I get shivers whenever I see those old black-and-white films of Elvis getting shorn for Uncle Sam. When he rubs his hand over the stubs of his former blue-black mane, I get a twinge in my temples. In the glorious year of 1960, I was at the Reseda Theater with my parents, and I saw the famous army footage before the onslaught of Psycho. I don’t know which was more horrifying. I hung on to my daddy’s neck and inhaled the comforting familiarity of his drugstore aftershave and peeked through my fingers as Norman Bates did his dirty work, and the army barber did his. I tried to believe that Elvis was doing his duty as an AMERICAN, but even at eleven years old, I realized his raunch had been considerably diminished. I tacked my five-and-dime calendar onto the dining-room wall and drew big X’s as each day passed, knowing he would let his hair grow long when he came home from Germany. Being an adored only child, my mom let me keep the eyesore on the wall for two years. I was always allowed to carry out my fantasies to the tingling end, and I somehow survived several bouts of temporary omnipotence.
All my girlfriends had siblings they had to share with, and since I had two rooms of my own, my house was where everyone wanted to bring their Barbie dolls. I ruled the neighborhood until I entered Northridge Junior High. It turned out to be the real world, and was I surprised! My lack of breasts took precedence over my grades, and actual real-live boys loomed before me, loping around, too tall for their own good. I wanted to make my parents happy and get an A in Home Economics, but boys and rock and roll had altered my priorities.
I was always in awe of my big, gorgeous daddy. He looked just like Clark Gable, and disappeared on weekends to dig for gold way down deep in Mexico. He had always wanted to strike it rich, so right before I was born, he and my mom left Pond Creek, Kentucky, heading for gold country, which allowed me to come into the world as a California native. We lived right off Sunset and Vine, in a dinky little hut on Selma Avenue, and after a series of unilluminating vacuum-salesman-type jobs, my daddy made his way farther west into the wild shrubbery of the San Fernando Valley suburbs, to seek his meager fortune bottling Budweiser. He splurged out and bought his very own cream-colored Cadillac that he paid for in seventy-two monthly installments, and we lived in the same split-level for twelve years, so I felt very secure. I had two parents, a dog, a cat, a parakeet named Buttons, and three good meals a day. In my early years, my sweet mom made sure that my wild daddy came across as a tame, devoted father-figure, but no matter how much she buffered and suffered, it couldn’t alter the fact that he was from the Old South, and I was from the New West.
Two incidents occurred when I was fourteen that had a profound effect on my life. The first was when my dad relented and let me remove the wisps of hair from my very thin legs (he did not, however, let me place the Lady Schick above the knee), and I had a moment of independence alone in the pink-tiled bathroom that will never be equalled for as long as I live, squirting a pool of Jergens into my palm and slathering it all over my hairless, shining Barbie-doll calves. Compared to getting my period, the first shave initiated me into the elementary stage of womanhood with a much more exciting sense of adventure . . . going forth into the world with no hair on my calves—Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness! The second incident involved a stolen car, a bad boy, and the song “He’s a Rebel.” Dennis MacCorkell was the slump-shouldered, shuffling, cigarette-dangling, pit-faced bad boy found in most junior high schools in 1962. He would shout to me whenever we passed in the hall, “Hey! No Underwear!!” I took it as an endearment and blushed appropriately. He had the same seat in his homeroom that I had in Biology I, and one Friday morning I found “No Underwear” carved into the table. I hoped it was a secret message of adoration, even though he was going steady with a tough Chicano girl named Jackie. Over the weekend, Dennis and two other bad boys from another school stole a car and smashed it to pieces and they all went straight to Teen Angel heaven. Jackie came directly to school so we could all see her suffer. She was wearing a black tulle veil, and her friends held her up all day as she staggered from class to class. She broke down during Nutrition, and every girl in school secretly wished that Dennis MacCorkell had been her boyfriend. “He’s a Rebel” became associated with Dennis, and rebellion turned into infamy in my teenage mind. Twenty years later, my mom was cleaning out her drawers and came across a little box with a dead rose tucked inside, and a slip of paper cut out of my 1962 yearbook: “Hey, No Underwear, good luck with the boys, Dennis MacCorkell.”
Nobody ever forgot Dennis MacCorkell at Northridge Junior High.
“He’s a rebel, and he’ll never ever be any good, he’s a rebel and he never ever does what he should . . . and just because he doesn’t do what everybody else does, that’s no reason why I can’t give him all my love.”
I began to associate the Top 10 with events and boys of the moment. My transistor became an appendage, the goopy-haired heroes crooning in my ear became all the boys who ignored me during “I Pledge Allegiance to the Flag.” Lyrics were taken seriously. I walked in the rain, crying, listening to “Crying in the Rain” by the perfect-haired Everly Brothers, imagining that I had just broken up with Phil “Caveman” Caruso, the Italian hunk in my Creative Writing class. When Vance Branco didn’t show up for my backyard luau, I joined Leslie Gore for the chorus, “It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to, cry if I want to, DIE if I want to . . .” I stood by the screen door in a real honest-to-God grass skirt that my daddy brought back from Okinawa, fiddling with my fake lei while all of my guests twisted the night away . . . “You would cry too, if it happened to you.”
Although I bought Bobby Vee records and wanted to put my head on Paul Anka’s shoulder, I counted the minutes and seconds until Dion DiMucci, suave and greasy, wearing a shiny sharkskin suit, came gliding into my living room via American Bandstand, admitted by Uncle Dick Clark.
May 9, 1962, Dear Diary . . . DION!!! Oh Help!!! I’m so excited, I think I’ll just DIE!!! I was runnin’ around, chokin’ and cryin’ and yellin’ and screamin’. wow wow cute cute CUTEl! you woulda died how he said “dum didla dum didla dum didla dum.” I was rolling over inside, I was cryin’, I love him so much . . .
I would sit cross-legged on the floor in front of our big blond box, dribbling tears of teen love into my Pop Tart while my mom looked on, shaking her head in amazement the way moms do. I had a shrine to Dion on my dresser, and I wore a locket around my neck with his picture clipped from 16 magazine and swooned over his slippery, sexy cool. It broke my heart when he married Sue Butterfield. I guess he was just pissed off at her when he wrote “Runaround Sue.”
I was truly boy crazy. My first boyfriend happened in the eighth grade. Darrell Arena was a half-semester behind me, but he made up for it with a shiny, hairless, muscular chest that I gazed at while we swam in his big Canoga Park swimming pool. The most we ever did was kiss without tongues up in his maple bunk bed.
