1983. A card from another long lost friend. Nancy. She had just returned from South America, and was living in Boston "but without a stable address" as so many of us were in those days. We graduated college together. I know I saw her a year or so later, back in Green Bay, because she called the day after my first beating from a now long-gone ex-boyfriend. She helped me pull myself together, and told me that her ex used to beat her as well. So many things were not out in the open in those days. I was embarrassed. How did I have the bad taste to pick someone who would beat on me?
Those were my biker days. I had broken up with the "good" biker, and was now running with the "bad"guys. Well, not exactly. As I told my mother, we're the good bad guys, not the bad bad guys. Still and all.....It was the kind of culture that passed out little "Season's Greetings"cards that read, "Money's short, times are hard, here's your fucking Christmas card." On a sheet of paper that has some of the lyrics to Karma Chameleon (written out by someone other than myself), is a draft of a birthday card to one of the biker crowd. I said, "Dear Dusty, I don't know what to get you for your birthday. I wish I could give you freedom and happiness and the love and understanding of the lady of your choice. But I don't know that much magic. All I can give you is the wish."
Dusty and Tommy lived in a trailer behind my house, and were hiding out from the cops who were after them for driving warrants. I immortalized pieces of them in [amazon B005NYGX90 inline]. I had a little crush on Dusty, too, but he would have been just as bad for me as the other guy was. Better I remember him the way I do.
I got beaten up because I was leaving, and the boyfriend knew I was never coming back. He didn't exactly beat me. He just banged my head against the ground over and over until I thought it was going to come off. That little incident became novel fodder later on as well. For a long time I went to a chiropractor to deal with the damage he did which was not apparent until a few years later. It was a Jack Daniels incident. I wish I knew what happened to Nancy. #