Back in the Fold

1988.

In 1988 I was 23 years old. After Kevin and I broke up I moved back to Redwood City. There was a brief stint at my parents’ house, but we started where we had left off – in the shitter.

Then I got a studio apartment by myself in downtown Redwood City. I rented a chair 2 to 3 days per week in S.F. at Larry’s hair salon on Maiden Lane and built a life without RJ.I had worked or lived with RJ for the previous 8 years. Before Kevin when RJ and I argued it had never lasted long. I’d never had someone like Kevin who displaced even a little of my affection for RJ. I had never chosen anyone above him. This failure in my relationship with Kevin confirmed everything RJ had ever said about me. That I couldn’t live with someone.  That I was never going to truly commit to someone. I was a wolf in sheep’s clothing–predator like him. No other guy would ever be enough.

I worked in SF but also filled in once in a while as a bartender at a dive in Redwood City. I made enough money in SF but real drinking is a vocation and dive bars have always felt like my most consistent home. I created a social circle of old and new friends.

I also went back to school and started my AA degree at a local city college with the idea of transferring to a 4-year university. I majored in English with a Journalism minor. I enjoyed writing and for a short time thought I was going to become a journalist or professional writer.

Compartmentalization

John Lee Hooker became my friend back in ’88, this is us in ’97. I introduced RJ and the group to him. He called them “freaks” good humorously, since they were my friends.

In the “outside” world I was mostly like others, while my “inside” world held all the secrets and things best left forgotten. These secrets continued to hold me to RJ and it was his voice that narrated my inner world. Now as an adult I’d become an expert at living a split life. I was one person with my biological family, a different person with different friends and guys I dated, and a different person at work. (If you could call what I did with guys dating). My life was completely compartmentalized and the walls that kept everything in also kept everyone out.

Then RJ and I started talking again. He was living at Joost with Wendy, Sheri, and a few other people. I don’t remember the circumstances of how we started up again. I did start renting a chair from him in a small salon where he worked alone. He charged me less than Larry, plus it always felt a bit like going home to be with him. RJ said all the things he always said, all those things that anyone would want to hear. He loved me, he understood me, he was just angry because he knew I was making a mistake with Kevin, I was important to him, part of his family, my family, the one I always wanted and helped to build.

The Return

Coming back into RJ’s fold started by hanging out at the house more and more. I would go for dinner or a party. Go with them to Mark groups and then stay the night and sit around and drink coffee in the morning. Everyone still had jobs and worked outside of the house every day. RJ, Sheri, and Wendy were the core group, other people were always moving in and out. RJ and I fell back into working and drinking together, sometimes with clients he wanted to dazzle with his lifestyle. Mostly just the usual drinking and fantasizing about the future.

The Community College Newspaper I wrote for before moving back in.

Sometimes when I would come over to Joost, RJ would ask me to read out loud the stories I wrote in school at the dinner table. Everyone would tell me how great they were, but I felt like an imposter. RJ would say, “Chrissy, you don’t need to go to school. You don’t need these intellectuals to write, just write.” But I couldn’t. I felt like all the writing I did was juvenile and anyone who liked my writing didn’t know what good writing was. The writing I did was to impress the teacher, or later, to impress RJ. It felt good to get the attention and acknowledgment though.

I’d never had moments like that before with any group, even my own family. It was times like these that convinced me RJ loved me, Sheri and Wendy loved me, that I was important to somebody. I was sure that this family was way better than any other. Here is a link to my articles from the school paper, because Black Lives Mattered back then too.

The idea that school was not worth my time would continue to be a theme with RJ. The same went for doctors, therapists, travel, outside friends, marriage, boyfriends, or anyone or anything I might look to for guidance or even just something new. Anyone who was a distraction from the goals he had for me or anyone I might admire more than he, was categorically dismissed. He claimed to love me more than I loved myself and I believed him. Of course, by this time, self-love was a pretty low bar and I was grateful for him in my life. My desire for other things felt like proof I was the most basic of bitches.