May 28 . . . When he put his musclie arm around me, I died!! I hope it’s not dumb to put your arm around a boy when he has his arm around you. Wow, he has a build and a half. If I don’t see him tomorrow, I’ll croak
Darrell rode show horses, and his mom would pick me up in the family Buick so I could be present when he trotted by in his sateen horse-show outfit and pointy-toed boots with spurs. He would smile down at me from lofty horsey heights, and I was in giddyup awe of my very own boyfriend. I wore his big baseball jacket to school, and took deep whiffs of it constantly. After so much dreaming about being near male flesh, just to breathe the male scent brought me to a near faint.
The summer of ’62 was about to heat up to a rolling boil. Rock and roll became flesh and bones when the Rainbow Rockers started to rehearse in the garage directly across the street from my house. Jamieson Avenue became a danger zone. I didn’t think anymore about Darrell Arena, or any of the other ordinary schoolboys at Northridge Junior High who were barely starting to shave. Breathing, sweating MEN, with shiny black pompadours and guitars, were playing rock and roll right outside my bedroom window!! Never having heard a band tune up before, I was jolted awake one July morning by disjointed twanging and an amplified voice: “Test . . . testing . . . one . . . two . . . one . . . two . . .” I ran out to the front yard and leaned against the chain link fence in disbelief. A neon-green sunflaked ‘58 lowered Bonneville gleamed hotly across the street, and a black-haired beauty was pulling a candy-apple-red guitar out of the trunk. Three guys were already gracing the garage, setting up drums, tuning guitars, and a magnificent tall creature was crooning into a microphone: “I had a girl, Donna was her name, since I met her, I’ll never be the same.” Neither would the neighborhood. It didn’t take me long to make their acquaintance. In fact, all the girls on the block became an immediate and constant audience.
July 13 . . . They played, and me, Iva and Linda listened. Robby sure is a doll, I talked to him a lot, he’s 18 and his shirt was way way open wow! I left at 11 at nite and Robby said “goodbye my love.” I sure hope they make the big time!!
The lead singer, Dino, worked out with weights, and by the end of the day, stripped down to his peg legs, driblets of sweat struggling down his biceps, clutching the mike like it was Brenda Lee, he groaned about his lover leaving him while I leaned against the screen door in a legitimate swoon. He was twenty years old and beyond my teen reach, but a couple of weeks later, I got my first wet kiss from Robby. He was the lead-guitar player. It was on the way back from Pacific Ocean Park, where my girlfriends and I had spent the entire day with the Rainbow Rockers, clutching and grabbing on them, round and round, up and down, on the rickety roller coaster, squealing with newfound pubescent frenzy. Just to get my hands on a thigh or a shoulder and squeeze hard was worth ten thousand trips on the scariest ride in the universe.
We crammed into the backseat of the Bonneville, the sea breeze pouring in the windows, and took off for the Valley, eating cotton candy and caramel apples. I could smell Robby’s manly manliness; it wafted over me and I collapsed into his English Leather lapels with the giggles. I’ll never forget this: He cupped my chin in his hand and pulled my face up to his lips, opened up my mouth with his tongue and slid it right in! What an amazing sensation! It was so wet, and he moved his lips all over, and his tongue poked around inside my mouth like it was trying to locate something. When I had to come up for air, we were in front of my house on Jamieson Avenue, and I felt like I had taken a trip around the world. I flew into the house, threw the door open, and my mom was standing there, kind of tapping her foot because I was a few minutes late. Breathlessly excited, I said, “MOM!! Have you ever been French-kissed!!?” She demanded all the details and proceeded to ground me for an entire week, adding that I could NEVER BE ALONE WITH ROBBY AGAIN!! What transpired is a historical piece of typical teen torment. I stormed into the kitchen, got a massive butcher knife, lay down on the floor, and, clutching my snapshot of Robby and sobbing hysterically, announced that I was going to stab myself in the heart.
Tell Robby I love him
And I couldn’t go on
Knowing he’s across the street
That our love is gone
Tell Robby I miss him
Tho’ he won’t miss me
The tears I cry each night
Just bring misery
My life will be ending now
I know it won’t be right
I am just a fool to him
I cry each day and night
This bottle that’s in my hand
Will stop my hurting heart
From beating without use
Since we had to part
Tell Robby I love him
And I couldn’t go on
Knowing he will love someone else
That our love is gone
I gave up on the butcher-knife idea pretty fast.
1. Don’t hang on boys
2. Be serious when it’s called for
3. Try harder on my complexion
4. Get better grades
5. Concentrate on my figure looking better
6. Don’t rat my hair so much
7. Try to be more feminine
8. Be cute every day
9. Don’t use vulgar language
10. Let nails stay long and polished
11. Pluck eyebrows every four days
12. Shave legs and underarms every week
13. Deodorant every day
14. Brush teeth twice a day
15. Don’t waste money on trash
16. Don’t ruin boys [What could I have possibly meant by THAT??]
It was a rough life, wasn’t it?
I had a disturbing lack of mammary glands when I started high school. It was soooo important to entice the ogling high school boys with at least some semblance of cleavage. The lack of a C cup, or even a B cup, was one of those unfortunate things that I had to live with. I remember a matching pair of particularly silky yellow scarves that I wadded up very carefully to stuff into one of my many “slightly padded” Maidenforms. I had to make sure the shape was exactly the same in each cup; the placing of the scarves in each gaping slot was crucial because it had to look like I was bulging with cleavage. I was once called “the stacked girl down the street,” and felt a combination of pride and guilt that I still find hard to comprehend, kind of a falsie pride! I hated Gym because you were required to shower and it was a difficult task to hide my stuffed bra under that skimpy school towel! A couple of the older girls must have seen my scarves trailing behind me, because when we passed in the halls, they would punch my chest and yell, “Falsie!” It must have pissed them off that the boys believed I had a bosom bigger than theirs. I can’t really blame them.
There was a girl at Cleveland High that I’ll never forget, Nicki Petalis. I once saw a cute guy ask her to look down at her feet to find out if she could see them. She cast her doe eyes downward and giggled, “What do you know, I can’t see them!!” There was a majestic mammary mountain in her way. I console myself with the fact that Nicki’s envious proportions are probably swaying at waist level by now, but to this day I look down at my feet and wish I couldn’t see them.
C-C-C-L-E-V-E-L-A-N-D, CLEVELAND CLEVELAND YAYYY!!!
