Wheeee------into the wayback machine-----------the year is 1978. I'm still married. To my second husband. But not for long. My daughter is 2. My son is 11. I am the central figure in a very large painting by Charles Munch entitled "6 Women". I am laying in the basic Venus position on a bench, although I do not resemble Venus in the least. Far too skinny. My friend the aforementioned Mary is the figure to the far right. My dear friend Marion, who I must believe to be dead by now, or in her 80's or 90's somewhere, is lying on the floor. I can't remember the name of the woman to the left, but I do remember her. I can see her smiling. My friend, who I worked with at the nursery, is there. Sue painted incredibly beautiful flowers. Ice cream colored flowers, I think I called them in a poem I wrote for her.

I remember posing for this picture. Oh, did I mention - we're all nude. My friend Charles, the painter (he won the top money prize at Wisconsin '78 for this painting, for which I have the brochure with a b&w photo of the painting on the opening page), is/was tall, rather ascetic looking, blonde. He made me lie on this hard bench. No, I couldn't have anything soft underneath me because it would throw the balance of the pose off just ever so much. My elbow is resting on the hard bench. It hurt. I think that's Charles' wife bending over in front of me, grabbing her ankle.

I'm still rather at a loss of the point of the painting. A statement by the Juror, one Ellen Lanyon, painter, of Chicago and New York, says: "Realism, surrealism, mysticism, fantasism, cubism, color conceptualism, constructivism, non-objectivism, opism, popism, optimism and narration..." What! Not Narrism? Can't remember another such string of isms in one place. She is "impressed with the impact of the environment, myth and the desire to communicate a sense of place or state of condition in most of the works." I still don't get it. I think I'm dense. I just liked helping out a friend and being in a big painting with a lot of other friends. I never see these people anymore. I am happy to know we are all still together somewhere.

Now here's a soap opera in a paper bag. ON a paper bag, actually. A little note. Don't know why I have it. Don't know why I kept it. It reads:

"Tommy, I didn't want to wake you up again! I decided to walk. Give me a call later. See ya. Joy."

Tommy was one of the bikers living in the trailer in my back yard for awhile. Joy was just a friend, I think. The note smacks of promises (a ride home?), a late night party?, a liason? What, what? There are all the ingredients here for a short story. Your assignment, should you choose to accept it. I'm already writing another story. I should send it to my writer's group. Actually, here I go to do just that.......

Linda was the first person I visited in prison. Not that I made a career out of it. I think I visited an NGB (no-good-boyfriend), and then my friend Kevin, but that story comes much later on. I didn't even know her very well. She was the girlfriend of a guy who was a brother to a very good friend of ours (my boyfriend and me). We never liked him. He was into hard drugs - heroin, dilaudid. He had a scam running with the local dentists where he'd visit the dentist with his honestly terrible horrible very bad teeth, get a scrip for a pain killer (dilaudid), make an appointment to get the teeth fixed, and never show up. He'd go from dentist to dentist this way, until he was blacklisted with nearly every dentist in northeastern Wisconsin. Linda was a sweet pretty waitress who did the drugs too, but was basically a very nice person. It's possible that prison was the best thing that ever happened to her, although I really hate saying things like that when I've only been a visitor. What the hell do I know about what it was like or what she could have done for herself without it. Anyway, her NGB would go so far as to show my boyfriend naked pictures of her and try to arrange for a swap, which basically would have caused me to stick my finger down my throat and say "gag me with a spoon" if that phrase were available then. Don't remember when it first came on the scene. My not nearly as bad NGB wouldn't go for it.

I don't know how many more of these letters there are. This last letter says she'll be out in November, and she "intends on dragging you out to party!" I left for Seattle in September.

LPH by John Cougar Mellencamp. I just looked it up to be sure, and found the lyrics, which I might as well post since I got 'em:


Pink Houses

There's a black man with a black cat livin' in a black neighborhood
He's got an interstate runnin' through his front yard
You know he thinks that he's got it so good
And there's a woman in the kitchen cleanin' up the evenin' slop
And he looks at her and says, "Hey darlin', I can remember when
you could stop a clock."

