Sweet Jane Formerly

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The following is an essay written in late August of 2023, a month after I started the blog. It expresses my regret at the time wasted, years stolen by an illness I’ve now endured for exactly half my lifespan. To phrase the question this way: What was my part in the dance? I’m at a loss to answer, except to say that there was a dance, and I participated every day, whether or not I believed I had a contribution to make. This road that I’ve traveled has been solitary, but Lou would be heartened to know there was never any shortage of people to love.

Lou sang Sweet Jane like it was the only philosophy you’d need in a life lived into one’s nineties. Lou Reed, the punk pioneer who endured shock treatment as a teen. And went on to form the Velvet Underground, a band that made countless listeners think they should start making their own music.

“Anyone who had a heart/wouldn’t turn around and break it -

Anyone who played a part/wouldn’t turn around and hate it”

For years, I hated my part in the dance. Hospitalizations, someone else bumming a cigarette at yet another facility. I hated everything I’d ever done. Disability gives you all the time in the world to question your life. Decades worth, in my case. And because I tended to blame myself for my crack up, I started to feel that every decision I’d ever made was a mistake.

Except for the degree. That part I got right. It took me eight years post-high school graduation to earn a B.A. in Latin American Studies from the University of California. I meandered; I traveled; I worked; and I took extension classes at different schools. When I became ill, through endless years of living under institutional roofs, I had that in my pocket. A Bachelor of Arts.

It’s the early 2000’s and I’ve just been picked up by the police. I’d spent the previous few days in Long Beach, 40 miles south of Los Angeles, at my aunt’s. I started reading an interview with Nicole Kidman in Vanity Fair and soon was thinking I was a famous actress myself, about to give interviews of my own. My Aunt, beloved Carol, took my rants and non sequiturs for three to four days before she filed to have me locked up.

In the police car the officers asked me a series of questions before depositing me at the hospital. “Highest grade completed?” was one of them. My answer provided my chaotic mind with a huge source of amusement: “B+.” I laughed openly at my own obnoxious humor. But the fact was my B.A. was the only thing I could point to with any degree of pride.

Edith Piaf had a hit with “Je ne regrete rien.” And the Chilean heroine who wrote “Gracias a la vida” - Violeta Parra - ended up killing herself. Anthems that are lovely when you’re on top of the world, but serve little purpose when you falter.

The news is, friends, I regret it all. Except for Rogelio, my Mexican friend from el D. F. And my B.A. And my son, always my son.

But Rogelio is dead. He retired for the afternoon to take a nap, age 57, and died in his sleep. He was getting into 3-dimensional art, he wanted to digitize his graphic output. His colleagues at the daily newspaper where he worked as a cartoonist memorialized him in words and images. “Chale,” wrote Gonzalo. “Damn.”

I remember an afternoon at Rogelio’s apartment in Mexico City. Marco, the musician among his crowd of friends, had asked me to pose for a painting he was doing. I was a siren waving the sailors ashore. We were listening to the Velvets, and Marco had a question about the English lyrics: Is it “an asshole here, an asshole there” -? No, I corrected him, “a hustle here, a hustle there.”

There’s a saying: It takes more work to be poor than it does to be rich. The hassles, in my case - far from the work of supporting a family or trying to keep children fed and educated - amounted to scraping together money for cigarettes or beer. But every time you’re admitted to a psych ward there are endless streams of paperwork to fill out before you get a sandwich and a smoke break. And always coming up short when someone, out of sympathy, takes you out to lunch - the poverty of my position was evident in the lifestyles of my fellow casualties, who had, after room and board, exactly $100 per month left over from their Social Security checks. Enough for one Frappuccino a day. Not even.

So, after becoming a casualty, according to Lou Reed I didn’t have a heart. Because I couldn’t think of anything to celebrate in my middle-aged life. I wanted to raise my fist and shout at the sky: “Why this? Why me?” It bears mentioning that my memories were of another girl completely. Someone whose existence hadn’t been upended and, seemingly definitively, derailed.

I learned how to panhandle from a gay woman who’d been viciously abused as a child, a companion at the first board and care facility, and her advice was to smear dirt on my face so as to look poorer. At first it was fun - asking for quarters, getting the odd dollar bill and sometimes a $5, when I wasn’t hungry and didn’t have anyone to support. After the 2008 recession I stopped asking for quarters because lining the exit ramps and city corners I saw people who wouldn’t eat without the money. I was done playing.

I actually think I only received a $5 once in my sporadic panhandling days. By this time I had no thoughts of putting grime on my face; I was happily begging for money in the leather jacket (premium leather!) that my mother had bought me. A young man drove up to the 7-11, exited his car and took one look at me before parting with his money and said, “You’re going to write the book” with a big smile.

Moments like that were exquisite and could make me smile for days. As an African American woman, another temporary friend in my long sojourn in the psychological wilderness, observed: it’s mentally ill people who are discriminated against the most. I knew I’d moved from privilege to a life on the bottom. My status in society was nil. A friendly stranger could be my life’s blood for weeks.

Je ne regrete rien? I regret the millionth cigarette and all the time wasted as I traveled from my mid-twenties to 50 and beyond. Except for my kid. And Rogelio and the degree.

If he’s still alive the child’s father is leading a group of homeless people somewhere in Hawaii as they confront confiscation of their camps, their belongings, and are forced to move on. I looked him up online and found a newspaper article in which he was quoted as the spokesperson for a community of homeless, dated several years ago, but I have no reason to believe he’s off the street. Drugs as young as 8, and a history of childhood emotional and physical abuse. Of course that doesn’t justify the meth amphetamine labs. He won’t quit the drugs, I don’t think.

Anyone who had a heart ...
Anyone who played a part ...

After years spent apologizing to Lou - “I regret it. Why this? Why me?” I’m no longer apologetic. You learn, sometime after your first break with reality, that life as you understood it will not return. You are too outside the norm. Your mental visitations and hallucinations take you places where others can’t follow, or even wave at you. The music in the cafés escapes you.

Rogelio is dead. Nothing will bring back the sunshine now. I sit and wait for letters that won’t arrive. I’m not even sure who they’d be addressed to.

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