Despite the fact that I had small titties, I was nuts about my high school. I had a crush on the head yell leader, Frankie DiBiase, and hoped against hope that I could become a cheerleader and toss the pompons all around his skinny body.
January 11, 1964 . . . I sure do love my golden idol, F.D. Man, don’t ask me why, but every time I think of him I get chills, and that adrenalin runs through my body . . . ooooh! OK enough of this, my heart is dying chunk by chunk.
I often got crushes on the wrong people. This yell leader was much too squeaky clean for me, and deep down I knew I’d never get him. I was already on the verge of weirdness, and these types went for the perfectly bouffanted cover girls with little hair bows that matched their little shoe bows, and even if I found the bows that matched, they somehow always came out looking crooked.
Frankie DiBiase actually did invite me to his pool one afternoon, and I panicked. I said could I please come tomorrow, and spent that afternoon cruising Reseda Boulevard looking for a bathing suit that would accommodate my scarves. I finally decided that the scarves would constantly drip and might feel like small boulders when sopping wet, so I spent the entire evening sewing puffy pads into a little pink-checked two-piece. I had only been in the pool for three minutes when I realized that Frankie’s gaze was penetrating my bosom. I just knew the puffy pads hadn’t fooled him, so when he tried to put his arms around me and squeeze my shoulders together to peek down into nonexistent cleavage, I wriggled away and announced I was going home. After that, whenever we passed in the halls he had a knowing smirk on his face. I was chagrined, but the idea of running for cheerleader never entered my mind again.
I still wore the school colors, got B’s, and was trying to figure out what kind of boy was right for me when I got a fatal dose of Beatle-mania. The Fab Four entered the atmosphere at exactly the right wide-open moment for Pam Miller of Reseda, California, to become a complete and total blithering, idiotic Beatlemaniac. Paul McCartney personified the perfect MAN, and once again the dumbbells at Cleveland High who didn’t ask me to dance at sock hops faded into oblivion. I had been searching for some new idols anyway. The Beachboys and Jan and Dean weren’t my teen cup of tea, and Dion had disappeared after getting weird on national TV. There was a rumor going around Reseda that Bobby Rydell had gone and married the massive-titted Mouseketeer Annette Funicello, and besides, his records were getting lamer and lamer anyway; and Paul Anka had gone right into the middle of the road and stayed there.
February 10 . . . Hello Diary, Paul, you are gear. Really Fab. Say chum, why are you so marvelous, luv? The most bloomin’ idiot on earth is me, cause I’m wild over you chap.
The country of England, which hadn’t existed for me until now, became Mecca, and every day I sent Paul a retardedly corny poem written on an aerogram and sealed with a kiss.
March 2 . . . It’s 2:21 A M at Paul’s house. He’s sleeping. I’m glad. I wish I could see him sleeping, I really do. I wish I could be with him sleeping. (just kidding) I hope he read my poem before he closed his beautiful brown eyes.
Even though I dreamed about what was between Paul’s perfect milky-white thighs, I had not yet conjured up dimensions. I collected Beatle bubble-gum cards, and one of them was a shot of Paul playing his bass, sitting on a bed in a hotel with his legs apart. You could actually see the shape of his balls being crushed by the tightness of his trousers, and I carried that card around with me in a little gold box with cotton covering it like it was a precious jewel. I peeked into it reverently, once a day, and lifted the cotton gently, holding my breath as I stared between his legs at the eighth wonder of the world. Every other day on my Beatles station, KRLA, Dave Hull the Hul-labalooer would announce whether or not Paul was engaged to marry the creepy freckle-faced bow-wow, Jane Asher. It drove me crazy; it’s all I thought about.
I stare at his face upon my wall
I know I love him best of all
His gorgeous eyes just knock me down
I sware I think he should wear a crown
The way he moves when he sings a song
Let’s hope he doesn’t marry before long
March 20 . . . He’s NOT, He’s NOT!!! Brian Epstein sent a cablegram to Columbia Records to announce; Paul’s getting married is completely and ridiculously untrue . . . Brian Epstein. YAY!!!! There’s no queen for my king YET!
I lost some good friends who were growing up and going steady and planning their lives after high school. They left me behind with my Beatles lunch box and bobbing-head dolls, practicing my Liverpudlian accent. And guess what? They’re probably still in Reseda with a gaggle of goony kids to kowtow to, being forced to listen to Motley Crue by their very own burgeoning teenagers, and it serves them right.
We gravitated to one another, the Beatlesweeties, and hung around in packs of four, one for each Beatle. Kathy Willis was my George-friend; her dad knew somebody who worked at the Hollywood Bowl and was going to get us good seats for the Beatles concert on August 23. We got our tickets before anybody else, and bought gilt frames to put them in and hung them on our bedroom walls. I paid homage to my ticket nightly. My entire room was covered with Beatle paraphernalia, I wrote with a Beatle pen, slept on a Beatle pillowcase, and breathed with Beatle lungs. Stevie was my Ringofriend, and no one understood the poor thing.
Oh, Pammy, I feel like the world is caving in on me!! Everyone is trying to take me Ringo away from me. Help me Pam, oh please help me!! I need encouragement so bad. I’ve got to meet Ringo or my whole life will be completely empty. Oh, I’m suffering so. He’s my love and I love him. Oh, God, please don’t let me Ringo be taken away!
We wrote Beatle letters to each other constantly, whining and moaning, and expressing the deepdeepdeep desire to meet the Beatle of our choice. But Howhowhow???
Linda was my Johnfriend. We spent weekends at my Aunt Edna’s house so we could be on neutral ground, pretending it was hallowed Beatle ground. We were two girls in a constant state of Beatle skits. I played John and myself, and she played Paul and herself. We could switch personalities with the flick of an accent. We took each other to parties and concerts, we ate dinner in gorgeous restaurants on Aunt Edna’s patio, and professed undying love with semiperfect working-class Liverpudlian accents. At night, we played all four people at the same time, when we would lie entwined in each other’s arms, pressing our four sets of lips together in an eternal expression of Beatle Love.
We wrote Beatle love stories for each other, and I could hardly wait to get to school to get my hands on the next installment of my continuing Paulsaga. I had six stories going at once, but my favorite was written by my old friend Iva. Ooooh, it was soooo titillating! She actually got us in the sack.
