Months later, in New York: The room was dimly lit. My father sat in a rocking chair. I said, “Dad, we have to talk about how you raped me.”
He said, “Raped you? You mean when we made love?” And that statement, more than anything, captures my father. He wasn’t a liar. He wasn’t in denial. He didn’t try to blame me. None of the tricks or excuses you’d expect an abuser to make. He simply lived without rules. If sex happened, and nobody protested, it was consensual. If sex happened between a father and a daughter, and nobody protested, there was no problem. If it felt good, it could be done, and if nobody put a stop to it, it could happen again, and again, as often and whenever it was convenient for him.
So I made Florida into the only kind of memory that was bearable—a bad dream. And in some ways that was all it was. Are the mistakes that you make real when they take place under extreme influences? If you fix them, undo them, ignore them, can you make them disappear?
I went back to work, and Peter and I met at the Chateau during a lunch break. We decided to get back together. I returned to the studio relieved. I belonged with Peter. I called Jeff to tell him it was over.
That night I went to another James Taylor concert with Peter. We were backstage at the Forum when the familiar call came. Betsy wanted to come backstage, so I had to leave. I went back to the Chateau, really pissed off. If I’d hoped my dalliance with Jeff would fix this part of our relationship, I was wrong. I was hanging out with my dear friend Rick Marotta when Peter called to say that he had to go to Betsy’s place after the show because she was upset. It was already late; I’d been waiting for Peter for hours. Rick saw what a state I was in. He pursed his lips thoughtfully and said, “You gotta do what you gotta do. I don’t see this changing.”
I waited up late for Peter to come home that night. We went to bed angry and the next day I left for work before he woke up. After work, I headed to Malibu because Peter and I were taking a helicopter to a gig in Irvine. On the way I stopped in Venice Beach, where Jeff was staying with a friend. I wanted to give him the last of his stuff—a pair of shoes that he’d left at my house in the canyon. When I came into the Venice bungalow, Jeff said, “Marry me.”
We were cokeheads, craving the rush of drama and control. A spontaneous wedding—what could be a brasher display of our renegade spirit? It didn’t really matter who Jeff was or whether I imagined us together forever. Jeff was intense and passionate and made it absolutely clear that he wanted to be with me. I was still angry at Peter for the previous night, and here, standing before me, was revenge. Or the antidote. I didn’t know which I wanted or which was driving me. It didn’t matter. I said, “If you want to marry me you have to marry me right now.”
“Come in,” he said.
We looked in the phone book and found a place that would marry us that night. Jeff was staying in his friend Michael’s apartment. We asked Michael to stand as our witness; the three of us got in my car and we drove away. The chapel, if you can call it that, was a little backyard garden next to the airport in Inglewood. I was wearing skinny jeans, a gray cashmere sweater of Peter’s with a T-shirt underneath, and red satin tennis shoes. There were deafening jetliners zooming overhead. The minister broke up his words to let the planes pass: “Do you take … this man, Jeff Sessler, to be your … lawfully wedded husband?” It was slow going, but we finally got through the ceremony. The minister said, “I now pronounce you man and wife. Ms. Phillips, may I have your autograph?”
It wasn’t exactly a dream wedding, but Jeff and I thought getting married was hilarious. Our families, my managers, everyone wanted us to do one thing and we were doing the opposite. We loved bucking expectations.
I was married, but nobody knew I was married except Jeff, our witness Michael, and my fan the minister. Then Peter called. He wanted to see me. After work I went over to the Chateau, to the penthouse where I’d lived with him. I came into the apartment and as we said hello I slid my hand behind my bag, hiding the diamond band, a ring I’d already owned, that was now on my ring finger. Peter said, “I see your hand, you know.”
I said, “Yeah, I married Jeff.”
Peter paused; he took both my hands in his and looked into my eyes. He said, “I wish you would understand that the night I got home from being with Betsy I finally asked her for a divorce. You left while I was sleeping. I was going to ask you to marry me.” Bullshit. My heart flip-flopped, because I was nineteen and I loved him and I wanted to believe him. But he wasn’t saying “Leave Jeff, because I want to marry you.” He was saying “Now that you’re married to someone else, I can torture us both with the pretense of devotion.”
