Life After Silverspoon - Chapter 3 - Life’s a Beach

Living in Venice four blocks from the beach was a much different experience than I thought it would be. Once in a while I would get together with Stephen and have coffee at the Sidewalk Cafe while we watched the tourist with their black sock and sandals toting cameras, the beauties in their bikinis and various other crazies skate by. There was that guy with the turban playing his electric guitar, the one you see on television now whenever they want to depict the insanity of that beach scene. Yes, he was there even then. He was nuts, but not as crazy as Wild Man Fisher was. Remember him? He was that whacko Jewish kid who looked liked he hadn’t taken a shower or bath in twenty years and would run around in circles on Tee’s Beach singing songs like Merry-Go-Round with puddles of spit spewing from the corners of his mouth. Now that was vintage crazy.

The apartment was a two bedroom and I hardly had enough furniture to make it look lived in. I didn’t even have a couch; instead I used beach chairs (the plastic kind you find in Wal-Mart) as furniture. I did like the wooden parquet floors that had those angular geometric shapes, if I was still taking LSD it would have made a good place to sit and trip out on, but those days were long since gone. I was making up for it thought with the herb, the white powdery substance and the booze. Once in a while Carrie would come over and she would spend a night or two there, but I wasn’t in love with her and I should have never let it escalate from friendship. She was a great cook and would make us Caipirinha’s—a drink made from Brazilian rum and pure sugar with tons of lime. They tasted so good you hardly noticed how wasted you would get before it was too late. I guess that’s what led to our romance, that and our trip to Tijuana where I bought a tan, leather jacket, a guitar and a stiletto. That night on the balcony with the warm Santa Ana winds blowing and the sun setting reflecting in her green eyes I could have fallen in love with her if she was the right woman, but it never happened— I couldn’t let myself let it happen. I wished we could have gone back to just being friends but that is harder to do than it sounds. I think I was still in love with Marly and I couldn’t commit to a full time relationship. At least I had my dog to depend on. We would go everywhere together on skates. I had the skates; she just used her four legs to get around on.

I had gotten in to roller skating when I lived with Marly in Burbank a few years back and I had gotten pretty good at it. Bridget Bardog would be my constant companion and whenever she saw my put my skates on, she would run around in circles in anticipation knowing it was going to be skate time. She loved it. I would put on her red leash and we would traverse the streets and sidewalks of Los Angeles together. She had more endurance than any other dog I had ever known. I had to hold her back or she would have dragged me into a storefront or into a passing pedestrian. We left Burbank early one morning, me with my black four-wheeled skates and Bridget with only her four muscular legs to propel her and I had decided to try to make it down to the Santa Monica Pier. We’re talking over thirty, maybe even forty miles. I must say that going over Cahuenga Pass was a bit frightening, but I kept my beloved Bridget in check and it wasn’t too long before we were cruising down Highland Avenue past the Hollywood Bowl, the site of so many future events in my life, but at that point I had no idea of its significance.

We made a right turn on Santa Monica Boulevard and I stopped at a gas station to give her a drink of water out of a paper cup I had secured from the trash can. Yes, I rinsed it out. From there we headed west past Fairfax, past La Cienega, past Doheny as I waved to The Troubadour, the site of so many memories in my young, but potent life. The sun was beating down on my shoulders as it arced its way west through that sunny summer’s day. We followed its path and it wasn’t terribly long before we reached the coast. We made another left at the bike path and with the ocean on our right we made it to Venice Beach by mid-day. Bridget was a real trooper so I rewarded her with a hamburger and I had a slice of pizza I bought from one of those little kiosks by the main drag. I sat on one of the benches while Bridget ate her burger and lapped up about a gallon of water watching the mixed bag of skaters, bikers, walkers, tourist with their black socks and sandals and cameras, the whole nine yards. After about an hour of that it was time to head home. We made it back to Burbank by four in the afternoon no worse for wear. That was the longest trek we ever made together and I will never forget it. God, I miss that dog.

