Seeking a life of passion August 6, 1985
It’s hard to tell at what point Mary Ann realized her
mistake – before or after Christmas Day in 81 when she finally picked Johnny.
Her life since has been a lot of “I should haves” if not consciously,
then deeper inside herself where something snapped inside her like an overwound
rubber band.
In the weeks following her breakup with Danny, she got
nasty, especially at Johnny who she claimed she had helped “rise from the dead.”
Johnny in this light seemed like an unfortunate victim, who
ought to be grateful for all Mary Ann had done for him in getting released. She
expected him to change overnight.
Unfortunately, he did what most junkies do when they get
released, he went back to his old habits.
He had never stopped using heroin even in jail, spoiling some
of the illusions Mary Ann maintained about him, yet she refused to give up on
him, partly because so many of her close friends and family warned against him.
She became more determined to save him, partly out of spite – she would have
her romantic interlude even if it killed her.
But ultimately, she felt cheated. Johnny didn’t turn out as she had expected,
making the same mistake Norman Mailer and other liberals made when assuming
people like Johnny were victims of an unfair social justice system, rather than
of their own poor choices.
Johnny isn’t exactly a wolf in sheep’s clothing, yet he’s
not what he pretends to be either. He played the role of victim because it got
him what he most wanted.,
He knew how to bat his eyes and bring down tears, and so
when he told Mary Ann he was sorry, she believed him – again. But Johnny knew
what he was doing and how he got over on her, even convincing her to bring him marijuana
when he was still in jail – once even bringing him the heroin he really craved.
Either offense, had she been caught, would have ruined her legal career.
His asking this of her was outrageous; her complying with
the request pure stupidity – stupidity born out of a delusion of romantic love.
After his release, heroin became a romantic rival, something
she needed to defeat or lose her romantic dream entirely.
She got furious in her determination to make the dream
become real, by molding the clearly imperfect Johnny into something he was not
and could never be expect as a cover for some manipulation of his own.
The whole gambit got more complicated when Danny came into
her life, someone she ought to have taken up with, but someone who did not need
her in the same way Johnny did, and so she rejected him, reversing reality,
mistaking Johnny as real and Danny as the fantasy, when the opposite was true.
Danny was in fact more than romantic hero Mary Ann so desperately
wanted Johnny to be, brining her candy and flowers, helping her write her poems
and stories. He was a rough, tough kid from a conservative city but with just a
touch of tenderness.
But Mary Ann had seen his kind before and had always avoided
them, or used them, never taking them serious as a potential life mate. She
would tease herself with such possibilities, then eventually reject them.
So, her decision that Christmas 81 posed a choice for her,
to follow her heart and go with Johnny or to recognized Danny as the more
logical choice.
Yet either way she chose, she would have lost. She would
have felt as guilty or more about deciding against Johnny as she feels now
about rejecting Danny.
She would have blamed herself for Johnny’s return to heroin;
just as she blames herself now for how Danny collapsed emotionally when she
rejected him.
She chose Johnny partly because she refused to admit to her
friends and family that they might have been right about Johnny and his junk in
the first place. But she may also have selected Johnny as a way of punishing
herself for years of living carefree as
part of the jet set, and at age 30, needed to find a purpose in her life other
than self-gratification. I think she feared she would turn out like her parents
did, and refused to live the mundane life Danny offered her by being his wife.
She wanted a life of passion and believed Johnny would give
that to her.
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