CHORUS:
Oh but ain't that America for you and me
Ain't that America somethin' to see baby
Ain't that America home of the free
Little pink houses for you and me

There's a young man in a t-shirt
Listenin' to a rockin' rollin' station
He's got greasy hair, greasy smile
He says, "Lord this must be my destination."
'Cause they told me when I was younger
"Boy you're gonna be president."
But just like everything else those old crazy dreams
Just kinda came and went

CHORUS

Well there's people and more people
What do they know know know
Go to work in some high rise
And vacation down at the Gulf of Mexico
Ooh yeah
And ther's winners and there's losers
But they ain't no big deal
'Cause the simple man baby pays for the thrills, the bills,
the pills that kill

CHORUS

Just another letter from Linda in prison written on stationary designed by the no good boyfriend (doing his own sweet time elsewhere) that has the Harley eagle wtih a skull and Viking helmet in the center. I think I liked it at the time. Smacks a little bit of Aryan Nation now. Don't know if he was into that. Green Bay bike club made strange (I want to say bedfellows here, but that could give a wilder impression than was actually the fact - only one of the "club" guys was actually a bedfellow). I did get drunk with the President of the club (leaving it nameless for the time being) one night, and he did in fact sleep with me, but that was only sleep. More specifically, passed out. First time I found out I snored.

The Pres was an ex-Nazi. I was an ex-civil rights worker. We got along. I remember sitting on the roof of my apartment with him that night, drinking Jack Daniels, and talking about how we each kept looking for some idea of freedom, but never really found it. I said I joined every movement I ever joined looking for freedom, and left when it became about someone else being in charge. He helped me understand a little bit about why the poor white farmers living in Northern Wisconsin tended to racism. The Posse Comitatus originated not too far to the west of Green Bay. We used to smile at each other with some kind of undefined understanding whenever "Little Pink Houses" came on the jukebox.

I have no idea who wrote the following. 'Twasn't me. Could be a fella name of Ed Meece, whose name sounds vaguely familar and which actually appears at the bottom of the second little tiny sheet of note paper on which was written the following:

"...that you thought was a g. of Columbian Jungle Snow but was actually shaved bits off your connection's corvette. The Doctor approaches and begins to extract the "cola". He's seen the symptoms before and asks, "How did this happen?" At this point you remove your container of bullshit ("aw shit, he's on to me! think quick) and apply generously where needed. "...and then Doc, and this is the funny part, the three Arabs see my nose sticking out of the rough on the 17th hole and putted their new experimental fiber glass ball into it. How was I to know it was an assassination attempt? But when it exploded I inhaled as hard as I could."

This is sometime between 1979 and 1985, remember. Peculiarly timely.

Back to the future...

July 18, 1985

Letter from Linda, doing time in the Women's Prison in Waupun, WI for helping her no-good boyfriend in a heroin deal. I still have the police report on their bust. Mighty glad I was saving heroin for my old age. Which is approaching. Still, think I'll wait another year or 5 or 10. I mean, I just quit smoking cigarettes a year ago, a little too soon to start on heroin, doncha think?

Anyway, the police report was informative at the time for its assessment of other drugs her no good boyfriend had in his possession, including some speed, which turned out to be bunk, and my (now) ex-boyfriend, who had actually bought some, was vindicated in his own private assessment.

Linda was just there when the undercover guy insisted on heroin, even though both she and the no-good boyfriend told him there wasn't anything worth getting in town, and when the ngb went to pick it up, she was driving, so here she is doing three years in prison. Taking a cosmetology exam. Taking a semester of college courses. Getting ready for a "family reintegration furlough" which is "8 days away."

I went to see her twice, I believe. She tells me, "Take care and stay in one piece. Gotta have you in one piece when I get out!" I had told her about my ngb banging my head on the ground. I left for the left coast in the fall, and don't think I saw her again. We lost touch. I hope she made it.