Paul fell across you, pushing you into the soft bed. His tender lips kissed yours passionately. You felt so good, so right, to be this close to Paul. He whispered into your ear, pausing to kiss your cheek or your neck, “Luv, oh Pam, you know as well as I do what comes next. . . .” You drew his lips to yours, ending his sentence. You knew what he would say and you didn’t want to hear it. Nothing can go wrong . . . love is never bad. Paul’s hands swept over you, his lips touched your neck again and again. “Paul . . . Paul,” you whispered against his hair, his body was so close. As he held you, somehow he pulled back the sheets on the bed. They were a blue and red candy-stripe. He laid you gently down and bent to kiss you. “I’m sleeping in the den, luv . . .” he said shakily. Then he walked out and closed the door. (A few hours later . . .) Stumbling through the dark living room, to the bedroom, Paul quietly opened the door. There you lay. Your blonde hair tossed carelessly, but beauteously over the pillow, your pink lips still wearing the smile they had as you fell asleep. Paul thought he had never seen anything quite so luscious . . . or so tempting.
Sigh.
My dad bought me a reel-to-reel tape recorder and I made up a lot of adorable little plays, acting out all the different parts, in which Jane Asher dies many grisly, horrifying deaths. The Pam Miller character was always around to pick up Paul’s pieces.
To his nibs, I sang a different tune:
Dear Paul, Your fans will always love you. Personally, I will never stop. Since hearing about your engagement to Jane Asher, I’ll have to love you in another way, all of my own.
Paul McCartney of Beatle fame
Has chosen another to share his name
Many girls will cry each night
Saying “this marriage just cannot be right”
Even though all of his fans are blue
It’s to her he whispers “I love you”
His face is like an angels, so they say
And it’s hers to gaze upon night and day
He is hers to have and hold
Til’ their lives are ending
Til they both grow old
Sure, there are people who will say he’s wrong
But let’s just hope that his love is strong
If he listens to us, where will he be?
He will be without children to bounce on his knee
He’ll miss out on the purpose of life
To live, to love, have a child and a wife
If we really loved him, how happy we’d be
That he’s found such happiness and ecstasy
She is his chosen flame
To share with him the McCartney name
It’s enough to make you throw up.
I developed a series of rituals that I had to perform every night, or I would never meet Paul: 1) Write “I Love Paul” at the top of my diary in my most perfect handwriting; 2) Listen to a Beatles record before sleep. No other sound could assault my eardrums after the sacred sound. If the dog barked, I had to climb out of bed and start over; 3) Put a Sweet Tart under my tongue as my head hit the pillow, and let it dissolve as I pictured myself in his arms. In addition to these rituals, I had to write HIS name down every time I farted, and I carried the list around with me until it reached well into the thousands before I became embarrassed and hid it underneath the clothes hamper.
Friday, May 8 1964 . . . I Love Paul. I’m in love with his body and everything that’s on it. I love you, I love you, I love you, my precious precious Paully Waully Paul Paul!! Oh, my bee bee, my own lover.
May 10 . . . I Love Paul. Sad News! He’s with PigFace in The Virgin Islands and I thought they had broken up. That’s not all! Ringo is with Maureen Cox and George is with Patti Boyd. No parental consent. No chaperones.
May 21 . . . I Love Paul. If Walter Winchell doesn’t leave Paul alone, he can go to Hell. He seems to want to hurt the girls. He says Paul and Jane are buying a house together, and Ringo is buying Maureen a ring. You’re so OLD, W.W., but your mind is so childish and ignorant.
June 3 . . . My seats at the Bowl, Oh My God!! I’m about 20 feet from the stage . . . fifth row!!! There’s an actual day this year that is called August 23rd! It comes in 83 days!!
June 24 . . . Paul McCartney is the man I love. If he got the chance I know he would love me. I just know it. I love every muscle and fiber and ligament in his thigh. I know that sounds odd, but that’s the way I feel.
July 19 . . . It’s only 33 days until my eyes will stare into Paul’s eyes. Instead of him being a flat surface, he’ll be soft and warm.
August 2 . . . It’s been a Hard Day’s Night and The Beatles are the greatest actors alive. First off, Paul is MY lover, he was such a doll. George was SEX, John was very mental and Ringo is truly a beautiful man. In 21 ravishing days. Oh My God!!
August 23 . . . Day Of All!! Tonight I saw Paul. I actually looked at his lean slender body and unique too-long legs. I saw his dimples and pearly white teeth. I saw his wavy, yet straight lengthy hair, I saw his doe-like eyes . . . and they saw me. Maybe it’s fate that brought him to our sunny shores . . . for I am here too.
I intended to meet Paul during his stay in Los Angeles. Stevie, Kathy, Linda, and I conned Kathy’s dad into shlepping us to Bel Air, where we encountered several hundred clones of ourselves milling around hungrily. The perfectly manicured lawns were covered with teenage girls and a few die-hard Beatle Boys with their bangs almost reaching their eyebrows. We took our place among the multitude temporarily while we devised a plan that would get us closer to our idols. I was paying close attention to people who didn’t look like Beatles fans—could they be Bel Air residents? I pointed this idea out to the others, who busily scanned the crowd for likely looking candidates. A freckle-faced boy about our age was riding a bicycle in our direction, and he looked at all of us with curious, detached interest. Not one of us, I surmised, and set out to make his acquaintance. We were about to make his day. Ronny Lewis, age fifteen, was the son of Jerry Lewis, and I was not impressed. At one time, when Jerry was skinny, I thought he was a funny guy, but when I realized he would never change his hairdo, I figured he was stuck in time and not going anywhere. They love him in France, God bless him. We flocked around Ronny, pressuring him with compliments and cajoling him with funny anecdotes. We had to get past the Beatle Barricade and onto someone’s personal property so we could prowl the Bel Air hills and FIND THE BEATLES!!!
