Bio in 2020s

Not sure if I ever shared this here or if I’ll finish it but I wrote this a couple of years ago. If you’re like me and you hate reading long entries then you might wanna skip this.

My Bio

It was the year 2002 that I finally decided to write my autobiography based on memories and the journals I’ve been keeping since 1987.

I was, and still am, the black sheep of my family. That’s ok, I don’t mind. I used to mind as a child, but I don’t mind as an adult. I was a lonely child surrounded by self-absorbed, controlling adults. I found their predictability to be rather boring whereas with me, they never knew what to expect, even if they liked to think they did.

I grew up in western Massachusetts. My family consisted of a mother, father, brother and sister. They weren’t exactly what I’d call stupid, but they had a narrow range of skills at the same time. They were very pessimistic about themselves, others, and life in general. They rarely approached the unknown with an open mind. They were easily made uncomfortable or even spooked by people or events foreign to them in any way.

Although my parents, Arthur and Dureen, were considered to be as different as night and day by most peoples’ standards because my father was much calmer, they were mostly carbon copies of one another at the same time they were opposites. They liked the same music, movies, foods and activities. They shared the same beliefs and opinions.

My very domineering mother made most of my childhood rather tough. It was often said that my mother treated her dogs better than anyone, and this was so true. Her dogs came first, then her friends, then her husband, and her children last.

She was her own person. No one told Dureen what to do.

My folks weren’t the worst parents in the world. They weren’t drunks, they weren’t perverts, and they were reliable enough to keep a roof over my head and food in my tummy, so no, I couldn’t exactly present them with the worst-parents-of-the-century award.

But things were bad enough. Our material and physical needs were met, but not our emotional needs. My mother was often a very negative, impatient, insensitive, hypocritical and very controlling person, and my sister Tammy was very much like her, though she had one character trait my mother lacked. She was a hypochondriac.

My mother was an unusually persuasive person. It was like she could demand one’s respect just by thinking about it. I sometimes believe she could convince a person to jump off a bridge if she wanted to, no matter how strong-willed they were. Despite this, she was also very weak emotionally. She couldn’t handle dealing with other people’s problems well at all. Especially if they were personal.

She seemed to enjoy controlling people any way she could and over the dumbest of things, too.

My father and brother Larry were by far easier to get along with. They were more passive with a sense of humor that my mom and sister didn’t have. This doesn’t mean I didn’t have my problems with them either, for I did, and by the time I was thirty-two, I had completely cut them all out of my life.

My maternal grandparents (Jack and Shirley) lived next door to us till we moved across town when I was twelve. They were similar to my parents in that he was mellow while she was a witch. One of the meanest memories I have of Nana was her telling me I’d one day be so big that I wouldn’t be able to fit through doorways. Meanwhile, the hypocrite was over 200 pounds herself while I was barely over 100 pounds. I had my pudgy spells as a kid, and even as an adult, but for the most part, I was pretty scrawny.

I never knew my paternal grandfather. He died in his fifties of a heart attack. I was named after him.

My paternal grandmother was Bella. She wasn’t in my life much till I was around eleven or twelve, then she died when I was seventeen.

My father was born in 1931. My mother was born in 1932. They married in 1951 when they were nineteen and twenty years old. Still just kids themselves and way too young for even the most mature of people to marry in my opinion. They went right into an apartment in Springfield. My father was in the Navy at this time. A year later they had another apartment, then built a house in 1953.

My brother was born in 1954 and my sister was born in 1957.

Bio 2

I don’t remember my mother working till I was older, though I vaguely remember my folks owning a record store when I was really little. Also when I was little, my father did some extermination work for my mom’s dad, who owned an extermination business.

During my teens, both parents traveled the state selling eyeglass frames to optometrists. They even traveled a bit in New Hampshire and Vermont.

In my early twenties, before they moved down to Florida, they owned a jewelry store in a mall. It was actually one of those carts set up in the center of the walkway between the rows of stores.

The pets we had growing up consisted of poodles, birds and some rodents. I had gerbils and guinea pigs when I was older. We had a rabbit for a while too, in my later childhood, as well as some hermit crabs.

The only thing I really remember my mother telling me about sex and boys was basically not to do anything more than kiss on the first date, and to make sure the man I married was Jewish.

