Take Another Little Piece of My Heart: A Groupie Grows Up

by Des Barres, Pamela

  Nick chose that moment to roar at his two pals over a supposed slight, the wrong kind of glance from one boy to the other. He accused them of complicity, ganging up on him. He was yelling, cursing, tears spurting, his face red. One boy went home and left Nick and T.J. alone, and it got a little better, but not before Jaid Barrymore caught a glimpse of the edgy situation. She pulled a piece of paper out of her purse and jotted down a number. “Call these ASAP guys, I’m telling you.” I saw Ariana out of the corner of my eye, watching, listening. Smiling.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I

  The very next night Lynn took me to a sixties throwback club called English Acid. It had been awhile since I penciled in red lips to wade through a steamy, sweaty rock-and-roll jungle. The thick atmosphere was exhilarating; I felt skin-prickling alive and verging on dangerous. We were there, Lynn had told me, to see “Jimmy.” “Jimmy?” I asked. “Who’s Jimmy?” Lynn sighed, exasperated by my obvious ignorance. “Jimmy Thrill, the lead singer in Rattlesnake Shake. The cute blond boy I brought yesterday.” Oh, him! The gaze I was getting when Nick erupted into flames. In a flash I remembered those dusty, come-hither hazel eyes.

  Walking into English Acid was sort of like a ride Nicky and I went on at Knott’s Berry Farm—Timothy E. Leery’s Time Tunnel—all black light and trippy-hippie. The kid and I had gone to see our friend Elvira strut her scary, sexy stuff on Halloween, and we wandered into the Time Tunnel, a psycho-delic maze, complete with David Crosby almost cutting his hair and Grace Slick begging us to “go ask Alice.” I was dumbfounded. “I can’t believe it’s come to this,” I mumbled while Nick laughed his ass off at the slogans: FLOWER POWER, DROP OUT, TUNE IN, and a giant WHY? hot-pinked across a fake brick wall. I had scrawled a huge “WHY?” over my entire poetry book in 1966. It had been the question of the decade. I felt like my eyeballs were spinning one way, then the other on uncontrollable stems, like that time I had smoked way too much pot in Captain Beefheart’s backyard. They even spelled Jimi Hendrix wrong—Jimmy Hendrix—a simulated sacrilege. Is this Owsley’s purple or Memorex? The experience left me gasping for air. Nick ran off to get a glow necklace and a funnel cake while I stood there in a stupor remembering the real thing. Peace and love, brother, sister.

  The whole sixties culture has been chewed up, eaten, and assimilated into the nineties, where it assumes mythical proportions. Almost like it never happened at all, like maybe George Orwell or Aldous Huxley wrote the entire decade into a blockbuster best-seller that has stayed on the list for twenty-five years. So many of the heroes are dead, the music is considered “classic,” and my friends from the love-ins have gone the way of the saber-toothed tiger. ’Scuse me while I kiss the sky. Have the hippies merged into the society they spurned and spat upon? A whole lot of them have. I see them peering out of tinted office building windows, mutilated mouths stretched wide. The silent screamers. But that night at English Acid a sixties rehash was very much alive and flowering. It’s fascinating to see the rock boys and girls attempting to resemble me and mine when we were peaking and freaking out on the Sunset Strip. I don’t know whether to feel proud, haughty, or petrified. At least I never became a silent screamer.

  Lynn and I squished into a booth next to a throwback couple who probably live in their VW van and gaze daily at a Peter Max calendar from 1969. When I apologized for the tight fit, the bearded guy with the beaded headband said, “Cool, man.” I can dig it. I ordered a seabreeze from a pissed-off, chunky frizz-pot when two young girls bathed in black giggled up to the table to tell me that I had validated their existence. I’ve looked at people the way those girls looked at me that night—sort of through the eyelashes, head down, breathless, and ecstatic. Gee, thanks, dolls!