Ronny was bowled over by the blatancy of our desire, and sneaked us through his mansion into the backyard, where we planned on scaling the wall and plummeting to the depths of the Bel Air brush. By this time we were all hysterical, sqealing piglets, and there was no way he could avoid getting caught up in our frothy fervor. He agreed to head the search party. We roamed around, getting stuck with prickly stickers, telling each other what wonderful things were about to happen. When Ringo laid eyes on Stevie, Maureen Cox would surely fall by the wayside, and when Paul got a load of ME, well, words couldn’t be found to describe the possibilities. Sweat-stained and dirty, we all trudged for hours through the bushes and brambles, our hearts pounding Beatle blood. I was the first to see the array of cops lined up in front of what was obviously THE BEATLE HOUSE!! How could we possibly break through this massive battalion? Ronny saw the string of billy clubs and decided to head back home; we thanked him abundantly and threw our minds into the problem at hand. Hiding across the street in the bushes, we watched the goings-on, waiting for clues . . . waiting, waiting, waiting. When it got dark, we decided to head across the street, one by one, crawling on our bellies like reptiles. There was only one way to go, through the garden around the side to the rear of the house, and we all made it! After dusting off we checked out our surroundings, and found out there was still an extremely tall chain link fence between us and the backyard. It was truly impossible to climb over, with barbed wire circling the tippy-top should anyone attempt to be so bold. We collapsed with exhaustion, hoping for accents to float on the wind while we waited out the night. I prayed hard for Paul to glance out his window. I just knew he would see a light shimmering behind the chain link because Pam Miller of Reseda, California, was aglow with incandescent Beatle Love that would never die. I finally slept, cramped and cold, and dreamed of my mother pacing the floor all night, worrying about her ditsy daughter on the loose in Bel Air Beatle Land.
After freezing all night, we sat sweating all morning, watching the pool with unblinking eyes, waiting for John, Paul, George, or Ringo to take a dip. What we finally saw was a roadie, Neil Aspinall, swim back and forth a few times, and a couple of windows open and close. The roadie must have seen us peering in at him, because a few minutes later we were hauled off by unamused boys in blue, shoved into police cars, driven promptly out of Bel Air, and asked very unpolitely never to return. On the way down the hill, a limousine passed by, and I saw John Lennon for an instant. He was wearing his John Lennon cap and he looked right at me. If I close my eyes this minute, I can still see the look he had on his face; it was full of sorrow and contempt. The other girls were pooling tears in their eyes and didn’t notice, but that look on John Lennon’s face stopped my heart and I never said a word.
The Beatles left town, and I didn’t meet them. It was a dastardly pill to swallow, but life went on. The look on John’s face made me grow up a little, and I worked hard in school and decided to get a part-time job.
September 23 . . . I guess I shouldn’t worry about getting a job, but it’s playing with my mind constantly, nagging and laughing and sneering . . . “I told you so.”
I wonder who or what was doing the sneering. When I couldn’t find a job, I figured that having a real relationship would help me to mature. Every boy in pants became a potential candidate, and I became a member of the Teen Center on Victory Boulevard, hoping that the perfect cutie would cross my path. I did the jerk, the frug, the slauson, and the swim, all the while checking out the merchandise. I kept on loving Paul McCartney, but I needed some physical contact.
October 17, 1964 . . . We left home in gay moods for another big night at the center. I dressed in my red sailor blouse, and put on my two fake pony-tails to be sure!! I walked in and absent-mindedly looked around for a dance partner. Greg Over-lin, of whom I hadn’t seen in years asked me to dance a few times, as did Richie “Sal.” (he looks like Sal Mineo) Out on the small patio, I did the jerk with Wade. None of them impressed me. I felt eyes on me, and looked up to see the most perfect boy ever! He had the most perfect curly pompadour and perfect long curly eyelashes. He looked so bitchen’ in his white coat and black continentals, and he danced so bitchen’ too. His name was Bob Martine. I smiled at him and his leg brushed mine. I asked him if he could give us a ride home and he gestured with his thumb “I’m hitching, is that OK with you guys?” Linda and I exchanged glances. I was game, but I was sure my mother wouldn’t be. He smelled of Jade East and I was swooning. Suddenly I had this great urge to touch his stomach. I began to unbutton his shirt, and he liked it! I could certainly be myself with him, that was for sure. He seemed experienced, but not too experienced, I mean he wasn’t trying to prove anything. A friend of Bob’s agreed to take us home, and we piled into the old car and were off! When we reached my house, I sat there on Bob’s lap, not budging, he put his hand up to my cheek, and turned my face to him and kissed me goodnight. Tomorrow holds promise in it’s grasp. I’m not sure of my love for Bob. I don’t know him very well, but I want to.
I fell in green-teen love that fateful night.
Bob and I started going steady the next day, but my passion for Paul had not diminished: “It’s a wonderful feeling being loved by somebody other than your parents and friends. Bob loves me. When Paul loves me I will be in unadulterated heaven . . . if the dear Lord permits.”
Mr. Martine finally won me over because he was there in person, and Paul was with Pigface across the vast ocean. Bob was a bit of a bad boy, which I found enticingly dangerous, and since he was from New York, he spoke exotic Brooklynese, newnewnew to my pedantic Valley ears. It thrilled me that he got in trouble for dragging on Van Nuys Boulevard, and the fact that he had failed the entire eleventh grade really sent me reeling. The concept of a Rebel Without a Cause had always seemed so out-of-bounds romantic, and I carried a photo of Jimmy Dean in my turquoise imitation-leather wallet at all times. Bob smoked, and even popped reds on occasion, which I found totally shocking. He fought with his hot-tempered Italian dad constantly, and cursed a purple streak whenever he felt like it.
November 3 . . . Bob called . . . He’s so bad, my bad little boy. He was picked up for Grand Theft 3 times. He’s done lots of other bad things, but he’s getting to be a better boy. and he’s mine, mine, MINE!!!
He even hinted that he had gone all the way, not just once, but several times, and this worried me, because my VIRGINITY was a sacred subject.
November 15 . . . He screwed ten girls, but swears he’ll never touch me . . . ever . . . We can talk about sex and it’s a clean word when we discuss it.
Ha ha . . . We spent endless hours on the phone, spewing sticky, sweet teen endearments, and my homework suffered. We spent all our spare time with each other, holding hands and exploring the idea of life together forever. Along with this idea, of course {despite his former claims), came his desire to put his hands all over my budding body. I still wore falsies, and in order to keep his hands away from my bewitching fraudulence, I promised to let him get to third base. (I somehow convinced him to save the holy vision of my breasts until our wedding night.) Meanwhile, the world of forbidden flesh loomed large in my immediate future. I learned what real making out was all about. With our eyes closed and our faces mashed together, we reached saliva nirvana, panting and moaning in backseats and on front porches. My mom was highly concerned, but she knew I had a virginity thing and wasn’t about to let go of it just yet. She liked Bob; he was a sweet boy with a bad rep. My dad worked nights at Budweiser, and sometimes Bob and I had to stop in mid-squelch when the Fleetwood high beams lit up the porch and outlined us, grappling and groping.
December 18 . . . I’ve never been so turned on in my life, and yet so completely relaxed, proud and clear-minded. Bob respects me very much, so I never have to worry.
