Take Another Little Piece of My Heart: A Groupie Grows Up (36 page)

But eventually I had to return to New York on beeswax, and Sandra and I went out for a drink after her show, and in the bar I boldly tampered with her hair, stroked her fingertips, asked questions about her childhood, her family, her lovers. Still not knowing what to do with me, she rested her head on my shoulder and sighed. We walked back to her temporary Village pad, arm in arm, laughing, intimate, nervous. Her place was bright and blank; she hadn’t been there long. A bare bulb blazed into my flushed face as I sat down on the couch with her, awkward, clumsy, junior high school revisited. The melee of feelings I was having were big news to me, and I told her so. I nuzzled her in the glare of that blasted bulb, heart wrenching. If the lighting had been more pleasant and gentle the whole thing might have been different. I wanted to kiss her but couldn’t do it. She sat there stroking my leg, sort of humming to herself. Why didn’t she kiss me? I was a mass of thunderous heartbeats, momentarily deaf, dumb, and sightless. She got up to make tea and I followed her blindly, attempting to hold her to me, and she sweetly pushed away, held me at arm’s length against the stove, looking at me, leveling. “You love men! I know because I read your book! Remember how much you love men.” She was smiling at me. What could I say? I smiled back at her, silent, wanting to say so much, realizing I was right near the door—escape from rejection—so told her I’d better
get going. As I slid back the lock, she held me from behind, kissed me on the neck, and told me how sweet I was. Breath caught in my throat, a panicky surge of desire moving through like a wagonload of spun glass. “See you soon, honey.” Honey. Did she call everybody that?

I wandered around the Village very confused. It was late, my feet hurt in the high heels, I was chilled, I was cross-eyed. I went back to Melanie’s and everyone was in bed. I made a hot, hot cup of tea and contemplated, questioned, attempted to turn inward. I had been tied down for so long, a very married woman, out of commission, and now untethered, I floundered—bewildered, green, groping around on a constant blind date. I felt like my nerve endings were raw, on display. As I wrote when I was seventeen, about some wild Sunset Strip boy who wouldn’t give me the time of night, “Unrequited lust is worse, by far, by far, than unrequited love.” Even though that’s not exactly true, it sure feels savage when you’re going through it. And Sandra was right; I do love men. She is the only girl I ever really wanted. Of course, I’m not dead yet. Ha ha.

So I took Sandra’s rejection on the chin. I took it like a woman. The next day I scoured thrift stores, antique markets, and lamp shops looking for a very special item for Sandra, finally finding exactly what I wanted from an old man going out of business on Christopher Street. On my way to the airport I dropped the present at the door to her apartment—half fearing, half hoping that she’d burst out and see me, bumbling and mumbling with my gaily wrapped gift, ribbons and bows in profusion. There was no word from her when I got back to L.A. so I had to bust down and call her. “So, did you get the present I left you?” “Oh, yes,” she said. “Thank you so much for that sweet little lampshade. It makes such a pretty glow in the room.”

The first thing I did when I got back to L.A. was to cash my very first—big!—royalty check and buy two tickets to Japan. Nick had always dreamed of going to Japan, his extreme fascination for everything Japanese having continued unabated. He was so excited, genuine joy spread across his face when I handed him the tickets, and it was worth all the tea in Kyoto. The day school let out (much to Nick’s relief), we boarded a bird for Tokyo, a twelve-hour flight, and Nick was the perfect child. No complaining, no demands—actual happiness! We put on our Japanese slippers, played cards, ate white rice with chopsticks, watched dumb movies, and tried in vain to sleep a little. He was so electrified by the time we arrived, I thought he would pass out with exhilarated expectation. Instantly at home, he seemed entirely comfortable on the wide, crowded streets. A serenity enveloped him that I had never seen before, a feeling of “fitting in” at last. The massive hustle-bustle madness of Tokyo somehow calmed him down.

It was Nick’s holiday, so besides all the wonderful meditative times spent at Buddhist temples and calming moments in immaculate gardens, with white deer all around us, we spent tons of hours in modern techno malls, perusing the latest in video systems. He wound up getting the newest version of Famicom, the Japanese Nintendo, and several nutty games, all in Japanese, of course. He was already teaching himself the Japanese language and today is almost fluent. Pretty good timing.

