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

by Des Barres, Pamela

  VI

  The fact of Jimmy hit Michael hard at first. He went through some of what I had to endure during those miserable few months when he futzed around with the cosmic home wrecker three years earlier. But I was honest about my feelings for Jimmy, so there was no crap for him to wade through. I had come to respect Michael for who he really was; we had come so far together, and there was no need to conceal the truth from each other anymore. “I’m happy for you, Pammie, I’ll just have to deal with it.”

  Nick had gotten established at ASAP, decorating his room with Japanese animation posters and rehashed Led Zeppelin paraphernalia. His roommate Frank was a Zep devotee, which inspired Nick to request Houses of the Holy and a portable CD player, and Daddy complied. It was some sort of warped karma for me—my own son thought Jimmy Page was a guitar god—a definite case of “whodathunkit?” Nick was pissed because they made him chop the wires on the speakers down to three inches long so they couldn’t be used as a noose. Thank glory Nick had never pondered suicide. Whenever he regressed to rebellion and stubbornness, his CD player was taken away. Once it was locked in storage for three weeks. Many times he had to sit in his room while everybody else went to the Friday movie. They just weren’t taking his shit, and it was working.

  In therapy with Tony, Nick was putting names on his black fears, turning them into something he could work through and discard. Previously he had tried to stay invisible, cowering, keeping his vulnerable artistic innards well hidden. But at ASAP Nick had to deal with his peers constantly within an enclosed space—meetings, group sessions, breakfast, lunch, dinner, school, free time—with no escape. He was forced to communicate, and before long, his far-flung humor and unique perspective emerged and gained him adoring attention. I think it surprised him initially, then gave him some true self-appreciation. The change in him was a joy to behold. Being different and special began to seem positive, not like deathly torment. And when Robert Plant came to town Michael made arrangements to take Nick and his Zep-adoring roommate Frank to the concert and to meet Robert backstage. Talk about feeling cool.

  As for me, twice a week for over four months I sat in a circle as boxes of tissues were passed around to wipe up copious tears, while people dredged up their long-buried newly faced truths. Often I felt a stunned flash of self-recognition dawn on my own face. I used to feel put-upon and taken advantage of, and I now saw the whiny-pants behavior as a form of manipulation, an attempt to make the loved one dependent upon me so I didn’t feel so powerless. I caught myself still tending to Michael, giving him tender bits of advice like a cooling salve, making it all better, and he reminded me—sometimes very loudly—that he could handle whatever it was himself. I was faced with retraining my entire being—a chance that most people never take, preferring the comfy haven of what they already know. Change is frightening, leading straight to the big unknown, but what I already knew wasn’t working—it was failing. I had always thought of myself as a freewheeling, freaky chick, ready for anything, willing to take all kinds of chances. Okay, so let’s see how we can handle this one, doll.

  At first I watched everything I did and said, like an eyewitness, judge, and jury. Eventually the new point of view took hold and folded into my life like whipped honey, the glitches standing out like a HALT! sign. It’s a constant process, and I still catch myself with a codependent Kahlua and cream in my hand and have to dump it down the drain before it reaches my lips.

  We started working with Tony on Nick’s “home contract”—the laws that would govern our relationship after he left the hospital. A lot of emphasis was put on choice. If he chose not to follow the rules, he had to pay the price of having a privilege revoked. We started out simple to make sure the contract wasn’t too daunting: Take out the trash, make your bed, only two hours of video games per day, etc. Nick was relieved that the rules and punishments weren’t too harsh, but we knew he had mixed feelings about leaving ASAP. It had become a safe place.

  Finally the day came. I pulled up at ASAP and was bowled over backwards to see Michael behind the wheel of a flashy new sports car, suntanned and wearing shades! Michael, the non-driver, who had always called a cab or relied on others (ME!) to get him from A to B. He smiled. “It’s about time, don’t you think?” Through the ASAP program he had thrown out the worn and torn concept that he didn’t have the temperament to drive a car. And here he was, on Nick’s big day, to drive his son home! I was awash in drippy tears, so touched and heartswollen proud of him!