I wrote a letter to my Beatlefriend Linda about my joyous relationship: “Dear Linda, I just realized a very wonderful and beautiful thing. That yearning, wanting and needing in Bob’s heart is churning for me! He’s experiencing his very first true love, and he loves it so much. He loves it so much that he has amazing control over his young body that craves only one thing. There’s a conflict, but I’m proud to say that good overrules evil, and love overrules sex.” What a bunch of dog-doo. Little did I know, my honey-boy was easing me into taking hold of his Private Part, and teaching me what to do with it. With a wink, he told me size was the thing and he had a Big Italian One, the envy of all his friends. I had felt it against various parts of my body many times, but I knew if I was going to hold on to this dangerous punk, I was going to have to hold on to his THING also. One of his older friends had a trailer, and Bob took me there one balmy evening to introduce me to the pleasures of S-E-X. He knew I had every intention of hanging on to my hymen, so he went slow. The first time, I felt it through his underpants. The second time, he took it out, and I closed my eyes real tight and tentatively grabbed on, petrified of damaging it, like it was a newborn. It was soft and hard at the same time, and not at all what I had expected. My virginal image was that of a cross between a sleepy pink baby worm and a vengeful billy club with one crazed eye. The third time, I looked, and it became my friend.
December 29 . . . Bob and I counted all the way up to good old number 69 tonight, if you know what I meant I think I know what an orgasm is. I was aflame with desire.
Happiness is being 16
Happiness is Cleveland High
Happiness is knowing you are loved
Happiness is a cuddly doll to sleep with
Happiness is Johnny Mathis (?)
Happiness is a blue mohair empire
Happiness is a kiss
Happiness is hoping to have a clear complexion
Happiness is getting a dark tan
Happiness is an orange
Happiness is Freedom
Happiness is a cooler on a hot day
Happiness is an electric blanket
Happiness is dreaming about entering “Miss Teen USA”
Happiness is bowling
Happiness is E.S.P.
Happiness is The Beatles
Happiness is my love for Paul
Happiness is Ringo, the one and only drummer boy Beatle, The spine that sends chills up mine. Ringo of the jeweled fingers and golden drummer hands (whew!)
Happiness is baby Julian Lennon
Happiness was August 23
Happiness is knowing you are loved so deeply by your boyfriend who is so bitchen’
My bitchen’ boyfriend was about to be taken away from me. His parents sold their house and were moving back to New York, taking their own personal Juvenile Delinquent with them. My heart was bleeding.
January 7, 1965 . . . 6 days from now I will be a very lonely girl. I’ll be lying on this same bed, using this same pen to write in this same diary. I’ll look up at the clock out of habit, but I won’t really see the time. Minutes and hours will mean nothing for I will be waiting for each day to pass. Each day which will be one useless drudge until my honey-boy comes home to me. He said “Dollin’, you’re so perfect. God put every little piece of you together just right.” I’m crying, and the teardrops will be in this diary for all time.
“Unchained Melody” was OUR song, and it played constantly in my hi-fi mind: “Oh, my love, my darling, I hunger for your touch, a long lonely time . . . and time goes by so slowly, and time can mean so much. Are you still mine????” He went off to New York, and I resumed Beatlemania with my JohnPaulGeorgeRingofriends. I wrote to Bob almost every day, we made tapes for each other, and he got to call me once a week. Part of his greaser charm was that he couldn’t read or write very well, so he dictated all this love-angst to his cousin and sent it off to me by the pile. I sniffed the air for Jade East on my way to the mailbox, and tore into the reams of mush with rabid relish. He proposed to me through the mail:
February 18, 1965 . . . Our children will be beautiful. They’ll have wavy black hair and big blue eyes. They will be twins, a boy and a girl; James Paul Martine and Jamie Paula Martine.
Poor Bob, I was about to name his kids after Paul McCartney. I saw A Hard Day’s Night a few more times, perfected my Liverpudlian, wrote stories for Stevie about the swell life she and Ringo were going to have, and actually worked on improving my grades, all the while dreaming of my honey-boy in New York. “Oowah, oowah, cool cool Kitty, tell us about the boy from New York City.”
Despite my self-inflicted ban on other boys, there was a guy at Cleveland who looked nothing like my slick, pompadoured greasy boy in New York, nor did he even vaguely resemble the perfect, ideal high school man. He wore worldly corduroy trousers and suede workboots, while Kip Tyler, the president of Cleveland High, tried to entrance us all with his blue-and-white letterman sweater and perfectly pressed flattop. Victor Haydon was always running from the vice-principal because his hair was way too long, and something about him inspired me. I still don’t know what attracted Victor to me. It must have been my barely budding antiestablishment ideas, which manifested when I gradually stopped teasing my hair into a coiffed flip like Cindy Bowling and all the other hopeful high achievers. Victor began to hang around me during Nutrition, blowing my innocent mind with radical departures from the truth as I knew it. He thought it was absurd to try to “fit in” to a society that was chasing its own tail and going nowhere fast. This was big news to me, folks, and I pondered it profusely. He told me about this folk singer named Bob Dylan and lent me a couple of his albums. I soon found out that the answer to any and all questions was blowing in the wind. Victor believed in the Rolling Stones with a vengeance, and since I thought Victor Haydon was blazing a new trail, I followed in his giant footsteps to the local record store to check out Mick Jagger. This incident coincided with my brand-new pubescent longings for something hot, and my desire to be considered a daring young thinker of dramatic new thoughts.
My Beatlefriends were aghast. They thought Victor was a holier-than-thou snot who was out to erase them from the planet, and they believed I had forsaken Paul for the grotesque, filthy, big-lipped animal, Mick Jagger.
5—9—65 . . . Dear Pam, I suppose you are wondering why Linda, Stevie and I acted the way we did after school yesterday. The main reason is because you are a phony person. You had better watch out before you become completely friendless. Why on earth could you even start to like Mick over Paul? You think you are an individualist. But an individualist isn’t one who wears strange clothes. Pam, you try to be strange, but you aren’t. You are just being a loser. Nobody likes you when you act the way you do. Personally, I’d much rather go around with my crowd than with moody Victor who chops everybody down just because he knows he isn’t popular. Just remember you won’t be a teenager all your life, and when you get in your twenties you will regret your actions. I thought I knew you real well, you were always so enthusiastic about the Beatles and now you’re a Rolling Stones fan. I don’t see how you could pick them over The Beatles unless . . . you were being a phony all that time. The Stones are dirty and sloppy and they repugnate me. When I think back to how you used to sign your name “Paul n Pam,” I can’t believe you’re the same girl. I don’t hate you, but frankly, I don’t like you much. . . . Kathy ’n’ Stevie.
