One giant step August 8, 1985

 


I keep thinking of that Christmas in 81, after Mary Ann made her decision, and floundered, not just because Johnny couldn’t give up junk, but because she was bringing him out into a world with some many temptations and dangers.

As said earlier in my journal, Johnny was never the person he pretended to be.

I got a hint of this when Johnny made Mary Ann destroy all the writing even remotely associated with Danny.

Maybe this was understandable, if not at all excusable.

Johnny was punishing Mary Ann for being human. She made errors in judgement he held against her.

This from a man whose record of failings is mapped out in tracks on his arms, legs, even between his toes.

Johnny’s rich father from Englewood gave him a camera which he used to take nude shots of Mary Ann, piling them up inside his dresser as if she was a prize won in some cosmic lottery, always emphasizing her intense beauty, but rarely her real inner beauty other people saw.

The romantic appeal that had driven Mary Ann into Johnny’s arms slowly faded, or perhaps the glitter she’d seen in him early on chipped away to reveal something far more flawed underneath.

That’s when the dreams about Danny began. She later confessed to me about her calling Danny twice – once drunk, another time, stoned. She later gave up alcohol and pot – she said – as part of her new found religious conviction, born again. Although I suspect, she could not resist the desire to see or even touch Danny when inebriated. She stomped down these feelings, destroying her art, objectivity and previous life style for the illusion of being “right with God” and with Johnny.

She had made her decision, and nobody was going to talk her out of it.

I think she could not back down after the stubborn stance she had taken when confronted by family and friends over her relationship with a jail bird junkie.

To alter course would be a major embarrassment, something she would have to live with the rest of her life.

She pressed on, scheduling their marriage for the following September, and when that did not seem like enough, she abandoned birth control, getting herself pregnant, forcing them to move up the ceremony six months.

Johnny still did drugs now and then, sometimes agreeing to meet his old high partner, often keeping this from Mary Ann, lying about it when she confronted him, nearly hitting her when she refused to believe what he was telling her.

Stuck with Johnny and the soon-to-arrive baby, Mary Ann lashed out at Johnny’s pal, putting the blame on him for Johnny’s behavior. She wouldn’t acknowledge the fact that Johnny wanted the drug as much as his pal was willing to supply it, and Johnny would seek it out elsewhere if Mary Ann succeeded in divorcing his pal from Johnny.

But her getting in the middle only enraged Johnny and the intensity of his anger said a lot about what went on inside him when he was in fact supposedly off the stuff.

Mary Ann constantly complained to me about her dreams in which she met other lovers and didn’t know what to do.

After the birth of her baby, she called Danny again.

He told her not to call him again.

“What if I was to ask if I could come and see you?” she asked.

“Don’t ask,” he told her. “I might say yes.”

The most intense changes came after her marriage to Johnny. She began to see all of her old friends – even those who had been extremely close – as shallow, their fast lane values as superficial. She found it difficult to be civil when she spoke with or about them. She even became judgmental about herself, hating the portrait of Marilyn Monroe she had loved since she was a teen, taking a huge step towards utter intolerance – which was not the Mary Ann I knew or loved.

 

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