“But what if I fall in love with a guy who happens not to be Jewish?” I once asked her.

“You don’t let it happen,” she said.

What a silly thing to tell your kid, I realized as I grew older. Like we can help who we’re attracted to and who we fall in love with any more than we can help what colors or flavors we like? Like it should even matter who we fall in love with as long as we’re happy?

But I always preferred women to men at least for the most part. So later on in life, when I was twenty-four, openly bi, and visiting my parents in Florida, my father told me not to tell anyone I was this way.

“Why?” I asked him. “Should I be ashamed of it? Because if the person I told was put out by it, then I certainly wouldn’t want them to be a part of my life anyway.”

During my preteen years, I was often left in the care of my aunt and uncle’s house, with their two daughters which wasn’t usually much fun. Aunt June was a bundle of nerves, and Ronnie, my mother’s brother, was a mean bully. Cousins Lori and Lisa could sometimes be fun to hang with and sometimes they could be little terrors of their own. Lori, who was a year older than me, liked to bully me around at times. I was closer to Lisa, who was a year younger than me.

For reasons still unknown to me, my uncle always seemed to harbor animosity towards me. I haven’t seen any of them since I was around twenty years old, and I can’t say I miss them.

Ronnie was definitely the worst, shoving me around when I didn’t move fast enough for his liking when we’d all go out somewhere, and just being a less-than-kind bully in general. My sister Tammy did her own bullying and bloodied my lip one time right in front of him and he just sat in his chair staring at us dumbly the entire time, as if it was perfectly normal behavior.

I had mixed emotions about leaving Ronnie and June’s place when I’d stay with them. While it was true that I looked forward to returning to my own bed, my own toys, etc., knowing I’d soon have to face my mother’s wrath could be quite nerve-wracking, even scary. It’d be worse when Tammy was with me because I knew that when we did see my mother again, she’d be sure to tell her all kinds of horrible things I said and did, most of which were made up. But Tammy was the oldest and that meant that she was the most believable which also meant that I’d certainly be in for some sort of punishment if she did decide to tell on me, made up or not.

When I was around ten the visits to their house stopped. I’m not sure why. Maybe Ronnie and June were sick of having me there, or maybe my folks were fighting with them. I know they have had their fights with them, just like with my father’s brother and his wife. Someone was always fighting with someone in my family. Mom or Dad beat up on Larry who beat up on Tammy who beat up on me. It was crazy and I often wondered if there’d ever come a day when someone was killed.

The more I think about it as I write this, the more I think that yes, they did have a falling out, and it was probably over an injury I received in the town’s high school gym. This seems to be around the time the visits stopped, too. During the summer I was around ten, I spent most of the summer at their house, and Lori, Lisa and I would ride our bikes to the high school for daytime activities. There were sports, crafts, swimming, etc. It was actually kind of fun.

I was a bit of a gymnast in these days, though I certainly preferred ice skating and roller-skating. I was doing a series of handsprings over the vault in the gym one day. On one particular handspring, I veered towards the side once my hands hit the vault and my feet were directly overhead. I ended up spraining my pinky finger quite badly. At first, I thought it was broken because of how swollen it was.

My less-than-sympathetic uncle did nothing about it, and this could’ve very well been why they stopped talking. I know that when I later joined my folks at our summer cottage at the beach, Mom wasn’t too happy about it at all. She took me to a clinic right away and a splint was put on my finger.

I always felt more uncomfortable when Lori and Lisa would come to stay with us, versus when I would stay with them. There may’ve been Ronnie to deal with at their place, but at my place, there was my mother to deal with, who would often compare me to them (not in a good way) and give me the why-can’t-you-be-more-like-them? spiel, making me feel like I wasn’t good enough as I was. In fact, it seemed I could never measure up to Lori and Lisa no matter what I did.

My other uncle, Martin, who people called Marty, wasn’t much better. He was a mean bully too, and I doubt he’d have hesitated to kill me one particular day when I pissed him off by slamming the door in his rude face, had I not frozen scared stiff like I did.

“Open this door!” he demanded when I shut it on him when he came over looking for my folks who weren’t home at the time. This was for the way he and his wife treated me when I stayed with them at the campgrounds they camped at. So I opened the door and let him scream at me. Even his mother was scared. As I grew older my fear would turn to anger, however, so it’s lucky for both of us I simply stood there. Had I been like I am now, I’d have either gone to jail for kicking his ass, or he’d have gone to jail for kicking mine. I hope he would have anyway!

