In Love With Lana (Part II)

“I didn’t bring you here to look at the pictures of this guy on his wall,” Lana said. “You came here to fuck.”

Nevertheless, I was still standing in front of the pictures.

“Shouldn’t we worship at the altar of this guy’s self-aggrandizement for a little while, though?”

“Hey, don’t put him down. He makes money. Look where he’s living.”

We went into the bedroom. The window looked out onto the beach, straight onto the sand. It was high tide. The waves were breaking a few feet away. You could hear them, but the sun had set and the moon hadn’t risen yet, so you couldn’t see them. It was black, black, black outside.

Lana took her clothes off and lay down on the bed. She was a beautiful woman and every curve on her body was absolutely exquisite. She had a great haircut, too.

---

She had been my first girlfriend. But I wasn’t her first guy.

Lana lost her virginity when she was thirteen. An eighteen-year-old neighbor got her alone at his house during a party and seduced her. How was it? I asked her. It was overwhelming, she explained. She almost came, but the sensory overload of being so excited and so scared was too extreme. She didn’t have sex again until she was sixteen. She was dating a guitarist named Mark. I heard him play that first night I met her, when she played “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” on the piano. Mark could do a note-for-note, tone-for-tone rendition of Jimi Hendrix’s version of the “Star Spangled Banner” from Woodstock. He had an excellent ear and could figure out songs after hearing them once. Mark played in a couple of bands and we’d go hear them every now and then. They had sex pretty often but she said it never did anything for her.

Then she became pretty promiscuous. She’d go to bars with her friends and their fake IDs, and they’d get picked up. She went camping with a girlfriend and they met two guys and traded tent-mates. (She told me after she’d finished having sex with the guy in his tent she cut a huge fart and laughed and laughed and laughed.) She even drove around with another girlfriend looking for guys and went to a vacant tract of land off Mulholland Highway once they’d found some. She told me none of that ever did anything for her, either. She never came.

One night, though, she went with some girlfriends to visit a friend in a dorm at UC Santa Barbara. She got separated from her crowd and a guy convinced her to come back to his room. She wouldn’t fuck because she wasn’t on the pill at the time and didn’t want to get pregnant. So the guy did her with his fingers and she told me she almost came. She thanked him with a blow job.

She still hadn’t had an orgasm by the time I went to bed with her. And she didn’t come that night, either. Nor the next. Nor the one after that. All through March, April and the first part of May – nothing. We tried everything. Doggy style. Oral. Her on top. Me on the side. Many variations as depicted in the Kama Sutra. Even some that weren’t. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

Then one afternoon we were in my room and I was on my back and she was riding me. I crooked my arm to finger her clit and she said: “Oh, yeah, keep doing that,” and she moaned and sighed and moaned and sighed and collapsed onto me and said she came. I felt good.

Then she told me:

“I don’t want you thinking that you did that. I did that. I let my body do that.”

That might seem harsh. But she was being honest. I’m glad she said it.

We had sex almost every day for the next five months, through the rest of May, then June, July, August and September, even on that horrible trip to Boston and back.

---

Even today, as I write this all these years later, I look back on that night in Malibu and I’m still amazed that I got it up. But I did.

And I put my knees between her thighs and suspended myself above her breasts in push-up position, so I could see. And I penetrated her and began thrusting, first gently, then harder. She closed her eyes and opened her mouth. She was trying to enjoy it. I was watching her.

She opened her eyes and saw me watching. We looked at each other for the time it took for me to make a half dozen or so thrusts. Shtoonk, shtoonk, shtoonk, ….

“This is awful,” she said.

“You’re right.”

I pulled out and sat on the edge of the bed.

“So what do you want to do?” I asked, sitting there with my hard-on.

She shook her head, dismayed.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I guess this fuck date was a dumb idea.”

“No, I think it was a good idea. It sounded really fun, actually. Maybe for anybody else, though. Just not for you and me.”

She laughed a little.

“I should go,” I said.

I put on my clothes, said goodnight and walked out the door.