June 22
—
Mommy and Nicky are in Tokyo! Nick gets up every morning and makes me a cup of coffee in the little pot provided in our hotel room. We went to see the long row of rock bands today
—
all so loud, each clashing with the other
—
miles of giant James Dean pompadours, Kiss clones. Nick was especially curious about a punk band called Burst Head. Spent hours in Kiddieland, the biggest toy store in Japan. I just had a shrimp burger and a delicious, cheap cappuccino. It’s true that picture-perfect melons are a hundred dollars, but if you don’t hang out in touristland, prices aren’t bad. Yesterday Nick crawled through the nostril of the world’s biggest Buddha and is supposed to get tons of good luck. Maybe we’ll find the perfect school in the fall. We’re having a ball. My little boy and me buying sugary canned drinks out of vending machines
—
Milky Tea and Pocari Sweat
—
walking down ancient streets, finding real
antiques!
Quiet times, eyes closed, at glorious temples, and we took a whizzy trip to Kyoto on the bullet train. We wrote the Des Barres name on a stone that will be embedded in the wall of the Todai-Ji Temple for all time. They have James Dean and Mickey Mouse on everything! I got a pair of James Dean boxer shorts, wearing them right now!

At one of the temples, as we silently peered into a thousand-year-old prayer room, Nick pulled one of the blessed good luck charms from his pocket and gazed at it, rapt. When he looked up at me, his eyes were misty. “Do you really think this will help me feel like a regular person?” It seemed like no matter how hard I tried, Mommy couldn’t make the boo-boo better.

We were in Japan for two weeks and Nick flourished. I think the clean, severe feeling there gave him a sense of purpose, and he felt important when we stopped over and over again to pose for pictures with the Japanese people—the long-haired blond boy and his flaming redheaded mother. But when we got back to L.A., his customary culture shock set in. We had reserved him a spot at Cottonwood Camp up in the beautiful hills of Santa Monica. The little blue bus would pick him up every morning, but whenever the phone rang, I had to brace myself for another complaint from a squeaky-clean Cottonwood camp counselor, telling me how Nick wasn’t making an effort to fit in, play sports, or jump through any of the hoops provided. Two weeks in and he was out.

I was left with the task of keeping him amused for the rest of the summer, dropping him off and picking him up at his dad’s (since Michael still wasn’t driving), taking him for little visits to my mom, down to Little Tokyo, to the Self-Realization Lake Shrine, for overnight
stays in Santa Barbara, to San Diego, and to Ojai to visit the Begleys. He now saw Laurance, his psychologist, twice a week, but was no happier with himself or anybody else. I prayed a lot and continued the lengthy process with the Office of Counseling and Psychological Services and Santa Monica Unified Schools to find a place where the teachers might understand what my little boy needed. It would take until the end of November for the officials to secure “placement,” and until then, Nick was home—bored, needing distraction, attention. In September an old, tired tutor arrived. Nick roasted her on the spit. She left her post without warning and probably retired soon afterward.

I was so over-worried about Nick—really tormented, finally coming to the painful conclusion I had zero control over the situation. Right on cosmic cue my new friend Ron Zimmerman raved to me about this psychiatrist, Dr. Frederick Silvers, a Jungian, and recommended I start therapy with him right away. Ron saw that I had a whole lot on my plate—it was dribbling onto the table, messing up the floor, and I hadn’t even noticed—and he thought I could use some professional help sorting it all out. Nobody had ever been more correct. After spending a relaxing Fourth of July under a billowing tent with good old Donnie on his massive new chunk of property in Aspen, I went for my first session with Dr. Silvers. Soul excavation with a fearless, probing pickax.

I climbed Frederick’s stairs, sat across from him while he smoked his pipe, and expected all the answers to drop out of the skylight onto my lap. After my third session I realized it didn’t work that way. It was laborious toiling. Mistakes, errors, blunders, and botchups are hard to see at first, much less admit to, accept, and understand. Therapy is like walking around in a dim, comfortable fog then coming up against a blinding light. At first you shield your eyes, then you take a peek at the light, finally getting the guts to stare at it, allowing yourself to see all the imperfections and cracks in the foundation, some of which you created. Oops. Uh-oh. Excuse me. I’m sorry. Who do you apologize to? Stop the world, I want to get off, please.