Even my father had an underlying macho stance about him as mellow as he usually was, and I did see him slap my mother once when I was around eight. This memory has haunted me throughout the years. It’s even more disturbing to know that had my mother put up any resistance after being slapped, he’d have probably beat the crap out of her right there in front of me, never giving a damn how it may have traumatized me. After he slapped her, my mother tried to justify his behavior, in a private little one-to-one, assuring me it was only because of his poor health. I was just a kid back then who bought anything that was told to her. However, as a grown adult, I know that this was a poor excuse for his actions and that if my mother had had any self-respect, she wouldn’t have made such lame excuses for him. Lots of people have heart problems such as he did and still has today, yet they don’t go around slapping their wives and traumatizing their children.

Marty’s wife Ruth could be sweet at times, but she was the phoniest thing I ever did meet! She had a big mouth and loved to gossip, but so did the whole family. Their two kids Polly and Philip were ok, though I rarely saw Polly. I doubt I’d recognize her if I passed her on the street right now.

Bio 3

James and Charlotte were my parents’ good friends. I liked Char and Jim. They had a daughter Shelley, also gay. Another couple that was close friends with the family was Goldie and Al. I liked them as well.

Richard and Beatrice, beach friends of my folks, owned an ice skating rink down in Windsor, Connecticut where I took some ice skating lessons. I didn’t see much of Dick, but I remember bleached-blond, tanned Bea to be one of the phoniest people I’d ever met! She and my Aunt Ruth could’ve been sisters, though they certainly didn’t look alike.

I rarely saw cousins Norma and Milton. They seemed nice, but they could’ve been ax murderers for all I know.

Cousins Max and Dorothy were a different story. I liked them, but I didn’t. They were very generous, giving me money upon my big cross-country move, but they had their faults. After I moved, I found out that they regularly visited Tammy. She lived over an hour away from them, yet when I was just ten minutes away, they never came to see me. I understood why, though. It was because of the “crazy” label my mother had worked so hard to stick on me. The fact that I didn’t have kids may’ve been a factor, too.

It really bothered me how Boo (Dorothy’s nickname) reacted to a question she once asked me. When she and Max were driving me home one day from seeing my father at his friends’ house in Brimfield, Massachusetts when he was visiting the area, she asked me how I was getting along with my mother. I told her, and it was obviously not what she wanted to hear.

“I love my cousin Doe! She works so hard! How could you cut her down like that?” she demanded.

Hey, she asked!

So far, my physical negatives have been having a deformed outer left ear that I’m deaf in, ADHD, asthma and allergies.

ADHD simply means you’re hyper and that you often have trouble sleeping and concentrating on things. That’s all it means. Nothing more or less. However, my mother tried to brainwash me into believing I had a chemical imbalance and needed drugs all my life simply because I was energetic, a bit eccentric, rather unique, and often viewed the world differently. Maybe the doctors brainwashed her a bit as well. Guess I’ll never know for sure. Nonetheless, this was back in a time when people preferred to put labels on certain traits and prescribe pills for them simply because it was easier to do so than to either accept the person as they were or to address the real root of the problem.

Because my mother nearly miscarried me, she was given an estrogen drug (DES) that they felt, back in those days, would help. Then they later learned it can cause cervical cancer in DES daughters and an increased risk of infertility. I don’t know if I’m sterile because of this drug or for some other reason. I may not be sterile at all, but just not meant to have kids (I did have what might’ve been an early miscarriage in the late 90s). Despite coming to decide I didn’t want kids in the end, somehow I knew this would be the case too, since I was a little girl. This would be part of my prominent sixth sense, but that didn’t really develop till I was in my twenties.

In the seventies, I had fifteen plastic surgeries in Boston to build an outer ear. It didn’t turn out so well. It never did look natural, and twenty years later it brought me problems. Persistent sensitivity within the frame caused me to seek medical attention which led me to two surgeries to dismantle the frame as well as to have a canal drilled. The amount of hearing I got in that ear is next to nil.