---

When we got back from Carmel after our breakup, I didn’t call her and she didn’t call me. Until about two months later, one night pretty late. She asked me to come over. She met me outside and ran up to me and grabbed my hand.

“I had sex with another guy,” she said. I suppose she wanted to see my reaction.

“Oh. Who?” I wasn’t completely indifferent. But pretty close.

“You don’t know him. I met him at a Halloween party.”

“What did you go as?”

“I wore an army uniform.”

“Cool. I was a hipster. I wore a cap. It wasn’t much of a costume. I went to a party at Joann’s house. It was pretty boring, so some of us went to the Roxy to see George Duke.”

I paused for effect.

“I didn’t get laid.”

We were walking behind the houses on Calabasas Lake. There were ducks floating on the water, asleep. They would wake up as we approached and give their wings a few flaps, then glide away. Otherwise the night was silent.

“I just wanted to tell you,” she said.

“I understand. It’s important for you that I know. It’s over between us. This makes it official and final, huh?”

“I still love you,” she said.

“I’ll always love you,” I told her.

---

She dated a French exchange student named Dominique, two years younger than she was. She wanted to go to France to see him after he went back there, but her father wouldn’t loan her the money. She got mad at him and they fought and she came over to my house one day and asked me if she could stay for a while. I said yes and she moved in. It was the summer after my first year in college. I was 18 and I was living with my parents.

“How long is Lana going to be here?” my dad asked me after a week.

“She had a fight with her father. I’m sure she’ll calm down soon,” I told him.

I slept in the den and she slept in my room. We’d sneak in to have sex with each other, though.

We snorted some coke one night and I got nervous, then paranoid. I was full of dread and felt a vague fear of the future. I went in the den and crawled into my sleeping bag. Then I got up and decided sex might make me feel better. So I went into my room and tried to get into bed with her, but she pushed me away and said she wanted to sleep. I went back in the den and jacked off. She came to see me five minutes later and said she’d changed her mind. I told her I was too tired. Too bad.

She moved back in with her parents. She got assigned to the Malibu branch of the Bank of America. When she worked as the drive-up teller, actors and musicians would pull up in their cars. Walter Becker of Steely Dan made his deposits and withdrawals there. Bobby Pickett, the guy who did that goofy song, “Monster Mash,” was a customer, too. She said he was really shy, so he’d flirt with her with just a wave of the hand and a smile.

I needed a date to a college journalism awards banquet and Lana was nice enough to come. She got dressed up and enjoyed herself. It was a foggy night. We parked on a street and made out, invisible to the rest of the world. We went back up to my house and had sex. My neighbor backed his car into the Barracuda in the morning, denting the fender. He left a note on her car.

At the bank, she made friends with Annette, who taught her to wear garter belts and lingerie. Annette dated a lot: guys she met at the bank, guys she met at the restaurants and bars around Malibu. That’s how Lana wound up with the key to that townhouse.

---

She called me the night after our fuck date.

“I was so upset afterwards that I cut my thumb opening a can of soup,” she said. “And it bled so much that I went to the emergency room.”

“Wow, did you need stitches?”

“No, they just bandaged it closed. I was so angry. I wanted you to know.”

About two months later, I was working as a busboy at a restaurant and she wanted to buy some coke. She didn’t want to wait for me to finish work. She wanted the coke right then. So she came and got my house keys and told my parents she was going up to my room to borrow some records. She snuck into my drawer and took the coke she wanted and left.

She was supposed to come right back to the restaurant and give me my keys back. But she went out partying with friends and pulled into the parking lot after I’d been waiting outside for more than an hour.

She got out of her car and handed me my keys and I walked away.

“Don’t be like that,” she said.

Fuck you, I said, but not so she could hear it. And I got in my car and went home.

---

I finished my second year of college and got a job at an import store on Ventura Boulevard. I sold African crafts that the owner collected while he was working as an animal trainer on that show “Daktari.” I sold scrimshaw that some craftsman had there on consignment. I sold used books and bongs and draw-string pants and tie-dye shirts. It was a weird place. Lana walked in one day.