One rainy day I had what is called a “breakthrough,” which is just another of those twelve-letter words until it happens to you. I was telling Frederick how I used to drag Michael to Disneyland and force the mouse down his throat. Make him feel guilty if he didn’t accompany
me to Science of Mind spectaculars. Frederick sat across from me, doing his job, puffing his pipe, nodding. I was laughing as I remembered waiting in the longest, winding line for Peter Pan one long-ago day when Michael still had streaks of silver running through his hair—when I suddenly stopped in mid-sentence. A gush of tears—unexpected—burst from a place that had been shut off for eons. Bright, clear anguish and the stunning realization that I owed Michael a sincere apology. I had tried to alter the man I was married to as if he wasn’t good enough in the first place. Mold and squash him into a heart-shaped cookie cutter, so out of the oven would pop my perfect man, complete with an inner-peace happy face. Nothin’ says lovin’ like something from the oven. He rebelled. He slept with other women. Maybe they thought he was A-OK just the way he was.

I came home and called Michael to apologize. “Forgive me, Mikie, forgive me!” I blurted. “I dragged you to Disneyland, you didn’t even
want
to GO! I forced you to go, over and
over!
” As I ranted with sorrow and relief, he was gracious, loving, and a bit surprised. “You didn’t mean it, darling,” he said gently. “I actually came to enjoy the little rat bastard. Besides, I’m sure you thought it was all for my own good.” I hung up the phone and felt like flying out the kitchen window, a burden I didn’t even know I possessed two hours earlier had lifted, and my slaphappy, unshackled soul flew on lightas-feather wings.

There were, of course, more mistakes to plow through, peek at, and mourn. By not wanting to flatten Nick’s spirit, hoping he might remain a free, unencumbered human being, I had not provided the all-important boundaries, guidelines, structure—whatever you want to call parental discipline. Since Michael had been raised with only a bohemian smidgen of parental supervision, the task had been left to me, the “yes” woman. Nick slept enough hours, ate enough food, wore cool clothes, had acres of spiritual and psychological input, lots and lots of love, but it wasn’t enough. Who knew? Nick especially needed to know how far he could go within his world, because his giant mind let in too many things. He didn’t know where he stood. The vast, full dark scared him. Too many options.

I cursed myself for being Miss Goody-Blue-Bonnet, the perpetual Snow White. After I had been in therapy for a few months, Patti started calling me “Snow Black.” I actually allowed myself to scowl and bluster once in a while. I started telling people off, and they said, “Why, Pamela, that behavior is
so
out of character!” At last! Was that a sparkler down there at the end of the tunnel?

My Jane Fonda fitness trainer had started making treks down the coast to work out a few lucky people. Just in time too, because I was getting tired of doing listless leg lifts to “Erotic City” at the Sports Connection, next to sweating strutters who were only hearing the thud-beat instead of Prince crooning, “We can fuck until the dawn, making love ’til cherry’s gone,” over and over again. Four times a week for an hour and fifteen, Kathy and I high-impacted, toned, pumped, stretched, and stepped our way to blood-boiling queen-machines. She even gave me a series of exercises using a hotpink rubber band that I could do out on the road and they were about to come in handy-dandy.

Berkley had bought the paperback rights to
I’m with the Band
and sent me back on the road to sing for my supper. I dished with Sally Jessy Raphaël somewhere in Connecticut, filled a sweetheart half hour with Bob Costas, got through the intensity of Geraldo one more time, and met Joan Rivers—finally—and she talked to me like we were sipping martinis on her patio. One of the girls. I was getting oh-so-comfy on the chat shows, no more butterflies. All kinds of fun.

I was on the Miami stop of the tour when I got a call from Berkley. I had just hit the
New York Times
Best Sellers list. The call came directly to a radio station where I had an hour to kill on the air. I was one happy former groupie, let me tell you, and that particular interview was a giddy smash. But right at the end of the peppy hour, the DJ said to me, “So what do you think about Jimmy Page calling you a bimbo?”

A few months earlier, Jimmy had attempted to snub me at the Atlantic Records reunion bash, where Zeppelin played together for the first time in many years. With John Bonham’s son Jason playing drums, John Paul Jones in top form, and Robert wailing with memories of a ripe, rip-roaring time, long, long gone, it had been a magical night. Backstage hanging with Robert, I greeted Jimmy warmly, and when he kept walking, I called his name so loud that everyone turned around. “Jimmy
Page
!!” He stopped in his tracks, slowly turned to face me, and said, “Why, Pamela, dear. How are you?” But his eyes weren’t kind, and it was clear he didn’t care how I was. I had heard it through the grapeslime that Jimmy had been angry about the way he was portrayed in my book. I guess I didn’t kiss his skinny ass quite hard enough.