I was amazed at how I could be in and out of the hospital on the same day for just two operations in Arizona in 1994, yet had to stay in the hospital for two days for each of the many reconstructive operations I had in Boston. In Arizona, all they did was bandage the area. Back in the seventies, my whole head was covered with bandages except for my face and a small area at the crown of my head where I’d have my hair sticking out in a ponytail. The part that went under the neck was a real killer. I would itch like hell and I’d have to wear the thing for weeks at a time.

The only other physical problems/accidents I can remember is being hospitalized for a couple of weeks with pneumonia when I was around nine, and falling off my bike and needing many stitches in my chin when I was around twelve.

They say our health is supposed to decline with age, yet I’ve been much healthier in my thirties than I was in my twenties. Especially seeing how I couldn’t even breathe throughout most of my twenties.

I grew up in a small affluent town in Massachusetts just outside the city of Springfield. The Connecticut state line was just minutes away. We lived in a two-story, four-bedroom house with a large backyard that was built while my mother was pregnant with me. I had a little playroom down in the cellar until my paternal grandmother came to live with us. She had lived in California, but after husband number two died and she had a stroke, she came to live with us. She lived in the finished cellar since it had a bathroom and shower stall she could use. My new playroom was to be one of the bedrooms since Larry and Tammy were out of the house before I was even ten years old. For the most part, I felt like an only child, and believe me, there were plenty of times when I wished I truly was!

Next door to us lived my maternal grandparents in a two-bedroom ranch.

I’m not going to even try to sugarcoat my childhood, for sadly the only fond childhood memories I really have are those of birthdays and holidays, but even those could be shaky at times. Being with family could be a very stressful thing for me. It made me very uncomfortable. I felt like such an outcast, always walking on eggshells and like I just couldn’t be myself. Particularly around my mother and sister.

When I was around grade-school age, Chanukah get-togethers could be kind of fun. We’d go next door to Nana and Pa’s and they’d dump a bunch of coins in the middle of the cellar floor, where everyone was gathered, for the youngest kids to gather up.

I’d look forward to getting new records and was into TV shows like Charlie’s Angels and The Bionic Woman.

The most unpleasant preteen experiences were school-related, which would become Doe-related, as my mother was commonly called. Yes, my mother’s wrath could be quite scary and my dad didn’t do much to step in and defend us kids. Though there was physical abuse, there wasn’t nearly as much of that as there was verbal and emotional abuse. Her stripping my room of the things I treasured most (my little victrola was always at the top of her list) when I’d do badly in school which was usually by being a little bully, would leave me thoroughly depressed. Sometimes just going home with a bad report card in hand was quite a task. My heart would be pounding with anxiety every step of the way, knowing I was probably going to get hit or punished or both.

Despite how much more passive my father was, he did most of the hitting. I’ve personally seen him beat the crap out of both my brother and sister. I remember waking up at night terrified when I was really little by the sounds of my father beating them with his belt. Once, my mother even came in to comfort me while she allowed it to go on.

But they stuck together no matter what. If one of my parents had killed one of us, the other would still be standing by them today, never mentioning it, forever acting as if it never happened. In a town like Longmeadow in the seventies, they’d have gotten away with it, too.

My father once went to attack Larry during a Passover feast next door at Nana and Pa’s house when Pa jumped up and shouted, “Not in my house!”

“I’m going to call DYS,” should’ve been more like it!

A teacher hit me once as well. It was only on the rump, but it was still wrong. To me, violence is violence whether it’s a little slap or a major beating. No one should hit anyone unless it’s in self-defense. I believe that hitting kids usually leads to aggressiveness. My mother brainwashed me into believing it was an act of love. She’d tell me she did it because she loved me. I thought it was normal for parents to hit their kids. So, for a time I believed that when I had a problem with someone, like a classmate, hitting them was the proper thing to do, and I usually did.

Because she was eight years older than me, I was often left alone with her. That was rather terrible since she was so much like my mother. Tall and wide, it was often said that she was jealous of me. Not just because I was small, but because of the things I’d later be able to do that she couldn’t do. She felt stupid and ugly compared to me, so I heard, but personally, I wouldn’t have cared what she looked like or what her IQ was if she had only been less of a monster! While her jealousy was rather frustrating to deal with as well as embarrassing at times when she’d pick on me in front of others, I felt sorrier for her than I did angry. This is because while Tammy may’ve had nice eyes and wasn’t the dumbest person alive, she was still quite homely-looking and lacked skills or talent of any real kind.