I was feeling lonely and isolated in Venice, which wasn’t really my scene at all and I missed the action of Hollywood. Now that the Two Guys were all but disbanded, I wasn’t playing live much but I was still writing songs. I always found time to do that and, of course, most of the songs in my life were autobiographical. I guess if I traced my life chronologically through my songs it would be an autobiography in itself. Songs like: Eventually which dealt with the eventuality of finding love, money and success—wishful thinking on my part in a three part harmony chorus that I borrowed from Nowhere Man—one of my all time favorite Beatle songs.

There were definitely two sides to my music now—the Beatle side and the Dylan side. I wrote a Dylanesque songs called Passengers, which is a story about a train hopping hobo talking to a baggage car man about how things have changed, how nobody even hops trains much anymore with the freeways and interstates taking over. You can thank old Dwight D. Eisenhower and Dinah Shore for that. You know, see the USA in your Chevrolet etc.

That year I had bought a Toyota Celica until someone decided to run a light and used it as a barricade. The car was totaled but fortunately I was alright. I got four grand in insurance money and decided I wanted to buy a Porsche. With my dad’s help, I found a 1967 black Porsche 912, which is really nothing more than a glorified Volkswagen. But with its sleek lines and curves I knew it would be a major chick magnet, at least I was hoping it would be, but they turned out to be the days of one night stands and failed romances. I must have had at least twenty or thirty of those disasters after Marly and before my next adventure in love with the teenage beauty queen from Germany. I would meet a girl on the street, or in a coffee shop, or on a bus, or at the office, it didn’t matter where as long as they were somewhat interesting, not repulsive looking, and had half a brain. The latter was the hard part. I was still looking for the magic and it seemed like the magic was gone, just seemed to have vanished like smoke in the lazy air. The girls on the west side of town were a little different from Hollywood girls—they were a little more health conscious and like to eat yoghurt and were opposed to smoking cigarettes. I didn’t mind that since I was probably in one of my no smoking phases, or just coming in to a no smoking phase. I think I only smoked then when I drank, which was every night, so I guess I was in a smoking phase after all. I guess I could take the time and try to name all of these women but I would have to strain my brain, besides it would be a bit boring since they all ended with the same basic result—nowhere. But still I will try and name a few. There was Eileen, the teenage ingénue who I met at Central Supply and would see off and on for years when I needed young love. Joyce, a flower arranger that I met at the park across the street from the Hollywood Bowl who lived in Santa Monica, Pamela, a girl that liked to have sex and had money enough to buy her own drugs, Doris, a nurse who came supplied with her own drugs, Campbell, a pretty girl from Chicago who I met at the park when she was walking her two St. Bernard’s, Carol, the freelance writer for The Detroit Free Press, who I actually visited in Detroit and had the head of my precious Gibson J-200 snapped off by one of the careless baggage handlers. That guitar never felt the same to me and I ended up selling it for $1800 on Ebay a few years later. The trip wasn’t a total loss since I visited my cousin Bobby and my Aunt Shirley and Uncle Norman. It was the last time I would ever see my uncle, who was my Mom’s older brother. The list of women went on and on and on but all ended the same. I was now past thirty years old and I was getting a little concerned about my future in music, love and money—especially the love and music. I always figured if the music was right the money would follow—a little naive but I was still a bit of a dreamer then, maybe I still am, but not anywhere near what I was.

I was planning on moving back to Hollywood when I learned that Mom was having health problems. Mom and Dad had moved to the hills of Studio City on Canton Drive and there was a guest house in the back that was like a log house, very primitive, but it had all the accoutrements— a bathroom, a kitchen and a loft where the bed was perched like a crow’s nest. It reminded me of the room upstairs at the Rainbow without all the people.

It was now the early spring of 1983 and my brother Robbie was engaged to Carol Schulman, a girl he met at an actor’s retreat in Montana two years before. They had moved to New York together while she danced and Robbie tried to get work as an actor. They both struggled, which is to be expected, but it wasn’t until Robbie went to the local actors guild to get some leads or make connections that he decided the New York acting lifestyle wasn’t for him. When he saw the aging thespians in the lounge smoking cigars, playing gin rummy and telling war stories of their triumphs and defeats in show biz (mostly defeats), he knew he had had enough. They moved back to California (Carol was also a California girl) where Robbie thought he might try to get some commercials or television work. He did a Pepsi commercial and a few other choice spots while they waited with anticipation for their wedding in May.