  I had been sweating next to the mellow couple for about forty-five minutes when through the smoky haze I saw Jimmy Thrill walking toward me. The lust-adrenaline snapped right out of hibernation and did a little dance of joy up and down my spine. He was wearing a black fedora, a jacket full of studs, skin-super-tight flared black jeans, and a lazy, totally unself-conscious, shining bright smile. His walk was a cross between a slink, a strut, and a swagger. I saw stars. I saw the rings around Saturn. That God-sent sensation is always unexpected and profound, shattering the serenity like a starry-stellar hacksaw. When matchmaker Lynn jumped up so Jimmy could sidle in next to me, I didn’t know what to expect. He looked at me from under his hat through streaky, shiny blond hair. “I had a dream about you last night,” he said, which was an age-old yet bewitching line. ”You were leading a meeting, telling a whole crowd of people that all the answers they were looking for were inside themselves.”

  Wow. Did he have my number, or what? Then a booming voice announced Rattlesnake Shake, and he was writhing around onstage—sweating, dripping, wailing—stripping off most of his clothes within minutes and swan-leaping into the audience with no caution, no fear, no shame. Unabashed, unapologetic, and totally uninhibited, he was so refreshing in this uptight, sheathed, just-so George-Michael (no offense) MTV world. We need more wild boys and girls. During the encore I tore out a check stub with my number on it, handed it to Jimmy’s friend, Spidey, and left without good-byes.

  II

  The next day, after Nick had been dreadful all morning and had gone grumpily off to school, I was sitting around with Ariana, having one of our soul-to-soul digathons, when she very casually said, “I think I’ll stay an extra day so I can go with you to see what that ASAP program is all about.” Oh no. Everything stopped. All I could hear was somebody’s lawn mower whirring in the distance. Ariana must have had a flash. She had previously agreed with me that Nick needed to be home, so what was up? I had been attending “Tough Love” meetings like she suggested—but she had seen a lot in the few days surrounding the barbecue. She had witnessed the frantic outburst with his friends, and the evening before I had asked Nick to do something and he said a simple “No.” Without any excuses, whining, conniving, he just refused me. I told him there would be a consequence, and he said, “I don’t care.” He was nonplussed, unmoved, his face a blank mask—and it had sent a dark squiggle of fear through me.

  But I still couldn’t face what needed to be looked at until Ariana took the moo-cow by the udders. “How about calling ASAP today?” she asked sweetly. Grasping at straws, I decided to call Nick’s teacher first, to see if she thought he might need a live-in program. Please say no. Very quickly she conceded that it was a good idea. “Someone has to get through to Nick, and I can’t seem to do it. He’s begging for help.” I put down the phone and stared across the room, feeling my face droop. I had been living with Nick’s behavior for so long I didn’t realize—I didn’t want to realize—that his troubles had surpassed my ability to make them all better. Could he really need to get away from me for awhile? No. Please. I felt like running into the ocean, jumping off the highest mountain. I couldn’t look at it, didn’t want to see. Wasn’t love enough?

  Instead of running anywhere, I called the ASAP program and brought Nick’s Aunt Ariana along to scope the joint. It looked like a little boardinghouse—not at all foreboding or medical, but sort of homey, kooky, comfortable. Since it was a twelve-step program, drugs were used as a last resort, and a lot of emphasis was placed on staying clean and sober. Of course, Nick had never been near drink or drugs, but an AA concept certainly couldn’t hurt, considering Nick’s obsessive-compulsive tendencies and possible genetic overload. Nutty-looking teenagers with Led Zeppelin T-shirts ate lunch in the cafeteria or played Ping-Pong on the patio. I saw a stream of pubescents troop off to group therapy behind a giant white-haired man with several earrings in each ear. There was a well-stocked arts-and-crafts room where, hopefully, Nick would create a few masterpieces. Some of the kids were actually laughing.

  One of the counselors, Betty, empathized with my indecision, and told me to call her husband, Dallas Taylor, for more information. Dallas Taylor. He used to play drums with Crosby, Stills and Nash, and I remembered him as a massive drugged-out mess. Now h
e was serving his fellow freaks by counseling kids in trouble. What a small world! For once I didn’t feel so much like an alien adrift among the tight-assed, white-frocked stern-burns. Maybe these were cool people who might really understand.

  On the way back to the car I cried on Ariana’s shoulder as she told me how the place felt good to her. “They help people in there. They care, and they’re strong. They won’t give up,” she said, trying to soothe my heavy, thousand-pound heart. Could I be strong enough to send Nick away? Superwoman never had such a ferocious battle to wage. When we got back home, I bent down to pick up some shoes that Nick had kept neglecting to take to his room and pulled my back out. Pain screeched up my spine and I fell into a heap. As Ariana helped me to bed, her look implied that I should take this as a sign. The gargantuan problem had manifested in physical form. There was no time to waste.

