Very Special People- 3 Stories

When you look back at your life as if it was a movie, there are main characters, there’s a supporting cast, and there are plenty of unpaid extras. But there are also very special characters that crossed your path that were so memorable they colored your life in very important ways. Here are three very special people from mine.

Louis. I once worked for six months with severely developmentally disabled children at a state facility in Connecticut. I worked in the ward with hyperactive young kids, which was challenging because it was a real hodgepodge of different mental ailments. In the morning, you had to watch out because the kids would often sneak off to the bathroom, likely to play with their own feces. My favorite tyke was little Louis, a sweet-faced, good-natured boy who would run down the walkway and hug me every morning. He followed me around and stood alongside me while I did my chores, always rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. He was a little angel. One morning I was in the day room getting the kids ready for breakfast and I heard a horrible crash. Louis had accidentally smashed his fist through the picture window. His arm was nearly completely severed in half and a geyser of blood sprayed the room. It’s funny how Boy Scout training flashed through my brain. I snatched a tee shirt off a kid, grabbed a sturdy toy on the floor and quickly made a tourniquet, holding Louis tight as he struggled and screamed. Meanwhile several of the children began diving in the blood and pretended to wriggle around on the floor like fish.  I held him all the way into the hospital and into the operating room. The nurses made me sit outside the surgery and I sat there, shaking and completely covered in dried blood. They managed to save Louis’s arm, and when they took him to recovery I sat alongside him and cradled him in my arms. That is, until his drunken mother showed up and passed out on the floor. That was the exact moment when I decided to move to Provincetown, Massachusetts, where I stayed for ten years. But I still dream about those kids and especially Louis’ cockeyed, sweet smile.

Beverly. This beautiful African American girl named Beverly moved to Provincetown during the 70s and we all fell in love with her. There was something exotic and strange about her- and she was funny. She wore expensive clothes and had a great apartment (the rumor was that she had a wealthy husband who shipped her to the Cape to get rid of her). Beverly did lots of LSD and when started complaining of violent headaches, we all suggested it might be connected with all the acid she was consuming, but she brushed it off. Instead, she discovered that walking backwards alleviated her migraines. So, for a year we used to watch Beverly strolling up and down Commercial Street, backwards. It’s a tribute to Provincetown’s bohemian spirit that no one seemed to pay any attention. My friend Frankie sneaked over to her place one night and peered in her window and sure enough she walked backwards at home too. Later, she told us she was going to some Swami in India who could finally cure her of her headaches. (We all joked about her sitting backwards on the plane). She disappeared shortly afterwards, but a friend said he spotted her five years later walking on the beach in a ratty raccoon coat carrying a wooden staff saying she was married to Mick Jagger and was the moon goddess. I like to think it wasn’t really Beverly.

Ronnie. I can’t remember where I met Ronnie exactly- he’d been dating a male friend of mine, but I first recall him sitting across from me at some party in Hartford, Connecticut. Super skinny, with long, stringy hair and oval-shaped rose-colored glasses, Ronnie ranting in my face for hours. His raspy speed-addled voice sounded like something from Goodfellas, but he was incredibly funny, and scary too. He knew all these girls from the Institute For Living (“rich neurotic fag hags” he called them), and we’d go over to their apartments and he would have me keep them busy while he would rifle through their medicine cabinet for drugs. He was maniacal during these raids and even demanded I sleep with the women just to keep them occupied. I’d always look at him like he was crazy but it never deterred him. One time on a separate occasion I watched him approach two young women getting off a bus, confront them while pretending to have a gun in his pocket, and demanded they dump out their purses. “Your makeup or your life!” he screamed. They relieved their pocketbooks of makeup and fled in terror and later he handed out all the eyeliner and mascara to the drag queens at the bar. Once he woke me early to drive to a thrift store deep in Connecticut that he’d repeatedly told me was a treasure trove of great stuff. He always described it as “WILD!”. We drove for hours (easy for him because he’d been up on speed for three weeks straight) and when we arrived at this quaint little Salvation Army store, we parked in front of the storefront window, and watched as several gray-haired ladies scurried around before opening. After several minutes, Ronnie got out of the car and banged on the front door, pointing at his watch. They waved him away and mouthed “Not yet,” and he got back in the car, fuming. Five seconds later he jumped out and banged on the glass again. They waved him away again. He got back into the car, revved up the motor and drove straight through the plate-glass window- shards of glass exploding, women shrieking and running for cover. Then he backed out calmly and as we drove away, said, “That will teach them not to fuck with me.”

I lost track of him after that nightmarish incident, but years later I ran into an old friend from that Connecticut crew and asked: “Is Ronnie still alive?” The person paused for a minute in the middle of the street, sighed, and then said: “Imagine if you will…a cat hanging off of a roof…”