The throw of the dice this week falls on adventures in beginnings. Starting over, and rewriting a life you’ve lived many years is the same as re-writing a secret story. It takes the same blind courage. About half between forty and fifty years old, you hear people say, “It’s too late to start over,” It’s not true. Behavioral change is essential to living a full life.
In the middle of the night I woke up as if it was morning. When I looked out the window, an almost full moon, white as a laundered tablecloth, was staring back at me. It said, get up and write. I retreated to my corner of the world; a tiny room bathed in blush pink and gold, and wrote from beneath the goose down comforter. The moon watched. Now that the holiday lights and decorations are placed in the cartons, the wrapping and ribbon tossed away, a landfill of disturbing, distressing, and terrifying global news is dumped on us. I do not understand the external world of political and international power, wealth, and motivation. I fled that world a long time ago when I learned that men who controlled the paths of others were dangerously self-serving. I recall my father sitting on that crushed green velvet sofa, holding the remote control in one hand and watching a news program. He turned the television off and said to me, “Luellen, everything that goes on is fixed; you cannot hide your head in the sand and think otherwise.” I nodded my head in understanding, while internally I thought my father was suffering from his usual paranoia.
Now the forces of evil have shattered that glass of indemnity, and I’m forced to understand. This year is not about selfish resolutions catering to my fanciful comfort and ambitions, it is about survival. It’s about transforming behavior and habits, excesses and denial. Being part of a group, makes us feel less traumatized. Imagine, all the thousands of people paddling the same current; forcing back the mortgage lender, relinquishing precious possessions, driving a car with a shattered windshield, wearing coats without any down feathers left, and wondering when the pink slip will arrive. Alienation, religion, and racism are at the root of mankind’s aggression and discontent. It can lead to unexpected violence, and then to massacre, and war. It is a collective neurosis that grows worse every year.
The inner world, where each of us faces a truth no one else knows, is ruptured. All I can think of is bringing a little bit of light to someone I know is in darkness. Like a child thrown into school on the first day, we are unsure how we fit into the novelty of today’s complexities. It is time for courageous thinking and reinvention. If you have any excesses, hold them up to the light; rethink how to make them work for yourself, or someone else. Recently my friend and business advisor, Jazzwise, told me a story. He is offering business counseling for a program sponsored by the Small Business Administration. One of his clients owns a three bedroom house she cannot afford to keep. She is going to convert it into an Assisted Home Residence for seniors and rent each bedroom. That way she can retain possession, and earn more than enough income to pay the mortgage.
Taking in boarders is another option, and one I considered. When I remember the roommates of my past, I run from that idea. I’ve managed to find a tortured closet lesbian, a Nazi sympathizer, and critical case pot-heads. It was 1988, the summer I returned from my European sojourn, and decided I could not go back to real estate management. With no experience other than browsing the museums and galleries of cities I’d been to, I decided to try working in a gallery. The gallery I chose sold expensive commercial sculptor and lithographs. I got the job because I wore a short skirt. After a few weeks, one of the salesmen approached me. He was coiled like a snake, with icy blue eyes, spiked bleached white hair, and a radio-perfect deep steady voice.
“Why do you keep running away from me?” he said when I passed through the lunchroom.
“I’m not. Why?”
“You’re so jumpy. Sit down for a minute, and tell me your story.” He reached for a extra long Benson & Hedges and flicked the ashes like a movie-star. I watched him because he was so well choreographed. We sat in the lunchroom and drank burnt end of the day coffee. I told him about growing up in Los Angeles, and before I got to the part about moving to San Diego, he had already set-foot into our common ground, and was pulling me down. He knew how to manipulate what I said into the broadest sort of connection. He was sure we’d met when we both vacationed in Laguna as young kids.
I can’t believe I’m telling this story. Anyway, Heidelbaum, I’ll call him, made me his personal pet. Since he was highest grossing salesman, when he asked me to be his, what did he call it, “frontline,” I accepted because we were paid on commission. Heidelbaum knew a lot about art, and just about anything else I mentioned. He claimed to be a dancer in the original “Hair” production in San Francisco; a former golden-boy broadcast personality, a child prodigy of the piano until some irreversible accident, and a frustrated but hugely talented writer. He only associated with creative people. He told me I was creative, and that’s what got me hooked. He also insisted on calling me LuLu, when I was still attached to the name Luellen. We worked as a team. I wore short skirts and he closed the deals. Those months at the gallery were the most deranged period of my life. I learned that there wasn’t anything creative going on in the gallery. Most of the salespeople were misfits of some breed, and the company policy was to practically force clients to buy on the credit we provided. We advised young sailors anchored in San Diego, that they needed an Erte sculpture to feel culturally accepted. Heidelbaum sold a sculpture or two a week.
“I’m going to take care of you. Don’t worry about everything so much LuLu, it ruins your personality.”
Within six months he picked out an apartment in a wooded canyon and told me I could have the large bedroom. He’d pay the rent and all I had to do was make coffee and be nice while he tried to write. I believed him, he was a non-attending student of Method acting. He studied books and film with relentless appetite. When I moved my furniture in, he went through the boxes. “What’s this?” he said as he browsed through my odd collection of art, books, and photographs.
”Is that Bugsy Siegel?” He held the photograph up and smiled. The photograph was inscribed; to Al, from your pal, Ben.
“How did you know.” I asked. “ LuLu you have to realize I know a lot.” Everything he said was preceded with, you have to realize.
“Your Dad was involved with him. Did you know that?”
“ They were friends.” He did that thing with his eyes, he practically tore the skin off my face staring at me.
“ LuLu, your dad was more than a friend. You can handle it.” I never did find out how he knew about my Dad and Ben. This was way before google, so he had to have read about him, or asked one of his big shot friends. After that, Heidelbaum turned into the tyrant from a science-fiction thriller. That first night he cooked a chicken, and threw it in the garbage because he said it was lousy-stinking lousy, “ I hate my cooking, and I hate this apartment. I only rented it for you.”
He drank cheap wine, and stomped around the room all night, mumbling about how wrecked he was, and how much he loved his sister, who had died, and all that other stuff he’d been hiding for six months. I closed the door of my bedroom clutching the photograph of my father. Heidelbaum banged on the door, and I held my breath. Naturally in the light of day, he bowed his head, turned his icy eyes into rose pedals, and begged me to tell him he still had his looks. I didn’t have any idea what I’d gotten into. I managed to live through three months of the most explosive and emotional behavior I’d ever witnessed in my life. Poor Heidelbaum was really choking on his identity. During that period a former boyfriend came to rescue me, after I called for help. Kenny could talk sense into a murderer, and manage to get a confession. Kenny was the one who found out that Heidelbaum’s grand-father was very big in the Nazi party. When Kenny told me to get my f—bag and move out before I lost my mind, I listened. I vanished from the apartment, and took my silly little boxes with me.
When I resettled into my next home and unpacked, something was missing. Heidelbaum had stolen the photograph of Ben Siegel. He probably sold it to a pawn shop and now it’s part of someone’s collection. My sister was outraged when I told her. ” You idiot, that was worth a lot of money.” The funny thing is, Heidelbaum and I used to write together, he out on the wooded terrace, and me in the yellow wall-papered kitchen. Then we’d exchange our work. Mine was always, sort of boring. I lied about his, I said it was good, but I knew it was contrived. That’s the first time I’ve ever written about Heidelbaun. The story has a part two but I’m not ready for that yet. Sometimes a story gets out that you hadn’t planned, and then there it is staring at you. I don’t like remembering that Lulu, but now that I have said this much, Heidelbaum did set off a spark of creativity in me.