Bio 4

We had a summer cottage at Old Colony Beach in Old Lyme, Connecticut. We’d head there as soon as school let out and wouldn’t return till Labor Day. We started going to this beach when I was a baby and stopped going as a family when I was in my mid-teens or so. This is partly because my folks made enemies there. The beach had its fun points, but for the most part, I preferred to be at the Massachusetts house. It was mostly a Jewish beach since my folks weren’t the least bit thrilled about hanging with those who were different than them. Not that they told me to hate others, like blacks. No, I’d come to hate everybody in general, regardless of race, color, etc., later on in life all by myself.

When I was around eight, Tammy and I would go and “be bad” when we’d go to check the cottage during the off-season. We’d rip screens off of other cottages, yank old doors off their hinges and things like that.

I mostly hung out with Andy. Andy was the youngest of six kids. They all lived in the cottage next to us. My parents and his parents, Judy and Al, had been friends for years. Since before I was even born. The friendship ended in the seventies and Judy and Al sold their cottage shortly afterward.

My parents had a falling out with at least three other families there, but it was mostly because of my mother. On and on went these childish little cliques and their struggles for popularity. I didn’t realize just how silly and immature it all was until I got older.

For the most part, the days were spent with me being bored on the beach (I could only swim and shovel so much sand), and the nights were spent doing a variety of things. Sometimes I was out interacting with other kids. There were bingo and movies on the beach. When I stayed in, I’d either watch TV, listen to the radio, or play with my dolls.

Despite my boredom, there were a few positives to the beach like ice cream, fried dough, candy necklaces, miniature golf and glow-in-the-dark wands. There was Mrs. Labriola too, an old lady at the other end of our street. I don’t remember how we met. I know my folks knew her somehow. We probably met while she was out in her yard which was beautifully decorated with lawn ornaments and I was walking by. She lived there year-round. Other than her kids who’d come to visit her and her dog, I was pretty much the only company she had. She was very good to me, often spoiling me with little treats when I’d visit. I was between eight and ten when I started visiting her. The last time I saw her was when I was around twenty-four in 1990. After moving to Phoenix in 1992, I learned she died in 1994 when I called her home and her son Vito answered.

My folks often played cards or other games with other couples just like them – very white, very straight, and very Jewish. My mother, as did my sister, had a thirst for praise and popularity. Recognition and acknowledgment were everything to them.

The most horrible memory I have of being at the beach was the one where my mother nearly left me for dead.

Literally.

The older I got, the more obsessed my parents, particularly my mother, became with my appearance. I had a chubby spell on occasion as a kid, causing my mother to taunt me as if I were a beached whale. I began to get more and more self-conscious and my self-esteem started to crumble. I also began to eat less and less as the pressure to fulfill Dureen’s obsession with me as the “beautiful” child mounted. Known for my big, long-lashed eyes, thick curly hair and being petite, I felt pressured to keep up the image, or else! When I finally did lose a little weight, she congratulated me as if it were the biggest accomplishment I could ever make in my life.

On one particular crash diet I threw myself on when I was around ten, I had not only no food but no water. I had nothing at all. I did this for a few days, then on the third day or so, I could barely lift my head off the pillow when I awoke that morning. I was so incredibly weak.

My mother and her best friend, Charlotte, were just off of the little kitchenette that was just outside my room. I called out to her but it was useless. When I asked for food and water, she refused to help me.

“You did this. You correct it,” she said to me, anxious to return to her backgammon game which was obviously much more important.

I was confused. I just didn’t know what to think at this point. Here she had been picking on me for being fat, yet when I insisted I was too full to eat anymore at a restaurant one night, she had made me eat it anyway and I ended up puking in the parking lot. It took all that before she quit making me continue eating once I was full.

As I lay there in my weakened state for many hours, I knew it was going to be up to me to save myself and that I’d surely die if I didn’t. I guess something must’ve wanted me to live because if that kitchenette hadn’t been right off my room – forget it. With all the strength I could muster, I pulled myself up out of bed, stepped just outside the room and yanked open a cabinet. Then I grabbed a Devil Dog, spun back around towards the bed and collapsed onto it. My heart was pounding. It took me all of ten minutes to gather enough strength to unwrap the wrapper and eat the damn thing. By this time it was late afternoon.