Changes

Wendy got pregnant with Mallie, which solidified the family even further. Pregnancy changed the dynamic in the house and as Wendy started to nest, Sheri moved into RJ’s room. Wendy was not always happy about it but as she grew bigger the beatings were fewer, less intense. Wendy was heartbroken that Sheri had become RJ’s number one but she continued to have eyes for RJ only.

I was there the night Mallie was born. RJ asked me to come by after work and see how large Wendy’s belly had grown. The whole thing freaked me out so much he thought it would help Wendy to stay calm in comparison. It was an intense night. I drove home with the top off my car and the fog of the early morning hitting my face. It felt good. I felt happy and in love with my “family.” Not long after I moved back in. 

Even though I was considered one of RJ’s women, we didn’t make out anymore. There was drunken fumbling once in a while, a blow job here or there, but that wasn’t why we were close. Our secret history and my fierce loyalty was the cornerstone of our relationship and what RJ exploited best. I was such a wild bitch that only RJ could really love me. I loved him and he was my oldest and closest friend, but I wasn’t in love with him like Wendy and Sheri were.  The desire had passed. Being sexual with him or for him was habitual, an instinct.

Additionally, sexual openness was and still is a power in the group. DOing played only a small part in our sex lives at this time and everyone mostly sucked and fucked like normal people. There was no “educational” slant. We were a straight-up sex commune. RJ used my ability to disassociate and “go pro” for him in this arena as well as in others. I was not a nice person, but I did feel powerful.

My Failings

Around this time RJ asked me to stop telling him I loved him when he said, “I love you” to me. He said he could hear the unspoken “but” that followed. That “but” was: I wanted to travel, I wanted to write, I wanted to go to school, I wanted to have a family, I wanted things beyond what he wanted for me, no matter how many times he insisted these desires were just my resistance. To him, the “but” was proof that I didn’t love him as much as he loved me. I was truly incapable of loving anyone if I didn’t love him completely and unwavering if I didn’t love the one who saved me.

It made sense to me that the cold hard place inside me was my failing, not his, who loved me so deeply. I was breaking his heart.  Sheri and Wendy would comfort him from my meanness, as I’m sure they continue to do today. That helped to solidify the viewpoint for me and everyone else that RJ was the hurt party here, not me. I was the predator.

Tenderloin, SF

In the group, I was given the tough jobs, the ones no one else wanted to do. I was also given the secret jobs because RJ knew if he ordered, “Say nothing,” it would go into the lock box with everything else. I did small things like hold Mallie at the doctor’s office when she was being vaccinated because Wendy would get so upset. I also did bigger things like help out when RJ’s nephew died in a Tenderloin hotel.

RJ thought he had probably died of AIDS so his niece and I donned full protective wear and went into the room to go through his stuff. The blood-stained mattress was still in there as we worked. Afterward, we stripped in the hall and threw everything into the room and walked away. RJ and I  never spoke of it again, and his niece never came to the house to visit. The incident was not brought up in the group. I’ve never spoken of this until now. It’s funny and painful how one memory provokes another. I remember being shocked at the time to learn that RJ had family in San Francisco (his nephew) that I hadn’t met, but since he was gay it also made sense that RJ didn’t have him over. He’s never believed that people are gay, but that homosexuality is just a perversion.

The Group Expands

Soon after I moved back into the house on Joost, Kim and Harvey moved in as well. They had been running 80 Hamilton, a More University communal house in Oakland. There were plenty of parties and Mark groups and they brought more people from the More community into our lives. Sheri, Wendy, and I were RJ’s women, and regardless of how we really felt we banded together around RJ when interacting with this new group. This also helped to strengthen the family. Talking about all the ways we didn’t want to be like More U. was more frequent than what we did want from all living together.

Kim, Harvey and Wendy at Joost.

One night we were all home for RJ’s birthday. It started like so many other of his birthday “parties”. RJ always insists that everyone (his women) gets weird around his birthday. It is hard to tell if everyone is on eggshells because of his birthday, or because of his continual insistence and exclamations about how weird everyone is acting. RJ believes he, and all men, only respond to women and have no original thoughts of their own. If he feels weird then someone is causing it, and you don’t want to be the one.

