Chapter 8 – Sex Trap

“You’re what?” I shouted in complete and utter shock.

“You heard right.”

“How far along are you?”

“I don’t know, maybe four or five months.”

I couldn’t believe what she had just laid on me. There she was smoking Marlboro 100’s and doing cocaine and she was with child. I had to make her see the error of her ways. But wasn’t this the pot calling the kettle black? I wasn’t exactly Mr. Clean and Sober, not yet anyway.

“What are you going to do about it?”

“I don’t know. Forget about it.”

“Forget about it? Whether you like it or not, you can’t forget about it. In about five months there is going to be a big surprise coming out of your uterus. That is something you just can’t wish away.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Really? I think we should, Maria.”

After going through two abortions with my first girlfriend, I had a generous amount of guilt stored up. I felt like this was an opportunity to make things right, at least try to make up for the hasty decisions I and my girlfriend had made in the distant past—at least it seemed like another lifetime ago.

“Whatever you decide to do, I will back you up one hundred percent. If you want to have this child, have an abortion, which may be difficult at this late stage, or give it up for adoption. These seem like your only three choices.”

“Right now I want to get high and forget about it.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea. Think of the baby. It could be born dependant on drugs. I’ve seen some TV specials about it, and it is not a pretty sight. Is that what you want?”

“No.”

“Good.”

About two weeks before I met Maria, a friend of mine, Jon Lowery’s wife, Beverly, had been approached by an attorney when he found out that she was pregnant. He asked her if she wanted to put the baby up for adoption. She adamantly said, “No way!” But he gave her his card nonetheless. I was over their house in The Valley buying an amplifier from Jon when I mentioned that I was living with a young German/Finnish girl who was pregnant and was confused about what to do. “Is it yours?” she asked point blank.

“No, I met her under that condition.”

“Good.”

She then gave me the phone number of this attorney in Beverly Hills, the same guy that approached her. I thought it may be a good thing to do. Not only do they pay your expenses, they let you choose the adopting couple from a file with pictures, ages, religious background and everything you need to know to make a rational decision. I was going to run it by her when I got back home.

Meanwhile Maria was hustling these so called “Sugar Daddies” for money. She swore up and down that she wasn’t sleeping with them, but we weren’t sleeping together so it was really none of my concern, although I did care an awful lot about her.

Let me tell you a little about this almost eighteen year old woman/child that was sharing my bed, an frustrating the hell out of me because, as of yet, we were not doing the deed. Her real mother was a Finnish woman by the name of Rita Surhasko living in the house of a German woman and working as an au pair, (a domestic assistant from a foreign country working for, and living as part of, a host family). The Borneman’s were the host family, the mother’s name was Suzanne and her husband was Hans. They had two children, Ana and Kai.

So three year old Maria, whose real name was Jutta Marja Surhasko, lived in an upper middle class home in Obertshausen and shared a room with her single mom, Rita. One night when Rita went out for a drink in nearby Frankfurt, in the American sector, she met a United States Army soldier and they fell in love. This soldier was scheduled to leave for America in a couple of weeks and had asked Rita to marry him, unfortunately for Maria and Rita, he didn’t want any excess baggage tagging along—no kids, at least no kids from another marriage. I don’t know if Rita was despondent or even depressed about the choice she had to make, but she finally came to a decision to marry this soldier and leave her three year old daughter in the care of the Bornemann’s. After a year or so little Maria was legally adopted by them and Rita and said soldier moved to Riverside, California and remained there until her death in the nineties.

Suzanne Bornemann was a force to be reckoned with. Not only had she grown up as Nazi (she had joined a Youth for Hitler club), but she was a full-fledged Scientologist—an O.T. level five, which is very high up in the ranks of that organization. What a lethal combination. While the Bornemann’s were on a sojourn to Clearwater, Florida, with the entire family (including seventeen year old Maria) to bask in the light of Scientology, Maria had run away. After many days and nights of hitchhiking (with her looks I imagine it wasn’t too hard to find a ride), she finally ended up in Hollywood, California. While in Hotel Hell she met a young punk rock skateboarder dude named Rusty and they became an item. He was the father of her soon to be child, if she decided to go through with the pregnancy, or if the fates deemed it to be.

What a tragic story, I thought, and there had to be something I could do to help this poor, beautiful but unfortunate woman/child. I couldn’t get her off the cigarettes, but she did cut down to a half a pack a day. As far as the cocaine, I insisted that she give it up and what was good for the goose was also good for the gander. I was almost sober now, except for the occasional beer and joint, and she was as well. She never did indulge in marijuana saying it made her paranoid, and I could understand that since pot is the bullshit eliminator—it is impossible to lie to yourself and have a good high.

Lying in bed with her night after night and not even touching her was starting to get to me. I told her I wanted to change the status of our relationship and asked if we could make love on her eighteenth birthday which was less than a week away. I didn’t want a pity fuck, I needed to know if she was attracted to me, and if so would she be able to let go of her problems for a night. I know you might think, it was sleazy to want to make love to a teen-age pregnant woman, but honestly she still had a flat stomach and I wondered if she wasn’t making the whole story up so I would have sympathy for her. How sleazy was it really? I thought I was falling in love with her and there was only a thirteen and a half year age difference between us. Look at all the seventy year old men (movie stars and directors, artist and sculptors etc.) that sleep with eighteen year old girls and are well respected members of society. I felt okay about it; even if the general consensus was that I was robbing the proverbial cradle.

At this point, everyone I knew was against me and my decision to harbor a teen-age runaway. My father and mother, sister and brother, Chas, Stephen, Paul Downing, and Larry Harrison—everybody tried to talk me out of helping Maria, but I had gone too far to turn back now. The only one who seemed to like her was good old Bridget Bardog. On the third of June, four days before her birthday, Chas was having a belated birthday party for himself on Milner Road, which was a few blocks away and a year or so later it would be directly across the street. I told Maria I was going and if she wanted to come along that would be fine. She said she had some “business” to take care of and declined the offer. I hopped in my Porsche and drove the half mile to Chas’ duplex while the party was in full force. Chas always had the best parties, always lots of women, booze and food, and this one was no exception to that rule. I was determined to meet an older woman (at least twenty) that would distract me from my feelings for Maria. There was this very attractive dark haired, dark skinned woman standing by herself in the corner looking around to see what her next move was going to be. It was me. I asked her if she wanted to sit in my Porsche (even though it was a glorified VW, it still looked the part of a sex trap) and talk, maybe listen to a cassette of some of my music. For the life of me I can’t remember this young woman’s name but I do have a good sense of what she looked like—she was pretty and kind of intelligent, and she was in my car. After getting to know her a little we started to make out in the front seat of the car. I knew I couldn’t invite her back to my place since Maria might be there, but it would serve her right to bring home another woman, at least it would force the issue. Instead I got her phone number and promised to call her in a day or two, and then we went back inside to join the party.

I left the party a little after midnight and went home expecting to find Maria there, but she wasn’t, only Bridget, who was in desperate need of a walk. After the dog did her business outside, I came back in to the apartment and noticed a note and a cassette on the bed. It was from her and it was scented with rose oil. She had written that she really liked me a lot but was so confused in her life, and if it weren’t for me, she would be lost. She went on to say that her words could not express her feeling but it would be better expressed in the song, More Than This, from the album Avalon by Roxy Music featuring Brian Ferry. What can I say? I was touched.

When she came back to the apartment an hour or so later, she saw me reading the note, (I had read and re-read it about a hundred times). She broke down and cried and we spent the night in each other’s arms. I can’t tell you if we made love that night, and I can’t tell you that we didn’t. You decide.