  During the inevitably tense and sad/happy good-byes—though Nick was so excited to ride in the new car with his daddy driving—he hugged Dallas, Laurie, Betty, and even the once-formidable Tony for a long time, a physical expression of friendship he couldn’t bring himself to make before he went to ASAP. And when we pulled into the driveway at home, Nick was startled and overjoyed to see T.J. and his friend Dan waiting on the porch with a messy cake they had made for him themselves. A banner was draped across the front door. It said, WELCOME HOME, NICK.

  Welcome home, Nick—and amen.

  VII

  With Nick finally back home, my days as a post-pubescent, sleeping-’til-noon, free-bird wildcat had come to a close, and the timing, as usual, was just right. I had to get back to work, regain a semblance of order. As Nick rubbed his beloved purring cats, I got such an aching mom-urge to bundle him up in his tattered blue baby blanket and rock him to sleep with a lullabye, but I knew I had to back off and let him grow up. I was supposed to expect more of him, let him do things for himself. I would have to tie my hands and heart behind my back for awhile.

  Jimmy and I had painted his room white, gotten rid of the baby bunks, packed his dusty robots and kiddie books into boxes, redecorated Japanese style, and it had a less cluttered, preteen feeling. Nick loved it. After the initial tippy-toeing around, and being overly good and careful about what he did and said, which only lasted a day or two, Nick got back into the swing of his life, but now it seemed he was really right in the middle of himself, living his life for real. I realized he had been hiding in his own shadow, afraid of who he was, and he had now started to understand how special he was in the real sense of that defamed word. He became more of who he was. He began to truly accept himself. We followed the home contract as best we could, and we still do, most of the time. Nobody’s perfect, right? (Actually we are all perfect, but we do imperfect things on occasion. Ha!) All of us—Nicky, Michael, and I—were changing, bobbing souls in motion, striving for a higher level of consciousness, more aware, more fully ALIVE.

  Who knew how Nick and Jimmy would hit it off? I had told Nick that someone new was in my life, and he seemed okay about it, but he was used to having me all to himself, kowtowing, placating, serving, doting. Jimmy gave us a few days to settle back in together, then came over for dinner, eager, full of smiles, curious, ready to interact with the unique kid he had been hearing so much about. He just expected the two of them to get along, and they did. From instant one, he spoke to him like an equal. At twenty-four, Jimmy had no interest in becoming parental in any way, which was perfect because Nick already had the best dad in the world. Shy, slightly intimidated at first by this constant sunny presence, Nick gradually loosened up, tolerating, accepting, and finally enjoying. Jimmy got him a Japanese fighting fish for his birthday, and it clinched their friendship. One day as we were driving over the hill to school, Nick asked, “Mom, how old is Jimmy?” When I told him, he said, “Isn’t he a little young for you, Mom? He’s closer to my age than he is yours.” His math was accurate, but I launched into a beauteous rap about souls colliding and how the age range is irrelevant. He laughed at me, but I was sure he knew what I was talking about. He always does.

  Now that Michael was driving, he spent more time with Nick, and their relationship got thick and mighty, rich and real. Nick tested us hard, and still does—he’s a flesh-and-blood teenager, after all—but with less frequency and much less hysteria. He’s a lot more comfortable within his boundaries. Michael started taking Nick on wee
kend trips, bringing him to the set of his TV shows and movies, and Nick’s self-confidence quotient kept rising. And Michael and I had reached a new understanding. Not exactly a clean slate, but at least we were holding tight to the erasers, surrounded by chalk dust.

  VIII

  I suppose this is where I’m supposed to wind up my life into a few clever closing paragraphs—summing up all I’ve written, all I’ve lived, narrowing it down to put a nice, neat capper on the whole thing. All I can say is that every day is fraught and overspilling with jack-in-the-box surprises, and I intend to keep it that way. The right music can still find a place inside me that has never been opened, lifting the top off an unborn feeling, creating a new space to be filled up with more living. I’ve definitely got the music in me.

  I’m finally crazy about myself. We have to adore ourselves—above all others, as stingy and ego-bloated as that might sound. All my life I’ve heard “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” and never comprehended the meaning. What’s not to love? You don’t know what love is until you can latch onto a glowing chunk of God inside yourself and match it up with the glistening chunks lurking in everybody else.