. It was at the wedding rehearsal the week before when all the real drama took place.

Canton Drive had a large back yard that looked like something out of Rudyard Kipling’s, The Jungle Book, with bamboo and paths of stone that wound its way around a delicate stream. Bridget’s two of the three beautiful offspring’s, Danielle and Jean Claude (Dani and J,) were secured behind a fenced area in back of the secluded guest house. When Bridget had her puppies on May 16, 1982, I was staying in the back room on Oakhurst again for a brief time. I guess I needed a place where Bridget could give birth. After they were born, Edward the excessively gay neighbor upstairs had complained of the barking to the landlord and I was so pissed off that I told him to go, well you know, do something to himself that intimated procreation—this lead to a feud and the departure of the Haymer’s from Oakhurst Drive. They were so mad at me for losing my temper, but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise since they would fall in love with that house on Canton Drive. The third dog, Genevieve, (Jenny) was given to a neighbor in Studio City who lover her very much and I would drive by sometimes and see her playing with the sweet black dog in her yard.

The rehearsal was a hit and everyone was having a glorious time and it looked like the wedding was going to go on without a single hitch, except for my mom, who was looking a little peaked. Her complexion had turned stone white. At first we thought it was the heat, or maybe she was stressed from working so hard at preparing the decorations and such. That night all the Haymer's and the Schulman's (Carol's maiden name) went out to dinner at the Shaghai Wintergarden on Wilshire and everything appeared to be all right with my mom.
The ceremony was at a Temple Emanuel in Beverly Hills and it was a lovely wedding. There was a string quartet playing as the young couple stepped up to the platform to take their sacred vows. I was wearing a gray suit I had been given by Jack, the retired aircraft employee that lived in the laundry room on Riverton in Studio City. It fit well because I was still indulging in that white powdery substance and I didn’t weigh more than a beanpole. By the afternoon the people at the temple were leaving and heading for the Beverly Hilton for the reception. Everything went fine and dandy and everyone gave a big sigh of relief when they had finally tied the knot. They had done it. It's funny how the youngest Haymer boy got married first, but I guess he was always a bit more mature than his big brother, James. That is at least one thing we both can agree on, except for the '88 Dodgers being the best team in LA history and Linguine with clam sauce. All that was left was the reception, a party, and how hard could that be to handle? Everything was going smoothly until my mom starting growing very pale again, looking much worse than she did at the rehearsal. In the middle of a hora or some Bobby Darin or Frank Sinatra song she fainted and fell on the parquet floor. Dad rushed to her aid and helped her back to her seat while the rest of us tried to give her some air and space. After awhile she seemed to have regained her composure but was not looking especially pert and wasn't her perky self.
After the reception the happy couple said their fond farewell's and in an hour or two were off to the airport Paris bound. They would land in eight hours time and hire a car to drive through France into Italy. They were so excited and wanted to check in with the folks at home. They stopped in a restaurant in Portofino and Robbie called home. It was Dad who answered the call and he sounded a bit strange and distant and Robbie couldn't for the life of himself figure out why. "Is everything all right?" he asked. "Robbie, I don't want to be the bearer of bad news and I sure as he;; don't want to spoil your honeymoon but...you're mom is in the hospital. She had a mild heart attack and they did a bypass surgery."
"What!" Robbie screamed. "Are you kidding?"
"No, I wish I was. But don't worry the doctors say she is going to be fine and they think we were lucky to come in when we did."
"Yeah!" Oh God, is there anything we can do?
"Yes, enjoy yourself and maybe pick up a bottle of Chianti for your mom. They say it's good for the heart."
"I will Dad. Give her a hug and a kiss from both of us, will you?"
"I will son, call me in a few days and I'll give you an update."
"I will, Dad. Goodbye."
"Goodbye."
 What a way to start off  a marriage. Mom was okay and they installed a big old pacemaker in her chest. I spent the rest of that summer in the guest house taking care of my wonderful mother (with Dad’s help too, of course) who had spent most of her adult life taking care of her three children, it was payback time and I didn’t mind it, in fact I was happy about having the opportunity to help her. She was the best! I miss her so much, but I will, as I wrote in the title track of my first solo CD, See You Around. Now I think I got the story right.