Bound to fail August 3, 1985

 

Maybe I’ve given Mary Ann too much credit in assuming that she had led her life through rational choice.

Certainly, the emotional investment she’s made in her marriage as well as the other people’s manipulating her played a huge role in her fleeing west.

Until 81, relationships didn’t mean much to her – none serious enough to lead to heart break, deadbeat fellows for a quick lay, even once a race horse jockey, whose small body she claimed reminded her of a child.

Then, everything changed on her 30th birthday, as if with a bolt she became aware of the ticking biological clock, and she began to struggle for purpose – not rational so much as cravings for something she’d not yet had.

Johnny showed up in her life at that moment, a fantasy at first, a quirk like the jockey perhaps, an imprisoned man seeking to seduce her long distance through extremely romantic letters – as if he could read her better than she could read herself.

Mary Ann until then was the classic liberal, full of sympathy for causes as long as she didn’t need to get too deeply involved. Slightly aloof, thinking herself better than those who she came to help.

But Johnny reached out and touched her in a way she hadn’t expected, wrenching something in her heart at a moment of extreme vulnerability.

Always a romantic, Mary Ann believed in exotic, heart-throbbing love, and here, an inmate fell in love with her after reading some of her poetry.

What could be more romantic than that?

Overcoming the huge obstacles that separated them seemed insignificant when views through the rosy lens of romance. So, what if he was a junkie? A convicted thief? A man who had strung along vulnerable women, leaving them behind like a trail of broken dolls?

The root cause of these issues has yet to be resolved, glossed over in the headlong plunge into marriage and parenthood.

Early on, when she told people about this true love, nearly everybody abandoned Mary Ann, her friends, her family, even some of her co-workers.

Until that point, Mary Ann had run with the fast crowd, superficial jetsetters, partygoers, who when seeing her changing mocked her for this odd love affair.

Even her family drew back from her, assuming this was just another fad they desperately hoped she would get over before she got hurt. They assumed she was motivated by lust and hoped the cell doors would prevent any real damage.

But the more her friends and family disapproved, the more stubborn Mary Ann became, making her even more determined to “save” Johnny, and make her the one and only man in her life, her lover, her needy child.

Perhaps she felt a betrayed when he returned to using junk while still in jail.

She was vulnerable and when her jet set friends introduced her to Danny, another even more powerful romantic hero, she was seduced. He brought her flowers and dolls, and even encouraged her to start writing poetry again.

She was torn in two – not all at once, but bit by bit, and not between two equal loves, but between self-destructive or creative love.

She sells herself on the idea that her love for Johnny was all about potential for growth, two of them overcoming hard times together, building an unbreakable bond.

Unfortunately, this was not so.

Johnny was always something bred out of guilt and self-loathing, someone Mary Ann needed to make up for the fast and pointless life she had led up until meeting him. She went with him because she saw him as a mission, not as real love.

Danny, on the other hand, just had too much going for him. He didn’t need her in the same way Johnny did. He was arrogant, self-assured and defiant, fully believing if he could turn up his charm to a high enough temperature, he would win her away from Johnny.

He just didn’t understand. The more Johnny needed her, the more likely Mary Ann was to choose him over Danny, and did, although later, secretly, she regretted the choice, and this also worked against Danny – because the more she regretted, the more she clung to Tommy, forcing marriage, forcing them to become parents, and now, forcing a move to the west to escape any possible temptation.

 

 1985 Menu

 


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