  Michael remembered Dallas from AA meetings, and together we met him at Patrick’s Road House, where over uneaten eggs we poured out all our parental woes. Nick would be the youngest patient there, but ASAP had helped kids his age before. There would be one-on-one therapy with a guy called Tony, group therapy, family therapy, twelve-step meetings, and school. As we talked, an unspoken conviction passed between Michael and me like an electric current. Dallas encouraged us to start immediately. “It’s such a difficult decision, if you mull it over too much, you’ll talk yourselves right out of it.” So finally, sorrowfully, we made the plans with Dallas’s firm but gentle guidance. “You can’t tell Nick he’s going until the last minute. He might run, he’ll feel betrayed, he’ll beg and plead, he’ll tear you up with guilt. But be strong,” he told us over and over. “You’re doing the right thing.”

  On the chosen day our friend Ron Zimmerman arrived at eight to help Michael take Nick to ASAP. We had no idea how Nick was going to react, but I was certain I wouldn’t be in any shape to drive over the hill. I will always be grateful to Ron. He had been through a similar troubled childhood, saw the desperate need for assistance, and gallantly came to our rescue. I had already packed the bag Nick would take to the hospital: jammies, toothpaste, sets of clothes, books, a comb, a brush, shampoo (plastic containers only—no wristslitting glass allowed—this concept alone sent panicky pangs shuddering through me), a family photo, a shot of our three cats. I bawled the whole time. I was sifting through his precious possessions, my little boy’s things. He was so shy, so emotionally young, so dependent on me. He liked only certain foods, he liked to sleep with the light on. Would he be able to sleep at all in strange surroundings? With strange kids? Would he die of starvation? He was so shy he couldn’t even order an ice cream cone. How would he deal with the rowdy cafeteria full of problem children? How would he keep the knots out of his hair? I felt like I was in a coma, underwater. Michael and I had spent the night in sleepless misery, huddled together on the couch while the TV droned, the clock ticking unmercifully toward tomorrow.

  Eight-thirty came, the designated time to tell him. Bloodshot eyes, acid cups of coffee, Nick unknowingly gathering books, eating Rice Krispies. Lost in agony, I went to the bathroom to wash my face and I heard Nick scream, “No!! NO!!” I came rushing back out to see Nick’s horrified, uncomprehending face, “Mom! Mom! Don’t send me away! I won’t go, I refuse! How could you do this to me, you hate me!!! I’ll behave, I’ll do everything you ask!! Please, please, please, don’t send me away!!” He ran to his room, slammed the door—no way to lock it. He would have to be carried out. Michael and I looked at each other, horrified. How could this be happening? Ron and Michael wrestled him, kicking, screaming, pleading to the car. I trembled for Nicky, my sweet unhappy boy, thankful in my pangridden state for Michael’s stone-solid inner strength, so noble. On the way out the door, Nick shot me a beseeching look of supreme, betrayed outrage, and trying not to break down until he was out the door, I told him I loved him. I’m sure he didn’t believe me. I wept from an area of my being that I hadn’t even contemplated since September 30, 1978, the day Nick came howling out of my womb. I was moaning like an animal, baying at the moon—my baby taken from me.

  June 4, 1990—It was the second hardest day in my life, right next to the day my dad took his last pathetic breath.

  Michael called in a monotone shock state to tell me about the miserable ride, the check-in nightmare, and the pain in his heart. We cried, we told each other we were doing the right thing. My mom was equally in torment, almost uncomprehending the need for such an act. Once again she kept her faith in me and in my decision.

  I had one more session with Ariana before she went back to Las Vegas.

  “I am a young Indian girl tending to a birth in which the mother dies. Care of the newborn falls to me, and I am devoted to the baby, I bond with it, love it totally. When the father of the child returns from a long battle, I am forced to give him the toddler, and I go into a very deep depression.” Ariana asked me to see myself at the end of the lifetime, spinning back, spiraling through nontime. “I am a wise woman, soothsayer, story-teller. I never married. I sit in a circle with other Indian women and tell my stories, lessons, teaching them. One story I told and retold was about how I had to give up the baby, and how it taught me to let go of someone I loved for their higher good. Letting go with love.”

