.
Orange, NJ: larger cheap furnished studio apartment, September 1961
John spends most nights with me here, but doesn’t actually move in. We shoot up heroin together. I start classes at Cooper Union art school. One weekend I go skiing with two of my brothers in the Catskills. It’s a relief from worrying about paying the rent and my car falling apart.
Irvington, NJ: family home, November 1961
I am out of money. My mother lets me move back home. I carpool to Cooper Union with three kids from Newark. Big Bad John is a hot song then, and the carpool sings it to refer to my John, who got out of federal prison shortly before I met him and then goes to state prison for three months on a drug bust. That summer I get a typing job and keep working part time when school starts again. I break up with John when the weight of his heroin addiction finally sinks in.
(to be continued)