In my father’s already dramatic life this was a notably insane period. He and Genevieve were now living in Newport Beach, California. His friends were trying to keep Dad and Gen off smack, but whenever my brother and I visited they were all high. So much for reliable sponsors. Dad had somehow gotten his hands on my limo account and charged thousands of dollars on it. Dad and Gen fought constantly—she hit Dad over the head, on separate occasions, with a guitar and a baseball bat. Michelle and Aunt Rosie were so worried about my brother, Tam, who was only nine years old, that they went to court and Michelle got custody. My father and Gen were soon to kidnap Tam back and flee across the country, but before they did so Dad somehow got it together to throw Jeff and me a reception.
Dad rented John Wayne’s yacht, the Wild Goose, for a twenty-four-hour wedding bash. We sent out invitations that Genevieve helped design. They were black and white with pressed wildflowers and fancy, cursive script. They weren’t exactly my style—I always liked thin, deco-y thirties fonts—but it didn’t matter.
Tons of people came to the party. I wore a gauzy mauve dress. Dad held court in a white captain’s hat and a double-breasted blue blazer with brass buttons and insignia on it. My mom was there, my cousins Patty and Nancy, Aunt Rosie, and a bunch of Jeff’s friends from Florida. Michelle even let Tam and Chynna come.
It was a wild party, a blast, with drugs, sex, music, and booze. There was champagne and excellent food. We were out on the water, on a beautiful yacht. Racer, a band that Jeff was friends with, set up on the deck and started playing seventies rock. I sang with the band, and as my dad somehow recalled for his book, apparently Jeff and I made love in John Wayne’s stateroom. We probably did. What I remember more vividly was that John Wayne had only died a couple months earlier and all of his personal effects were still in the stateroom. His clothes were in the drawers. His toothbrush was in the bathroom. His prescription pill bottles were in the medicine cabinet. He wouldn’t be needing those anymore. I wanted to steal one as a souvenir, but it didn’t seem right.
At some point my father said, “Excuse me, dear. I’m going to go downstairs and abuse the Zulu.” That would be Genevieve, who was very into Zulu culture.
After the party, there were piles of wedding gifts that we somehow managed to cart up to my house in Laurel Canyon. My mother-in-law, Liz, stayed at my house to cat-sit Brains, the one cat I’d brought with me from Beachwood Canyon, while Jeff and I went on a honeymoon to Hawaii.
In Hawaii Jeff and I ordered room service and picked the most exotic food on the menu. We rented a cabana every day, sipped tropical drinks, and had races in the pool. Jeff put all the umbrellas from the tropical drinks in his hair and I adored him. I loved that goofiness. We made love all the time. We were perfectly matched sexually and had great fun in bed. It wasn’t kinky as it had been with Peter, just pure passion. Jeff and I had a real connection. There was something about him that made me willing to throw away everything I had with Peter.
No matter how impromptu and misguided our union, we were really happy … for those first few days. Then we were in our hotel room watching the Pineapple Bowl on TV when the station broke in with a special report. There was a fire in Laurel Canyon. They announced that my house was on the damaged list. The honeymoon was over.
Jeff and I caught the next plane home. The band REO Speedwagon was in first class with us an
d the lead singer, Kevin Cronin, tried to help Jeff comfort me. I drank cognac from Hawaii to LAX. We took a limo back to Laurel Canyon. It was nighttime, and as we drove up the winding road of the canyon we saw bright flames shooting into the sky. We drove until the police stopped us. There were fire engines everywhere. They wouldn’t allow cars up the small winding canyon road, so we climbed out of the limo and ran up toward the house. I prayed that it would still be standing. As we approached my driveway I breathed a sigh of relief. The house next door was still there!
We ran on—but mere yards away, the lot where my house had stood was completely empty, a pile of charred wreckage. My house was gone. My mother-in-law had escaped just in time, but my cat, Brains, was lost and all my possessions were ashes. There was nothing left standing except the dishwasher and the fireplace.