“Got any hash pipes?” she asked, without saying hi.

“Just these,” I said and showed her the ones in the display case. “And hello, by the way.”

She looked at the hash pipes, seemed to disapprove of them and walked out.

She called me a week later as if that hadn’t happened. I had to remind her.

“You walked into the store and didn’t say hi to me,” I said.

“Sorry. That’s why I’m calling. I wasn’t feeling good that day. Why don’t you come over after work?”

So I did. We went upstairs to her room, like we used to. She had a bunch of records I didn’t have that I always liked to hear, so I put one on. I think it might’ve been the one with the flute player in the Taj Mahal. Paul Horn’s “Inside.” Haunting and mysterious.

Just then her phone rang. It was obviously some guy. She was talking with him for a while. More like listening, though. I couldn’t quite tell what was going on.

“You know what I like,” she told him. “Uh huh … Uh huh … Yes. …. No. …. Yes.” I could tell she didn’t want to reveal too much in front of me. I waited for her to say: Listen, a friend just came over so I’ve got to go and I’ll call you back later. But she didn’t. So after a few more minutes of that, I left.

A few minutes after I’d gotten home, she knocked on my door. My dad let her in and she stomped up the stairs and into my room. She was furious.

“No one walks out on me like that!” she shrieked. “No one!”

She turned to a photograph I had on top of one of my speakers. Her brother had taken it of her and me in front of Mount Rushmore. It was a great picture and I really liked it.

“You can’t have this anymore!” She tore it up.

“Are you crazy?” I grabbed her and tried to get the picture back, but it was too late, it was already in pieces. She started slapping and punching me. I pushed her onto my bed. My dad came in.

“Are you OK?” he asked. “Do you need help?”

“No, it’s OK, dad. She’ll be OK. Everything’s cool. We just had a little fight.”

He left.

“Gimme some coke,” she said.

“I don’t have any personal stash left.”

“I’ll buy some.”

“How much do you want?”

“Half a gram.”

I opened my drawer and gave her a bindle – one of those envelopes you make by folding a square piece of paper into a triangle, then folding in the corners. She opened it up and tapped two long lines onto the mirror that was on my table. She snorted them both, folded up what was left in the bindle and put it in her purse. She threw fifty dollars on my bed and left.
And that was the last time I saw her.

I went to Europe a couple of months later and stayed for eight years. At one point she called my parents and got my address in France and she wrote me a few letters. She was living in New York City, but said she was moving to Oklahoma. She was dating a prison guard and I supposed he’d gotten a job there. She came back to L.A. one weekend and called my friend Mike and they went to see a ska band play at the Whiskey on the Sunset Strip. She was staying with her lawyer, who was suing the storage company where she’d put all her stuff before she moved to New York. The storage space had been broken into and all the possessions that she’d left in L.A. were gone.

And that was the last I heard of her.

I remember the time she invited me over to see her parents’ new house on the lake. She opened the patio door and said: “Watch this.” There were ducks on the lawn in the back. They had waddled up from the lake. “Missy!” she called to her toy poodle, a tiny gray thing with its toenails painted blue. “Go get ‘em!” Missy flew out the door and terrorized the ducks, careening around the lawn like a pinball. Lana laughed and laughed. “Isn’t that the funniest thing you’ve ever seen?” she asked me.

And I remember the time we dropped acid and went up to the water towers late at night and stayed until sunrise. It was above the city, so the glow of the stars turned the night sky violet and the pine trees came to life, vibrating into various forms for our viewing pleasure: one became a couple making love, another was a Tyrannosaurus Rex popping stars into its mouth. At dawn we went back to my house and I poured us cereal and milk for breakfast. We ate sitting on the floor of my room, listening to Steely Dan’s “Bodhissatva.” She was still wearing her poncho. I remember watching her and telling myself I’d found my partner in love, sex, music, acid and life. Even though by then I knew it wasn’t true.