After I ate, I showered and went outdoors. My legs were shaky. And being the kid that I was, I didn’t hold the fact against my mother that I could’ve died had I not managed to feed myself, and I almost didn’t!

In my early teens at the beach, I’d often cruise the next beach over, which was a public beach, for anyone who had some pot to spare or share. Once, I was dumb enough to get into some guy’s car and drive away to get high where there were fewer people. He hit me for sex but dropped me back off at the beach immediately when I said no. The guy could’ve kidnapped, raped and killed me, so something was looking out for me that day, too.

I attended two camps in Maine. One when I was eleven, the other when I was fourteen. I was supposed to be there the whole summer, but that didn’t happen. I managed to get kicked out of both camps. I really hated camp. Not so much because the activities weren’t fun, but because it was too structured and hectic, leaving no time for any space or privacy. I always valued my solitude and I missed being in my own room with my own things and not having to share a bathroom with twenty other girls. I missed my stereo the most.

Camp M, the one I was in when I was fourteen doesn’t stand out in my mind in any way. All I remember is making sure I’d get caught smoking cigarettes so I could get kicked out, and slugging the camp counselor assigned to my cabin. I guess she startled me when she went to wake me up, so I didn’t literally “slug” her. She said I did, though, but I knew she was exaggerating because she wanted me out of there just as much as I did.

Camp N, the one I went to when I was eleven, does stand out in my mind because of a woman whose name I can’t remember. She was somewhere between her late teens to mid-twenties. She was extra nice to me and seemed very fond of me. I think she was some kind of supervisor because she had her own cabin in which we spent my last night in together.

Twenty years later, in Phoenix, Arizona I tried to track this woman down to thank her for caring for me in a time when so many people didn’t. I was never one to take good people for granted after all the bad people I’d dealt with, and I’m still not. Though I contacted Unsolved Mysteries for help and was shocked to get a phone call from them inquiring about her, I never could find her or learn her true name. No one I spoke to seemed to remember her. All I learned was that the camp was predominantly a Jewish camp. I should’ve figured as much, I suppose, since my parents were pretty big on hanging with our own kind.

Jenny, a friend I’d had since I was nine, wasn’t a very good influence on me. On top of a controlling mother, I had this bossy friend telling me what to do, too. But being the nice person that I was, I put up with it till I was in my twenties.

After a year of our friendship, Jenny moved to a rural town about forty minutes from where I lived, but we visited each other from time to time.

She had an older gay sister, Robin, who was on her own. Both Jenny and Robin were adopted. Her father seemed pretty passive, but her mother was a neurotic alcoholic that I never really liked.

Jenny and I had our share of good times, but I can’t say I was too thrilled with her for getting me started on cigarettes. Who knows, though? Maybe I’d have started anyway. She also introduced me to pot, though fortunately, I never got carried away with that. Just an occasional joint from my early to mid-teens. Actually, my last joint would be when I was twenty, but that story will have to wait.

As kids Jenny and I would hang out together, smoking our cigarettes and stealing from stores. Petty things like candy and cigarettes.

My other friend was Jessica. She and I are still friends today.

Just like Jenny had gotten me hooked on cigarettes, I got Jessie hooked on them. I spared her the pot, though. She and I didn’t cause too much mischief together, though we did skip school once.

Jessie was also adopted. Her adoptive parents were divorced. She lived with her mother a few houses away from mine. Her father was a very famous public figure.

I stayed with Jessie at his house in Connecticut a few times. His house was quite impressive. The layout was really cool. He had a lot of photos of him posing with other celebrities. The show’s set was in New York where he had a nearby apartment as well.

I hated school and having to get up early, though I found middle school to be a little better than elementary school, and high school to be even better. Before I became a ward of the state, that is. I totally loathed math, history and English. Science was ok. My favorites were chorus, gym, and the typing class I had.

I ended up at an alternative school at one point, the last public school I ever attended, if only for a brief time and it wasn’t too bad. That’s because we could get away with murder there. This was in Springfield and there were only a few teachers and students at this school. We could smoke freely and goof off all we wanted. Even our bus driver got high with us!