K.&.S . . . I have very sensible answers to your ridiculous questions. Paul and Mick cannot be compared. They are two opposite types with two opposite types of love connected with them. I have not taken the Stones over The Beatles. I have just let them become a part of my life too. Is that so wrong? The Beatles can never be topped, but the Stones will never be topped either. Oh, you don’t understand. They play two different types of music. They cannot be compared. It makes me literally sick how you think you know so much about the “sloppy” Stones, that you feel you can call them “dirty.” Just because they don’t all wear the same suits and comb their hair the same way. You know nothing of Victor, and if you did, your opinion would change. Well, maybe not, he doesn’t get along very well with people who’s minds are rather narrow. He can also spot a phony, and if I were a phony, he would have told me long ago. I don’t think I’m one bit strange. I go to my closet and pick out things that I think look good together. I don’t stand there and say “Oh, I think I’ll look strange today.” I do what I like and say what I like, and I don’t hate you either. I don’t hate anybody. . . . Pamela.
I left Pam in the dust and became Pamela, leaving all the Beatle-sweeties gasping for breath.
The girls had no idea to what extent I had glommed on to the dirty, sloppy Stones. My brief sexual encounters with Bob had opened up new vistas of turgid, twisting thoughts, and Mick Jagger personified a penis. I took my new records and my glossy steaming photographs into my rock and roll room, where I scaled new heights of tortuous teen abandon, wriggling in my seat with newfound throbbing ecstasy. The second song on the second side of the second album changed my life. The first time I heard it, I had an orgasmic experience: “Let me put it in, it feels all right.”
I would sit by my hi-fi, playing that line over and over until I reached my pulsation point . . . “Let me put it in,” “Let me put it in,” “Let me put it in” . . . When I played it for my Georgefriend, Kathy, she said, “Let me put what in where?” I rushed home from school every day to throb along with Mick while he sang: “I’m a king bee, baby, let me come inside.” I began imagining what it would be like to get my hands on him. With my precious Paul, I never really got past the hoping stage, but now I dared to imagine Mick with his widewale corduroy trousers down around his ankles.
My new best friend, Victor, had a real-life rock and roll cousin who lived in a trailer in the desert, with the outrageous name of Captain Beefheart. Vic titillated me with this information more than once before inviting me to see his group, the Magic Band, perform at the Teen Fair at the Hollywood Palladium. I was so thrilled I could hardly contain myself. I put on my newly acquired big, baggy corduroy jacket, my first-in-Reseda Sonny and Cher blue-jean bell-bottoms, and jumped into Vic’s Hudson Hornet, ready to steam in to Hollywood like it was the brave new world. Don Vliet, a.k.a. Captain Beefheart, was a wildly intimidating crazy genius who was so far ahead of his time, people are still trying to catch up with him. He was just a wee bit out of place at the Fourth Annual Teen Fair, where the big thing was samples of Knudsens new fruit-flavored yogurt. Teenagers littered the floor with little plastic spoons, while I looked upon the man who was going to alter my life for all time. The first look into his spacy blue eyes (I knew they looked straight through, into the real me) told me that my life was just beginning. He was gruff and shaggy, but his gaze penetrated the depths of my emerging individuality, pulled it out, and hurled it on humanity. “You, too, can make people think you are a disgusting weirdo, and create havoc by just walking down the street!!” Beefheart told me that my baggy corduroy jacket was “a gas,” and said, “Haven’t we met before . . . are you sure . . .?” I knew I was on the right track, and I intended to plunge ahead into unknown realms of hipness.
I wrote irregularly and infrequently to my boyfriend, Bob, who became increasingly dubious about James Paul and Jamie Paula Martine ever coming into being. I’m sure he conjured up many indelicate encounters between me and half of Cleveland High. He was about three thousand miles away from the truth.
I had escalated beyond recognition in my own estimation.
Beefheart was also a major Stones fan, and suggested that we all go see them at the Long Beach Arena. The thought of seeing Mick LIVE sent me into a swoon, but I kept it under wraps because I wanted to be cool with Beefheart and his Magic Band. Victor and I waited in that long line, amid throngs of teeming teens, from the middle of the night until eleven in the morning to get our Stones tickets. I thought all of us must be the hippest bunch of people on God’s earth.
April 26, 1965 . . . Vic asked me to be the local president of Beefhearts fan club! Out of a million girls, he picked me! He tells me that he is super human and in the fourth dimension. Who Knows? No matter how much he keeps asking me, I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE MARIJUANA!! He was reading Sigmund Freud today.
May 3 . . . I hung around all day with Vixon and Tomato . . . We had so much fun at Nutrition. These are my people.
May 7 . . . I feel like I’m a part of Beefhearts group, a big part. They all think I’m a crazy little chick, hep and with it. Don said “If only they were all like you.”
I was arriving.
The month of waiting for the Stones’ arrival increased my wanton desire to feel those gigantic lips on mine. I started writing porno things in my diary for the first time: “Someday I will touch and feel him, I know it. Mick, my dear, dear PENIS!” I brazenly created in pink and red oil colors my concept of what his balls might look like. I turned it in to Mr. Gifford as a modern-art project and got an A.
They came to Hollywood on May 11, 1965, the same day I was thrown out of school for “looking absurd.” I can still see my mom trying to explain to the lumpy old-maid VP about the new look in teen fashion. Victor was proud of me, and I figured I looked just right for the Rolling Stones. Vic and I hurtled ourselves to RCA, hoping they might be there recording and, incredibly, they were! We waited around, panting, until they came out, and as if I were in a zomboid trance, I followed Mick into the parking lot. As he got into the rented station wagon, he turned and asked me to help him out of the parking space. I was so enthralled that he had spoken to me, and just being in his presence turned me into such a jibbering, slack-jawed dildo-brain, that I had him bumping into two different cars before he made it out of there. I’m afraid I didn’t make a very good first impression. Dazed, I walked right into Keith as he ambled to the car. Even in my bewildered condition, I swore he gave me a sexy look. I wrote in my diary: “He looked me over . . . sexy . . . whew!!” And what did he see? A skinny shivering wreck of a teenager, truly petrified during her daring rock and roll deed. They asked us for directions to the Ambassador Hotel and Victor stood there gaping. Mick leaned out the window and said, “No, I’m serious.” So we escorted them up Wilshire Boulevard with “Satisfaction” blaring on the radio as I gazed into the rearview mirror at my steaming photograph in the steaming flesh.