And I remember driving up to San Francisco with her once. “It’s right here that it happened,” she said as we passed a desolate point on the I-5. “I was going up to visit my cousins in Auburn and I saw this dog running around on the freeway. He was beautiful, a shepherd-collie mix. I passed him and I thought for a second that I should stop and get him in my car so he doesn’t get killed. But I didn’t. Then I decided to turn around at the next exit and go back. And I thought to myself: I’m going to adopt him. And he’s going to be my companion. And we’re going to go hiking together. And I’m going to move to my parents’ cabin in Bass Lake with him. So I was creating this whole new life for myself with my new dog. And I got off the freeway and turned around so I could get back to where he was. And by the time I got there he’d been run over, he was smashed, dead and all bloody on the road. I cried the rest of the way. And so from that day on whenever I want to do something I do it. I don’t let anything go by. Because in a few minutes, it’ll be too late.”

And I remember the night she took me for a drive up to a place called Tabletop. It was a hill above a housing tract. A full moon was glowing above us. Suddenly, a huge barn owl glided across the sky, and landed on the top of a pine tree as he retracted his enormous wings. His balance was so perfect that the treetop barely swayed under his weight. From his new perch, the owl surveyed the scene. Looking for prey, no doubt. Possums, cats, rats, whatever. But to me it seemed the owl was the master the world. The king of the night.

It was a prefect moment, perfect for me.

Some people say that love doesn’t exist, that it’s just affection, lust or some kind of neediness. I do think I really loved Lana. That’s something, isn’t it?

Ten Cartons of Cigarettes and Six Quarts of Milk (for L.D.)

I grew up here in the suburbs, didn’t know much about much, didn’t date a lot in high school, so he was really my first guy. I was a waitress at Jay’s Steak House. They had us wear these low-cut blouses, short skirts and fishnets, so I probably did look pretty appealing, especially back then. … Well, thank you. But even so …. He used to come in every now and then and ask to sit at my station.

Then he invited me out one night. He had tickets to a Lakers game, and I’m a sports fan so I went and had a good time. He was funny and nice. We went out a couple of more times. Dinner dates, movies, a walk on the beach. … Yeah, he was older than me. … Gee, let me remember. Twenty-seven when we met. His cousin was getting married and he brought me to the wedding. So I met his family. Everything seemed OK.

He bought me an engagement ring and asked me to marry him. Yeah, I know, in hindsight, it was crazy, right? But I was nineteen. I thought maybe this is how these things happen. Well, I don’t know what I was thinking, really. But I said yes.

We put the wedding together right away, in just a couple of months. We met in January, got engaged at the end of February and set May 1st as the big day. Small ceremony, non-denominational, immediate family and friends, low-budget, but nice. We rented a hall that had a patio, there was a guitarist and a singer, they did jazz standards, “Sunny” and “You Are the Sunshine of My Life.” We drank and danced and everybody got along fine. “Crazy kids,” I’ll bet they said. “And they just met. Isn’t love great?”

We took a ten-day cruise as our honeymoon. It was really nice. Luxury dining, swimming, stopping at the ports along the coast. On our way back home, we were standing on the deck watching the ocean go by, and there was another couple, I don’t know, fifty or sixty feet away. Maybe farther. Off in the distance, in any case. He heard them laughing. And suddenly he froze. He turned to me and asked:

“Are they laughing at me?”

And I told him, no, no, they can’t hear us, they’re not looking at us. They’re just having a good time.

He closed his eyes and gave his head a slight shake. I thought he was saying no, then I thought he was shaking off some acid flashback or something. I was a little concerned. But the cruise ended without anything else weird happening. I knew something was wrong. I didn’t know what, but I wasn’t worried. I was nineteen. There was a lot I didn’t know.

After we got back from the cruise, I moved into his apartment. It was small, but it was in a nice complex. So there was a lot of activity over the next couple of days. You know, you can imagine, with a woman moving in, the clothes, the décor. Adding that feminine touch to his bachelor life. Maybe all the stimulation was good for him. Maybe all the activity kept his mind working. Maybe it was when he slowed down and his mind wandered – maybe that’s when the problems started.