This night, like just about every night, everyone was drinking and dinner was being made. This night, though, the music was too high and RJ was already half-drunk. You could see the violence building in him. As it goes with every birthday, RJ started resenting everyone for not giving him a better celebration. He felt sorry for himself because these “hold-out bitches” were determined to torture him. I remember being tired and wary of where the party was headed. Having been to enough of RJ’s birthdays I knew that this could turn into a long ugly evening.

Distraction works. RJ on the left, Harvey on the right, me in the middle.

I knew that the next thing that would happen is someone would get hit, and the drama and the booze would be cranked up until the trauma peaked and RJ’s venting dissolved into the recognizable scene we had all become accustomed to. I decided to get up and dance. It was chancy, I could have easily been ridiculed, but I couldn’t take the tension in the room anymore. RJ and then Harvey started laughing and making comments. Next, I knew they were both up next to me, one on each side.  Shortly after, the clothes were coming off and everyone started to join in. I felt like disaster had been averted and if I remember correctly, we all ended up in a pile in the living room eating dinner with our hands out of the pots in the kitchen. 

Baby Days

Since Mallie had arrived things did change. Sheri was sleeping with RJ, and Wendy was living in a room downstairs at the back of the house with the baby. I stayed in one of the bunks downstairs with everyone else. We still partied and had dinner guests but there was also baby time and family time. I felt like we were more of a family than ever before. I was back to working and living with RJ and was glad to have my closest people surrounding me. I still slipped off to my other friends but less and less as time went on. 

During this time Jennifer F. moved in. She had started hanging out once in a while. The first night she came over was the first time I’d seen Sheri so jealous. It was usually Wendy losing her shit but this time Sheri went through the roof. Wendy seemed glad that Sheri was finally getting her comeuppance, and Kim and Harvey were just “working” Jen to become part of the group. Somehow Sheri didn’t implode and Jennifer came back.

In Redwood City, Kato, me, John Lee and Jennifer

Jen was so different than anyone else there. Wendy and Kim are 10 years older than me. RJ is 20 years older. Harvey was 30 years my senior. Sheri is only a few years older but she seemed older, probably because she was sleeping in RJ’s room and therefore the “head bitch” or “house mother”, as well. I was the wild card. I had more history with RJ than anyone and was the most rebellious, but also the most loyal in any pinch. RJ liked to call me his junkyard dog. I would protect him fiercely from any attack, real or imagined. Jennifer was my age and we became friends and shared a lot of the same interests. I liked how bold she was and I felt I had found a friend.

We started boxing at City College, then found Don’s gym on Leavenworth and talked him into letting us hang out. This is Jen and me with Don’s friend. We were quite the novelty.

Wendy and I had started a boxing class at CCSF and Jen joined us. Jennifer and I started to hang out more and more. We both liked to box and found Newman’s boxing gym downtown. We talked Don, the owner, into training us even though we were the only girls. We also both liked to drink and dance and started going out and partying a lot. This was not appreciated by RJ and the group. We felt like they were all old retired folks, with a baby. We wanted to have fun, be out, be young, and free. This was not welcome as it pulled me away from the “group goals” and from RJ.

Date Night

During this time, to try and bring me back into the fold, RJ took Sheri and me out on a date. I knew that they wanted me to get closer to them. They hoped I’d fill in some of the space left when Wendy had the baby. RJ demands a lot of attention. We went to North Beach for dinner and had a good meal and a lot to drink. Walking down Columbus Ave. arm in arm feeling good, Sheri and I had a moment. I don’t remember exactly what was said but RJ felt excluded by the intimacy and he exploded. He started yelling and smacked Sheri. She fell to the ground and he hit me upside the head.

Learn more: Breaking the Cycle of Abuse

At first, I didn’t feel it. All the boxing training had strengthened my neck and my head barely moved. This pissed RJ off even more and he spat “butch” at me and went over and grabbed Sheri by the hair as she cried on the ground. I, of course, ran over and tried to soothe the situation.  Somehow we made it back home, all feeling bad. Sheri went to bed with RJ and I was blamed for “cutting off his dick,” working to exclude him and making him look bad to Sheri. 