  III

  I was stupefied from the decision to take Nick to ASAP. I spent the next few days wandering around Nick’s room, perusing his baby photo albums, sitting and stewing about that terrible Monday morning (Monday, Monday—can’t trust that day) and the difficult weeks to come. When Jimmy Thrill called, I was mucked up in guilt and depression, my heart light-years away from the carefree promise of romance. But that Friday night one of my favorite off-kilter bands, the Havalinas, were playing. And maybe I was finally learning not to torture myself by dwelling too hard on the pointed-corner facts, because I started putting on my mascara.

  I moseyed around the Palace, adrift in my nearsightedness, too vain to strap on my eyewear, squinting into the smoke for a glimpse of my blond date. When you meet someone at a club, is it classified as a actual date, I wonder? After a few minutes of skittering nerves, Jimmy slink-strutted over to me as an unexpected geyser erupted in my center, and we watched the band together. Despite the inner lava, I danced and grooved, attempting flirty nonchalance, feeling his young heat next to me, not wanting to look at him too hard at the same time wanting to stare. How old was he, anyway? And how much did it matter? Upstairs at a small band party, I sat on Jimmy’s lap, leaning into him lightly, laughing with Lynn and Dan, feeling pretty and fetching, starlit and warm-blooded, but every so often warding off images of my little boy in chains like they were blows.

  I liked the way Jimmy could start up a conversation with anybody, so quick to smile, openhearted, open-minded but slightly secretive, like he knew something wild that nobody else could even fathom. We felt each other out, finding common ground. He was going to Japan next week with his band. Oh, I took my son to Japan. Be sure to see the giant Buddha, the mile of rock-and-roll bands with KISS makeup and two-foot pompadours. I took my son to Japan. My son, my darling son. I thought of him innocently eating Chicken McNuggets with his grandma, thinking he would be going to school on Monday. . . . Oh God, grant me the courage to accept the things I cannot change, to change the things I can . . .

  Jimmy kissed me that night—once, leaving me momentarily faint and startled by the depth of the tingle, the echo of his lips. The crazy boiling of my blood just wouldn’t stop. Jimmy Thrill was giving me a fever. What do you know? Expect the unexpected—one of my favorite truisms. He walked me to my car, where we stood for a long time. I pushed his platinum locks, shining white in the moonlight, away from questioning hazel eyes. What was in there for me?

  IV

  We weren’t allowed to call Nick for the first few days and had to rely on the counselors to tell us how it was going. We called every hour for the first few days, begging for a crumb of news. The first night he was away I didn’t think I would make it.

  The first
week he sat in on the required sessions without speaking—surly, detached, enraged, determined to prove he had been put in there by mistake. He was “restrained” more than once, strapped to a table, given pills to calm him down. He was so stubborn, given a choice he would opt for the hardest treatment. What was he trying to prove? Should we take him out? Go on like before? Try to cope? Desperate, I called Jaid, and she told me horror stories about Drew at ASAP. “You have to trust them, they know what they’re doing.” I worried about Nick’s spirit being broken, like the taming of a beautiful bucking bronco—a heavy saddle where freedom used to be. I hurt all over like my soul had been fried in crude oil.

  Nick called me on the hospital pay phone, but I wasn’t allowed to answer. Ten, twenty times a day the phone would ring with a collect call from the operator that I had to refuse. It was unbearable. Dallas told us to keep our answering machines on all the time. We all needed to detach a bit, said Tony, Nick’s new therapist with the white crew cut and all the earrings.

  Let go with love.

  Did a life-affirming turning point really loom around the corner? The first time we could talk to or see Nick was at that first group family meeting. I was gasping for breath, hanging onto a window ledge, but as we filed into the big room with several other sets of beleaguered parents and their angry, confused offspring, as corny as it sounds, I realized I was not alone. As Michael and I nervously sat down in the large circle of chairs, anxiously awaiting Nick’s appearance, Betty came up to us. “Nick is refusing to come to group. He doesn’t want to see you.” As our hopeful faces collapsed into putty muddles, she went on, “It’s normal. Most of the kids feel betrayed and are out to make their parents feel guilty, so don’t worry about it. He’ll come around.” Normal. That was encouraging, wasn’t it?