Throughout most of grade school, I was quite a rebellious little terror. Experts say my behavior problems were linked to the abuse I received at home, or my ear/hearing and ADD. Maybe it stemmed from all of the above. Who knows?

I’d do things like hit or kick students for no apparent reason and steal their snacks. Once, I hid a classmate’s glasses behind some books in a bookcase. I refused to tell the teacher where they were, so the class tore up the classroom in search of them, while I stood out in the hallway, grinning through the little square window of the door.

I played the flute and piano, but didn’t play the flute for long at all.

During the third and fourth grades, I was in the “retard room.” This was for slow learners or troublemakers such as myself.

One particular horrible memory I have of grade school was when I was in the first or second grade. I was afraid to go home that day because my mother had been fuming at me before school. This was because I had to wake her up because I couldn’t find the dress she wanted me to wear that day. I don’t know what went through the teacher’s mind when she thought she could save me by having a schoolmate walk me home, but that was her solution to the matter.

So this boy walked me home. I kept insisting that he not approach the house with me because I knew my mother would be mad if she saw me with a boy, but he stuck to me like glue anyway. As soon as my mother opened the back door the boy blurted out, “She was afraid you were going to hit her so the teacher told me to walk her home.”

Enraged at the thought of outsiders knowing that she hit her children, my mother slapped me right then and there in front of the boy. All I remember after she yanked me into the house, slammed the door on the boy and slugged me, was me huddling fearfully in the corner of the kitchen.

Mr. M, the high school music teacher, was definitely my favorite and the only man I really had a crush on before meeting Tom. He was tall, dark and handsome in every sense of the word. He was like a masculine version of Kate Jackson, also someone I had a crush on. This was when I began to really learn about rejection, for he was infatuated with another student at the time whom he later married.

I had no real friends in high school. Perhaps this was because I only attended Longmeadow High for the last part of my freshman year. From September till after the New Year, I met one-on-one with a private tutor at the Willie Ross School for the Deaf on the other side of town.

This was around the time I started seeing a therapist at the Jewish Family Services center in Springfield. Naturally, when my mother was present, she’d put on her public face. I believe I had to run away for a day in order to earn myself a few therapy sessions at this place. On and off throughout my childhood, I was a member of the Jewish Community Center. One day I hung out in this cave-like thing in the playground instead of going to school. I was also becoming self-destructive, cutting myself and things like that.

Back when I was around ten, I saw a shrink in Boston who recommended I stop having surgery. It was getting to me, that’s for sure. That’s a lot of operations to be having at any age, let alone so young.

This is when they began to control me with drugs, too.

Bio 5

In 1978 we moved from the newer side of Longmeadow to the older section. Although this house was much older, it was bigger and I liked it a lot better. It didn’t have much of a back or front yard. That was ok, though, since I was well past the days of playing outside on swings and in makeshift forts and tents, not that there were any woods in this yard anyway. All there was in back was a hedge separating a small patch of grass from a small brick terrace. There wasn’t much of a front yard, either. In fact, my dad could ditch his sit-down mower for a push-mower and leave the mowing to me. I didn’t mind. It was pretty much all I ever had for chores besides laundry, other than to keep my own territory neat and clean. I didn’t do any cooking. My only kitchen job would be to set the table, clear it off afterward, load the dishwasher, then empty it.

I received a weekly allowance of $10 which I’d spend on cigarettes. A carton of cigarettes was around $5 when I started smoking and ended up being over $20 when I finally quit eighteen years later.

Unlike the first house, which was on a dead-end road, this house was on the corner of a busier street.

It was also a two-story house with four bedrooms. My stereo and guinea pigs lived on one side of the cellar where I’d hang out a lot.

When Nana Bella first came to live with us at the first house, she’d snitch on me for every little thing. Then once she saw how my mom could be at times, she kind of felt sorry for me and we became closer. She even kept her mouth shut when I’d smoke. “Just don’t burn the house down,” she’d tell me.

She died when I was away from home as a ward of the state at age seventeen. Both of my maternal grandparents died two years later.

If I had to pick a timeframe in my life that was the worst, I’d say the teenage years were definitely it. This is when my mother began running out of patience with me, and her pawning me off on others or at other places would escalate. Places that could be even worse than being with her. I truly believe that my mother never wanted kids in the first place and that the only reason she had them was for show, so to speak. She married in a time when kids were expected of any couple.