It’s hard to imagine this happening on a busy street in North Beach these days, but back then Broadway and Columbus were a different place. Strip clubs lined Broadway and its seediness spilled over onto Columbus. Nobody even flinched. I’m sure we just looked like every other pimp with his women.

Dance, Dance, Dance

Jen and I continued to party. Sometimes we would come home so drunk we’d pass out in the living room on the couches, fully dressed. More and more RJ and the group would sit us down in the living room and we’d be told off for being reckless. RJ, Wendy, and Sheri would get mad and sometimes cry.

They would say how much they loved me and how scared they were that I was going to get hurt. They’d accuse me of being irresponsible and insisted something horrible was going to happen if we kept it up. Compared to my life when I lived in the Tenderloin, the partying felt like a lot of fun and pretty tame. I believed that they cared but I also thought they were annoyed and a bit tweaked that Jen and I were hanging out. I was being a bad example, but wasn’t fun the goal? We definitely had fun.

So many times something fucked up would happen at the house, someone getting smacked around or pressure to have unwanted sex, that I would run out of there. I’d stop at the little liquor store on the way to the freeway,  head down to Redwood City looking for pot, or go to the dive bars that were my old stomping ground. Sometimes I would go to North Beach or Upper Haight to drink and dance. If Jen was there she would come with me or meet me somewhere.

Jen was my closest friend at the time, but I was always the secret keeper for RJ and the group. There was so much I couldn’t tell her, but we became ports in the storm for each other anyway. Even if the port was listing and drunk, it still created some sort of safe place.

Screening

We had a Socially Transmitted Disease screening group at the time in the house. This was based on More University rules and Harvey and Kim, being the “authorities”, ran the group. Basically, you get all your STD testing done, and then you can be voted into the group. Without screening, you had to use a latex barrier to have any mucous contact. I was in a screening group when I lived at More. It was important to tell if you “broke screening.” Any mucus membrane contact outside of the group was breaking screening. Hitting a joint with your lips or drinking from someone’s cup were all breaking screening.

It’s not a bad idea, only badly handled.

If you broke screening you had to admit it and describe the infraction at a screening meeting. Then everyone decided if you needed to be retested and if you were allowed to stay in the group. The group’s main goal was to make it sexually safe. This was 1987 and AIDS had ravaged the city, but it was also a practice in integrity. Integrity meant being deliberate about saliva but also your agreements with your housemates. Telling the truth about your actions and being responsible.

Everyone had to hold to the rule but RJ. He had no issue berating me or anyone else who slipped up, but with a few drinks in him, he would kiss (or more) anyone he felt like. I remember him even licking the pussy of a dinner guest the first time she came over, but nobody challenged him. She was 16 years old.

Systems of Control

RJ always criticized Jen to me. He’d say the most awful things about her and what her intentions were, or he criticized me saying I was in love with her and a lesbian.  He didn’t like that I hung out with her and always tried to convince me I had some nefarious plot against her which was, in his eyes, ultimately against him. This is how it was with all my relationships, but with Jen, I soon realized that he didn’t really know her at all. Jen is beautiful, strong, and direct and that was what I liked about her. That and the fact she was also, like me, insecure and self-doubting at times. 

Jennifer truly wanted people, including Sheri, to like her and be nice to her, but there was so much drama all the time. The trouble we got into going out in SF seemed mild and a kind of relief in comparison to the pressure at the house. Then Sheri announced that she was pregnant the same week a year apart from Wendy. The idea that I would be next was unspoken but seemed inevitable. Jen liked to tease me about it to see me squirm.

The End, Again

It was my 24th birthday and I had worked a long day. I came home and Wendy had made a beautiful cake for me. Everyone sat around the table and sang happy birthday. I thought it was the family love and attention I had always wanted, but in actuality, I was counting the minutes until l could leave. There is/was always a level of stress being in the group. I always molded myself into what RJ wanted and expected until I could slip away. This war inside of me–wanting him and fearing him–wasn’t clear to me then. Now I can remember the feelings and see them for what they were and are, for what they have always been.