  I certainly see the radiance of His Nibs in my imaginative, unconventional (to put it mildly) son. I’m so delighted he landed in my life. I’m completely thankful to be his mom, to know that blessed and pure, whole love that can only come shimmering through an umbilical cord.

  The love I feel for Michael is more real and true. Nothing in between, no more fibs, no more fiction. I’m so grateful we didn’t toss our relationship to the winds like so many other busted-up couples. As I’ve said over and over, why give up, cover up, and stomp on so many years, so many feelings, so much pain, ecstasy, agony, love? We know each other better and have so much to give each other that no one else can. Years of life history—and our son, Nick.

  Jimmy continues to wrap me tight in his fine joy of life. We’ve been living together for quite some time now, and I am one half of a true-blue couple. The seemingly gargantuan age difference is not even something we consider anymore. Jimmy never really paid much notice to the seventeen-year gap, anyway. When you find something that feels so right, so bright—plant a bed of flowers around it and dance. I know what love is on the deepest physical level and how it feels to reach the highest, brightest place within my being—no fear, total forgiveness, adoration of life, locked within the body—at the same time escaping it. No words can come close to describing that deep and thundrous unity with the universe. I have entered other lifetimes having sex with Jimmy—brown, hot bodies tossing around in gigantic green jungle leaves—another time, just past children, bathing in sunken marble, furtive, stealing each other—locked together at the groin. Still, we live day to day, moment to moment. I have learned the fine art of reveling in the second with Jimmy. You just can’t pin down the future, it’ll wriggle away from you.

  Life is so grand—even the most difficult storm-wracked days are full of suspense. Hour to hour, you can’t predict it. It’s always “anything can happen day,” and I know we create it. I often wonder—I actually daydream sometimes—when I get a spare instant to reflect—about living a calm and gentle life in a place where I could count on each day being just like the one before. I could un-create my whirlwind existence, move way out to the West Valley, or up into what’s left of the California mountains, meditate in a cross-legged position until serenity claimed me—or spend my days at a straight, predictable job, ignoring the silent scream, just so I could count on some comforting consistency. Everydayness. I could even go back down to the shimmering hills of Kentucky, cook delicious turnip greens with my auntie, and drop out entirely like Victor once did, but I know I’d miss the adrenaline-rush action, all shapes and sizes—here, there, and anywhere, hair-raising glory of my everyday life. I’ll have to tap into that calm and gentle, serene state within myself more often, so I can stop wasting my time wondering and daydreaming, kicking the empty can down a dried-up stream. You know that old saying, “the suspense is killing me”? Well, dolls, the suspense is what keeps me alive.

  Epilogue

  Poor Nick had a chilling experience at the local high school we attempted to enroll him in after ASAP. During nutrition on his second day, a pack of kids surrounded him and asked if he was a boy or a girl. His hair streamed down his back and he wore, as usual, very colorful and highly inventive clothing. After ignoring the taunts, he finally announced, “I’m both,” just to confuse and piss them off. At that point they started to chase him through the school, out of the school grounds and down the street, where he ran into a handy-dandy police station for protection. Two hundred kids chased Nick down the street. Wow. Luckily—or, as fate would have it—Ariana was here on a visit, and went down to the school to pick him up. The teacher was shaken and chagrined as he explained the situation, “Nothing like this has ever happened here, I’m at a loss to explain it, I’m sorry. So sorry.” Aunt Ariana brought Nick home and listened to his story of terror and said, “Nick, do you see how much power you have?” and he didn’t flip out. Later, when I asked how the experience had made him feel, he stated, “Mom, I had an O.B.E.” An O.B.E? “An out-of-body experience.” He told me he watched his body running faster than it ever had from a safe distance, way up above. So that’s how he got through it.

  Eventually, he was happily placed at Linden Center, a progressive school in Beverly Hills, the very same site where Michael went to his first AA meeting. He’s been there for a year and a half and he’s doing well. He’s finally reaching the age and stage when he can enjoy his individuality. He’s developing a social network of his own. Just last week I dropped him off on Melrose with his girlfriend, Carina, and watched him walk into the crowd of trippy-hippy, trendoid types, laughing and amused with his life, and I felt so damn choked up and happy. He’s a teenager, he walks around on Melrose, he goes to concerts, he speaks Japanese, he still has his spiritual altar, he comes home from school smiling (most of the time).