As a hyper child with wild dreams of becoming a rich and famous singer, I was more than getting on my parents’ nerves. They started ignoring me more, becoming more and more engrossed in TV and outings with friends. I felt I lacked and needed attention. My mother’s control and ridicule were increasing by the minute. It seemed I could do or say nothing right, and as the last of my optimism and confidence faded, my early teens would be when I’d have my first thoughts of suicide.

I took an overdose of sleeping pills, but all it did was make me drowsy. I began to cut my wrists regularly. Actually, I’d hack up my left forearm. I wasn’t doing it to die. I was doing it as a way of channeling and venting my frustrations, my depression, and my growing anger. No one influenced me to do this, either. I never saw anyone do it on TV, never heard anyone talk about it. In fact, I didn’t know anyone else in the world had ever cut themselves.

Although raised Jewish, we rarely went to the temple. Religion wasn’t a regular part of our lives. That was ok with me, for religion is too structured and often bigoted in my opinion.

When I was somewhere between twelve and fourteen, I was walking down the street next to ours one crisp fall day.

“Oh, what a cute sweatshirt,” said this middle-aged woman who was out raking leaves in her front yard.

I looked down at my Mickey Mouse sweatshirt. “Thanks,” I said.

With my hair pulled back in a ponytail, she noticed my ear and questioned me about it. After telling her about it, she informed me that she had a deaf son and that I was welcome to go into her backyard and meet him, so I did.

Jeff was a dark, lanky boy a year older than me with the same exact birthday. He knew sign language well. All I knew at this time was how to fingerspell the alphabet. Jeff taught me many words a day. I’d write down the words I wanted to know and he’d show me the signs for them.

I began to teach myself Spanish at this time too, using books and records. That was all I could do since I knew no Hispanic people to help me. There were no Hispanics that I knew of living in Longmeadow at this time. The only Hispanic people I’d met were this family from Venezuela in Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital when I had one of my ear surgeries.

I’d never even seen a black person till I was around ten, or maybe even a little older. “Dark Land,” I’d call the black section of the city whenever we’d drive through it.

I also dabbled a bit in French and shorthand.

Although Jeff and I hung out a lot together, neither of us liked each other as boyfriend and girlfriend. For him, it could’ve been for any reason. For me, it was because I was gay, though I didn’t know or understand that yet. I just knew that women in general were better looking than men in general. I was attracted to what I was attracted to and I didn’t question it. Not when I was attracted to someone I’d see somewhere, or when I was attracted to singer Linda Ronstadt, who’d be one of my favorite singers, or actress Kate Jackson.

The summer of 1980, when I was fourteen, was not a fun one. Instead of being at the beach, my parents were traveling daily, selling eyeglass frames to optometrists. I had just gotten kicked out of camp, and so my mother, not ready for me to come home and spoil her peace, dumped me off in Connecticut at the campground Uncle Marty and Aunt Ruth spent their own summers.

Although I was allowed to take my guitar and new guinea pig with me after losing one that I’d had for two years, I was not a “happy camper.” My only good memories of this time were the day I went water-skiing on the lake. Also, when I went diving with a bunch of other kids from a cliff that was a good fifteen to twenty feet high. It was scary at first, but I found it to be a lot of fun once I got used to it.

Marty and Ruth stayed inside a trailer while I stayed in a small outdoor tent. I didn’t mind the tent. It was my uncle I minded, along with my spineless aunt who went right along with his domineering ways. Believe it or not, though, she was the one that hit me that summer, not him. She slapped me across the face. I’m not sure if I earned that slap for bumming smokes off of others, or for the boy that was in my tent that they were convinced I had dragged in with me.

This kid actually came into the tent one early evening when I least expected it. He sat on my cot next to me as I held my guinea pig on my lap.

“What do you think you’re doing?” I asked him.

Saying nothing, he pulled my mouth towards his. Before his disgusting lips could touch mine, I heard, “Jodi, who’s in the tent?”

It was my Aunt Ruth. Both of us emerged from the tent, but before I could explain, she’d already made up her mind as to what had happened.

“Get in the trailer!” she demanded, where I would spend the night.

Shortly after this incident, my father came to get me. Before we left, he and Marty and Ruth openly discussed my “problems” as if I weren’t even there.