They waved good-bye when we reached the hotel, and our hopes of being invited in were dramatically dashed. We parked and went to call Beefheart, who had met Charlie in England, and he said he would meet us in the lobby. Instead of waiting for him, we decided to cruise the Stones’ rooms. They were staying in a series of pink bungalows with hordes of girls standing watch. One of them was Flo, a wiry black girl with a switchblade prominently displayed on a leather cord around her neck. She told us that Keith had given it to her so she could keep the fans from bothering him. She led us to believe that she was one of the chosen who did have access to the pink rooms by proudly telling us that the Stones called her “The Grand Canyon.” She did a bump and grind to make sure we didn’t miss the point.
I stayed clear of Flo and went around the back of the bungalows to peek in the window at beautiful Brian, who was cavorting with two scantily clad ladies of Spanish descent. While I watched, some teenybops banged on the front door, begging him to come out and give them an autograph. He threw open the door in his underwear, holding a broom as some kind of weapon, and shouted, “IF YOU DON’T GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE, I’LL DRAG YOU IN HERE AND FUCK YOU!!!” They ran squealing into the moonlight, and he came over to the window where I was gnawing my knuckles and pulled down the shade. For a few minutes I stood there, listening to scintillating sounds that I couldn’t really fathom, and cranked up the courage to knock on Mick’s door. “And Mick opened the door. He had no clothes covering his body and a soft light drifted down over his bare chest and legs. He stood at the door a moment in his naked splendor, and then decided he’d better close the door.” I guess he just wanted to give some fan a thrill. That’s just about the way it happened, only I neglected to tell my diary that I let out a shriek and ran out into the same moonlight as the other daring girls had. Needless to say, that’s not how it had always happened in my dreams, and I sat down on the lawn and cried over my failure to sweep him off his feet.
Beefheart soon arrived and we spent hours with Charlie and Bill, listening to Muddy Waters while I thought of Mick, two bungalows down, with a soft light drifting down over his bare chest.
The next night was the long-awaited concert at the Long Beach Arena. I might have thrown my bra onstage with some of the other crazed girls, but I was sitting next to Beefheart, and besides, I still hadn’t reached the point where it was cool to have small tits, so my bra still held fraudulence. Mick was so sexy. I had never seen anybody move like that; it was downright scuzzy, driving the girls in the audience to poke and prod at their private parts. One half-nude girl climbed down the drapes and hung on to Mick’s corduroy-clad leg until two guards pried her off and tossed her back into the wailing crowd. The music was hot and raunchy, my heart was beating below my waist, and my hands were itching to hold something warm. I was a sticky, sweaty teenage girl, squirming my way into womanhood. They only played for about half an hour in those days, so the lights came on much too soon and we were herded out into the night, clutching our Rolling Stones programs and damp, wrinkled ticket stubs, wanting more more more!!
Back at the hotel, I once again attempted to make contact with Mick. I went to the back of his bungalow, behind the bushes, and peered into the window, afraid of what I might see. At first I thought the shade was pulled down because I was gazing at impenetrable whiteness, but as I slowly looked up to the dimpled grinning face of Mick, I realized I was staring straight into his underwear. It’s a miracle he didn’t tell me to fuck off, since I had annoyed him twice, but he said, “It’s time to go home, pretty little girl.”
“He thinks I’m pretty!!!!”
Nobody at Cleveland High would believe I had met the Stones, and I didn’t really care. I had given up trying to impress people who didn’t impress me. What a relief. I owed so much of my newfound attitude to Captain Beefheart that when he invited me out to his backyard to watch the clouds that resembled nuns flying overhead, I gladly followed him. He took my hand and beads of sweat formed on his upper lip like pearls of wisdom. He asked if I would like to feel something warm, and he guided my hand back and forth, back and forth, while we watched the swaying habits gliding overhead. It was our only intimate encounter.
Victor and I decided we needed jobs to support our all-consuming record addiction, so we worked together at a tiny factory in Van Nuys dipping Batman boots and Robin gloves into little bottles of paint. One evening after an exhausting day at work, as I was peeling emerald green off my fingers, Bob called to let me know his parents had changed their minds about living in New York and he would be coming back in two weeks! My emotions were totally mixed. He assumed he would be cradled on my large, cleaving, heaving bosom, and I had recently removed a layer of padding from my brassiere, creating a seminatural look. I hardly resembled the drippy-eyed, doting honey-girl he had left behind on the front porch. What would he think of my “Cher” pants?? I worried myself ill waiting for his knock at my door.
Because of our splendid past, I felt I owed it to Bob to re-create our relationship. I’m sad to say it didn’t work. He didn’t understand Victor and his artistic tendencies; in fact, to my incredible embarrassment he attempted to beat him up on two separate occasions. This made me look unpeaceful, and I just couldn’t take the chance of blowing my new cool. That I had once considered this macho greaser anything but a passing acquaintance made Victor look at me very, very suspiciously. His raised eyebrows helped me to take action. I told Bob as gently as I could that I had changed while he was away, and he begged me to go back to being the girl he had fallen in love with. He then promised to change along with me, and the next day he went out and bought some cord bell-bottoms that were way too short; he combed his precious pompadour down over his ears, and it stuck out on both sides like Bozo. I ached with compassion and cringed quietly.
October 8 . . . I can’t figure myself out. I guess I should be happy that he tries to understand me. He fails most of the time, although he doesn’t know it. School was screwed.
November 26 . . . I went to Hollywood. Bob is pretty sad, but I think he’ll get over it. He was crying again. I got my Dylan tickets. 3rd row.
December 23 . . . Bob and I fought all week and I can’t be tied down anymore, he just doesn’t get it and it breaks my heart. Merry Krimble, as John Lennon would say.
December 31 . . . almost 19661! It’s only obvious how confused and what a wreck I am. Does every young person go through big fire to reach a little brook? All I know is that if my friends can make it, so can I.I hear my dad laughing in the living-room. I remember that every year, laying in bed, listening to dad laugh. I miss Bob. My mind is churning and I can’t stop thinking. Where would I be without thought? Bob Dylan captures what’s really going on.
Come senators and congressmen throughout the land
And don’t critisise what you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command
The old world is rapidly fading
So get out of the new one if you can’t lend a hand
For the times they are a changin’