  There isn’t anything Nick and I can’t talk about and crack up over. Just a few days ago we laughed so hard about a goofy expression on the face of a ceramic poodle that we collapsed in a heap of spasms in front of several concerned swap-meet sellers. He calls me into his room to enjoy the cock-eyed commercials running through his Japanese videos, and we roll on the floor, hysterical with glee. When he was asked to bring a sample of his favorite music to share at school, he listened to all the rap bands and Marky Mark stuff before slapping Captain Beefheart in the cassette machine. “Fast and bulbous, the mascara snake, fast and bulbous.” Jimmy bought me the complete set of Jack Kerouac’s recordings, and Nick has been on a nonstop listening binge, astonished and laughing, then writing zany stacks of his own poetry. My fave is entitled “The Red SlipSlide of Old Bones.” The Linden Center just brought in a teacher to work on a screenplay with the kids. He asked them to suggest their favorite character to be incorporated into the plot, and Nick wanted the baby from the early David Lynch film, Eraserhead. What can I say? Nick is a true artist, a step ahead, a step apart. He’s the kind of guy who would have inspired me to scrawl his name all over my notebook in junior high, but he’s my son and a friend for life.

  Nick’s dad spends more time with him than ever, and he remains a sweet soulmate for me. When Michael reached ten years sobriety, he invited me to the AA meeting to give him a cake. From the podium, where he usually makes everyone laugh, he brought people to tears by “making amends” to me in front of the sober bunch. “I put her through Hell and I’m truly sorry.” Apology accepted, Mikie.

  He has been working his butt off on TV and in the movies. At one point he was appearing in Roseanne, MacGyver, and The New WKRP in Cincinnati all at once. He just stared down Tommy Lee Jones on the Big Screen, and has just landed another humding role in a MMP (major motion picture)! He sees Ariana on a regular basis, and has done so much work on himself that honesty is starting to dribble out of his sun-tanned pores. He pumps a lot of iron and has a pretty actress girlfriend, verging
on serious fame, who hugs me whenever she sees me. Very sweet. She bought a jacket from Jimmy at one of our yard sales—one of those fabulous patchwork sixties numbers. It looked really cute on her.

  Still, Michael and I go to lunch and dinner, he buys me little gifts, and sometimes big ones. We talk on the phone three times a day, we seek advice from each other, we continue our meetings with Tony, Nick’s therapist—the guy Nick feared and now adores. Michael took Nick and me to Roseanne and Tom Arnold’s wedding, and it was so sweet and perfect—buckets of love being dumped on everyone. We go to swap meets, The Renaissance Faire, I go to his wrap parties, he comes to my dinner parties. We will always be there for each other, and it’s a relief and a reward.

  I appreciate my friends more every day. There’s a lot of hand-holding and intense phone-consulting in my life. It’s so great to know I can count on my precious pals to pull me out of a stuck and sputtering state of mind with just a few words. Patti lives in a big house on Long Island now and I miss her so much. We sat together chomping pasta in an old New York eatery recently, and we both burst into drizzling tears in the middle of our girl-chat. She and her almost-hubby just had their second child, Liam, a brother for year-old Emmelyn, the cutest kid since Nick was a toddler. Melanie and Donnie are always away. The last time I saw them was on TV. Sad but true. I miss them madly. My dear Catherine married a divine Englishman, Stephen Blacknell, and I was the maid/matron of honor once again. Dee Dee and Tony Kaye broke up, and she just moved to Santa Monica, yay! A girlfriend neighbor! I’m working on my next book with my oldest friend, Iva. We went through grade school, junior high, high school, and the Sunset Strip school of learning together—and now we’re writing partners! Ariana visits us many times a year and all of her clients troop through the house in varying degrees of spiritual evolvement. Some have to sit on the couch for awhile after a reading and all kinds of other worldly conversation takes place. Fascinating chit-chat. Ariana always reminds me about important stuff. “The sure way not to heal and grow,” she says sweetly, “is not to forgive.” “Get out of that reactive swamp,” she smiles, “You’re reacting instead of living.” Ariana is here right now, and Moon Zappa just left, feeling a whole lot better. She tells me her daddy, Frank, is doing okay. He’s been very ill and I pray for him daily.