Jeff and I checked into a penthouse suite at the Chateau Marmont—the same suite where I had tried coke for the first time and where I had lived with Peter Asher. All I had left were the few clothes I’d taken with me on my honeymoon—shorts, flip-flops, some T-shirts, a light dress—and a husband whose true (dark) colors would soon emerge. Everything was gone. I took stock of all that I’d lost. My beloved cat, Brains, was never seen again. The new wedding gifts were the least sentimental items— they were still in their boxes. But I’d been the family archivist. I had my sister Chynna’s bronzed baby shoes, a classic record collection, the Madame Alexander dolls that my mother gave me every year. Genevieve’s five-hundred-year-old wedding jacket, countless photos and negatives. All my diaries, including the big silver one that I turned to in my father’s flat on Glebe Place when he and Keith Richards forgot about me. It never occurred to me that as a newlywed I might have found enough joy and happiness in another person to overcome the material loss. Jeff was fun to frolic with, but he wasn’t that man. I was truly destroyed. Jeff and I went to score coke that same night, and in the weeks that followed I snorted mountains of cocaine. Oblivion was how I dealt with shit. With the help of coke I disappeared into myself for a long time after the fire.
We eventually rented a lonely house above the strip on Franklin Canyon Drive. Since we had no dishes or furniture, we rented it fully furnished. Some time after the fire I went back to the ruins of my house. I found slips of charred paper, a melted bowling ball, and one of the roller skates Peter had given me for my nineteenth birthday, with its wheels grotesquely melted. I took the dishes out of the dishwasher. No matter how many times I reminded myself that most of the loss was only material, the fire felt bigger than that. The sum was greater than the parts. It was a devastating blow, and a bad omen for the marriage.
14
When I came back to One Day at a Time after my honeymoon, I didn’t show my castmates photos of Hawaii, and they didn’t congratulate me. The fire, which had been all over the news, overwhelmed the rest—and none of them were exactly enthusiastic about Jeff anyway. I’d married him so quickly, and those who met him saw only his obnoxious side. They expressed their sympathy about the fire, and I thanked them, but I was distant. I was traumatized; the impermanence of everything weighed heavily on me. I’d put a statue of St. Francis of Assisi in the front courtyard of the house to protect my cat, and if even St. Francis couldn’t protect poor Brains, then I couldn’t count on anyone to protect me. I should have felt safe in the arms of people who knew and loved me. Instead, my drug use escalated, as if the fire were still burning, destroying whatever lay in its path.
The house in the hills became a major drug hangout. The scene was reminiscent of my father’s mansions growing up. The digs weren’t so luxurious, but I had a great deal of money, and Jeff and I spent it on shitloads of drugs. Perhaps not surprisingly, it turns out that free-flowing drugs attract a pretty nasty crowd. There were always ten or more people partying in our house, but whereas my dad’s friends had been stoned and mellow, our friends were freebasing like crazy. Half-strangers crawled around on the floor, smoking bits of the carpet, picking stray rice kernels out of corners, hoping they might be crumbs of base.
I was still friendly with Linda Ronstadt, who was now dating Governor Jerry Brown. They dropped by once. I was in the upstairs living room with a bunch of the usual suspects. There was an open stairway, and as people came up the stairs their heads would appear in the room over a ledge. As I sat there in the living room I saw Jerry’s head pop up above the short wall like a little gopher. He looked around, saw the scene, and his head retreated right back down the stairs.
We often flew to my dear father-in-law’s drug clinic in Florida to stock up on pills. On one of these occasions Jeff and I were photographed outside our hotel. The photo was published in the Enquirer, and it was less than flattering. I looked like Keith Richards on a bad day. So burnt out—gaunt and weird— I didn’t even look like a girl. Size zero was loose on me. I didn’t like the photo or the bad press that followed it, but what was I supposed to do—change? That wasn’t an option.
I still thought I was having fun. In the beginning, in spite of the drugs, Jeff and I behaved like a couple of kids in love. But the money and the drugs started to affect Jeff. He had been struggling financially. When we got married, he suddenly had access to an unending supply of cash. Jeff just spent and spent and spent. There was often a three-foot line of cocaine running down the mirrored wet bar. We hemorrhaged money on drugs, travel, hotels, cars, and musical equipment. I paid for everything. Pat McQueeney and her daughter Kathleen, who were managing my affairs, told me that the outflow was too high and I was going to go broke. They kept telling us to stop spending, but I didn’t pay attention.