It was a Friday. He was still off from work for the honeymoon. He had a job at his father’s mortgage company. We were sitting in the living room watching the Dodgers game. Suddenly, he started laughing. Nothing was funny, though. I looked at him. He didn’t know I was looking. He acted as if I weren’t there. He was transfixed by the TV. He was sitting there laughing at the Dodgers game.

So I watched his reactions, and I watched the TV. And I saw what was happening.

You know how the catcher gives the pitcher signals? Well, every time they showed that shot, the one from behind the mound where you see the catcher hold down two fingers or three fingers and the pitcher nods yes or no, he laughed, or said “oh yeah, that’s true,” or disagreed, or got this look on his face like he was in on the secret. And I knew he thought the players were communicating with him through their hand signals. …

What did I do then? I didn’t know what to do! I was – astounded. No, that doesn’t describe it correctly. I was disoriented, caught off balance, completely baffled. I was scared. I didn’t know if I should ask him what was going on, if I should shut the TV, if I should splash cold water on his face, or what. So I just watched. And he started getting worked up, more and more as the game went on.

“What?” he shouted after one hand signal. “Oh, no!”

Then he turned to me, and in kind of a frenzy, he said:

“Lisa! Go to the store now and get us ten cartons of cigarettes and six quarts of milk!”

I’m guessing that the catcher told him there was going to be shortages. Or something. I don’t know, I’m just guessing. But I took my cue and walked out the door. I went to the first pay phone I could find. Fortunately, I had his sister’s business card in my purse. I called her up and told her about what happened on the cruise and what was happening at the apartment.

“Oh, shit,” she said. “He’s told me that when he’s on his meds, he feels dead, like a zombie. I’ll bet he went off his meds to enjoy the wedding and the honeymoon. And Lisa, I gotta tell you, when he’s on his meds, he’s fine. But off his meds ….”

… Well, yes, I asked her why she didn’t tell me, why nobody warned me. She said it had been years since he’d had problems, that the meds had kept him under control, that they’d talked about it and he knew he’d have to stay on them for the rest of his life.

And then she said:

“Whatever you do, do not go back to the apartment.”

She told me to call county mental health and explain the situation to them. Meanwhile, she called the social worker. She told me to keep the front door within eyeshot so that if he tried to leave before they got there I could go and stall him. So I stood in the parking lot. And then I watched when they came and took him away. And they
really were wearing white coats. He struggled as they dragged him out of the apartment, but not that much. He could see me watching. That’s the last I ever saw of him.

My dad found a divorce lawyer through somebody he knew. It was an old guy, seventy or so, sole practitioner, at the end of his career, I think. Quiet. Reserved. Silver hair. Glasses. Hearing aids in each ear. I told him the whole story. He just sat there listening. When I was done, he didn’t respond for a few seconds. I thought maybe his hearing aids weren’t turned on. Then he said:

“That’s the saddest story I’ve ever heard.”

And this was a divorce lawyer who’d been practicing for years, decades maybe. You’d think he’d have heard worse, huh?

What should I do? I asked him.

“Sweetie, you don’t have to do anything,” he said. “I’ll take care of the divorce. No charge. You just forget it ever happened.”

… Yeah, really nice of him. That was the end of it. … No, I was never mad. And now, twenty years later, I’m even sympathetic. I understand why he went off his meds. You can’t live life like a zombie. Until I met you last week, that’s what my life was like, kind of. A zombie’s.

I married Paul two years later, and it was fine until now. The kids are great and I love them. But the routine, month after month, year after year. It turned me into a zombie. When you and I left the hotel that afternoon last week I walked outside and the trees were green and the sky was blue and I said to myself: Colors! I’m seeing them again! I’ve come back from the dead! So I kind of understand him now. Sometimes you’ve just got to come back to life, whatever the consequences … Thanks, I’m glad you had a good time, too, but it was more than just a good time for me. Like I said, I’m alive again.

Oh, and I wanted to mention: I still follow baseball, and I go to a game every now and then. But I don’t watch on TV. Ever. Can’t.