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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