Jeff also started to be more possessive. At first he’d just ask, “Where are you going?” and I’d say, “I’m going to buy bras— why? Do you want to come with me?” The questions grew more intense, but the change was gradual and I didn’t notice right away.
Jeff dreamed of being a rock ’n’ roll producer, so we started a band. I was the lead singer. But I still had my job at One Day at a Time, which was just starting its fifth season. So I worked on the show from ten to five every day, then went into the recording studio with Jeff and the band from evening till dawn. The schedule fueled my habit. I was so tired during the day that I had to do coke to stay up, then so tired at night that I’d do even more. I felt like a wind-up doll.
Patricia Fass Palmer, a producer on the show, saw me weaving and bouncing down the hall. Alan Rafkin, the director, said I was “wonderfully easy, but when [I] was under the influence and talking to a wall … it wasn’t registering.”
I couldn’t go on like this. Jack Elinson and Dick Bensfield, the executive producers of One Day at a Time, called me into their office for a meeting. It sounded like I was being called into the principal’s office—though I never had been, not even in the days when I showed up at junior high on acid. I sat down in the office across from Dick’s desk and they cut to the chase. They said, “You’re looking tired. We’re going to give you a sabbatical. Take some time for yourself. Put on a little weight. Get well. Come back in three weeks.” Things were different then. They didn’t say “We know you’re taking drugs” and send me to rehab as they might now. Rehab wasn’t in the news every day. I was a pioneer celebrity kid drug addict, and nobody knew what to do with me. They didn’t know, and I didn’t know.
I felt bad, just as I’d always felt bad when I disappointed Aunt Rosie by staying out late. So during the time off I cleaned up my act—stayed away from coke, got my teeth cleaned and my hair cut and colored, and bought some new clothes. Three weeks later I came back: “Ta-da!” They said, “Oh, you look great,” and the show went on.
In October 1979 I came back to One Day at a Time and found out that while Julie and I were gone from the show, we’d fallen in love. I was introduced to Michael Lembeck, who would play Julie’s husband. Michael was so handsome, so funny, so sexy. A perfect husband for Julie. I loved him immediately, and loved his wife too. I didn’t socialize regularly with anybody from the show, but Michael and Barbara had me over for
dinner a couple of times. My character and I were married months apart, but Julie the rebel cleaned up for her big day. She wore a white lacy wedding dress with a high neck, a brooch, and a hat. I had worn red satin tennis shoes. And that was just the most obvious difference. By now my life was so far removed from Julie’s that any parallels in our lives were lost on me.
I came back to the show with renewed energy. I didn’t want to disappoint anybody. But weeks later, without thinking of it as a lapse or a failure, I was back to using again. Val says she saw me on the monitor, standing on the set, nodding off, unable to keep my eyes open. She stood there thinking, Please, somebody help her. Even my cousin Nancy, who had partied with me plenty, said, “Everyone wanted the best for her. But she was so sure that what she was doing was right. She was an independent, grown-up person.” I didn’t think I had a problem. I certainly didn’t think of myself as an addict. I just continued to live the way I wanted to live, regardless of what anyone else wanted me to do. Same as I had done with Aunt Rosie.
It was the beginning of 1980. I was twenty and about to face one fucker of a year. It began with my grandmother. Dini was very sick. She’d had a stroke and was in the hospital, dying. My father and Gen were off the map—soon after my wedding party on the Wild Goose they’d fled to the East Coast with Tam. Nobody knew exactly where they were and Michelle and Rosie, who had temporary legal custody, had reported them to the LAPD, who turned the case over to the FBI. It was a messy, painful situation and it is Tam’s story, not mine. But when I went to see Dini, I asked Aunt Rosie, “Have you called Dad?” She said, “To hell with him. He doesn’t care. He won’t show up.” Rosie, Michelle, my mother—they were all mad at Dad and Gen for leaving with Tam and for what had happened between Dad and me in Florida. These women—strong, loving women who made a practice of forgiving my father—were angry at last. They had been wronged many times in many ways, but now they saw his children being wronged and they couldn’t accept it. It was unforgivable. I said, “She’s his mother! You think he’s fucked up now—just wait until his mother dies without us telling him.”
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