Jen wasn’t at my birthday celebration. I could be wrong, but I believe she had broken screening a night or two before and hadn’t  been back to face the music. I was meeting her later in the Haight-Ashbury at one of our favorite warm-up bars. RJ seemed to be sobered by Jen’s break in the screening agreement  and everything was calm enough when I left.

An old favorite.

What I remember of that night is sitting in Murio’s Trophy room drinking beer with tequila shots and talking to Jen. It was early and we had just started drinking and talking about the house. I told Jen that I had always wanted to go to Europe. After reading so much Dickens, Orwell, and Hemingway, I really wanted to see the world. I told her how everyone at Joost had looked into buying a house together but that it kept falling through. I said, “Once the family is settled, I will go.”

Jennifer said, “You’re never going to go. You’re never going to leave RJ.” I knew she was fucking with me, daring me, but I didn’t feel like she was being mean or trying to trick me. I realized that she was right and the only one in my life who was willing to speak the truth. I decided at that moment that I was going to Europe. I don’t think I told her at the time, but I made up my mind right then that I was going to go, no matter what. It felt like I was running out of time to do all the things I had dreamed of.

Herradura

Good tequila changed my life.

Then a cute, sandy blonde-haired merchant marine leaned over and said, “Don’t drink that Jose Cuervo crap, try this. Two Herraduras, please?” I remember dancing in the street sometime after that and then waking up in his room. I called the house and Wendy answered. She was mad. They had been worried about me. I told her I had decided to go to Europe…finally. She got even angrier and told me to come home.

RJ knew I had the goal to go to Europe but always said he would only support me if I went to Outer Mongolia, making it seem like the best place in the world. It became a topic of discussion once or twice when he was drunk but he was not supportive. Again, the goal of travel was not on his agenda for me. 

When I got home to Joost everyone was sitting in the living room fuming. They were mad that I had decided to leave, but everything exploded when I said I had stayed the night with a  random guy. “You bitch! I’ve wasted enough time on you! You fucking cunt!!” RJ screamed at me (the refrain that would mark all of our breakups). This time he added, “And take your fucking blonde girlfriend, too!”

Aftermath

Rincon Center was brand new when we stayed there with Jen’s friend on the 34th floor. I started seeing my clients on the balcony of the apartment now that RJ was mad at me I was out of a job too.

Honestly, the next few days were a complete blur. Jennifer remembers going to her uncle’s but I was in shock. At one point we went and stayed with an old boyfriend of hers and it is there I would stay until I left for Europe. Jen and her ex liked to recite lines from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, and it freaked me out, but I was not sure what else to do. I trusted Jen and at the moment she was my only friend. It felt good to make even bad decisions with her.

At first, Jen said she wanted to go to Europe as well, so we bought a bunch of Ecstasy to sell and make money. Of course, we ended up just taking it or giving it all away. I had a garage sale at my sister’s house and sold everything I owned with the exception of one small box of mementos. I bought a one-way ticket to Amsterdam, but then the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake happened. It felt wrong to leave right after so I postponed my leave date until after Thanksgiving that year, 1989.

Another Kind of Date Night

RJ called me a few nights before I left. This was the first contact from anyone at the house since I left. He took me to dinner at Scoma’s and bought me a lobster. He told me how he’d only thrown me out because he knew if he didn’t I would never really make the trip. I didn’t believe him then or anytime after when he used this excuse for his bad behavior. I knew better but was glad that he had found a way to forgive me for leaving. I knew I had hurt him and made him mad, as I seemed to always do, but I could tell he was shocked that I was going through with the trip. I stilled loved dearly, he was still my family more than anyone else in the world.

I left 3 days after Thanksgiving 1989 and spent 6 years in Europe. I came home three times during those years and will write about what that was like later. 

The weight that shifted from me as I flew away, even though I had a total of $300 dollars in my pocket, was an amazing experience. At the time I thought it was because I was leaving all the entanglements and commitments, spoken and unspoken, to those who loved me. I thought maybe it was confirmation that I was ultimately broken, but at the moment I didn’t care because I was alone and free. 

Thank you for reading,

Christine