I knew it wasn’t right, but I was hooked. When something happened on my birthday that November, the small uneasy voice inside me became a scream. I should have fled then. But men like that have a way.
I was still living in the house behind the Country Store in Laurel Canyon, and one day I could hear him on the phone downstairs having a tempestuous argument with someone. When I went to see what was going on, he yelled, “You tell your fucking mother I don’t want to fucking ever try to help her with anything ever again.”
I was stunned. I asked him what had happened.
“They’ve been planning a surprise birthday party for you,” he said, “and I was going to give her names of people who you really like, but they really don’t care and they’re really not involving me. They’re doing it all themselves.”
I was shocked by his childishness. You might think killing the surprise for me was bad enough—and for what sounded like completely ridiculous reasons—but what came next should have had me running to the hills.
I heard my mother’s car pull in shortly after. She must have left her house as soon as he hung up on her. I walked outside to talk to her in the car.
“That fucking asshole!” she yelled. “There’s something wrong with him.”
She was sounding off when I noticed him bounding out of the house, down the driveway. I’d never seen this side of him before; I was terrified. Before I could stop him, I remember him thrustinghalf of his body through the open window of the car, screaming in my mother’s face.
“Get your head out of your ass, you fucking bitch!” he was shouting.
In fear, she started to drive away. I saw him kick the car. Again, I was speechless. What had happened? All I remember after that is the pit of devastation that lodged in my stomach. And yet I was still in the throes of obsession with him, so much so that at the subsequent birthday party, we all agreed that he would stay on one side of the club, and my mother would stay on the other.
I was desperate to keep the peace. I loved my mother more than I loved anyone, but I couldn’t break his spell on me. I needed to please them both. I didn’t want either of them to ruin the party for all my guests—friends who wanted to make me happy. If you look at the pictures of that birthday party, I seem very happy.
But as ever, my eyes aren’t smiling.
This marked the true beginning of my excuses for him, trying to believe that everything would calm down and eventually be okay. In my heart I was thinking,I can’t lose him,just as I had always thought about my mother,I can’t lose her.He’d convinced me I’d never find anyone better than him, and I believed him.
Fear of abandonment was deep in my soul; my whole life, I had always felt that my mother was going to leave me. I feared she resented me for ruining her life. She was a great support, and a great love, but I was always afraid of upsetting her.
My mom hated him. She knew, she justknew. Of course she did.After what she’d been through with Joe Lala, she wanted to do anything she could to keep me away from the likes of this guy, but there was no telling me. She would say, “I know this guy is going to hurt you. Get the fuck away from him, Christina.” She said she knew the look in his eyes, could feel this motherfucker’s evil energy. As early as August 19, 1990, just a handful of months after the relationship started, I’d written,
My mom instills so much fear in me about him that it caused me to rummage through his things to see if he’s some weirdo. But I found nothing but remnants of a very intense, confused, yet spiritual individual… I feel so empty. Sometimes I feel on the brink of desperate insanity. I’m afraid (today) to deal or talk to anyone from the outside world. Afraid, lonely, confused, bombarded, paranoid. All I can do is ask God to bring me back to the light. Feel it, taste it, inhale it, and digest it & drown in it.
A few weeks later, I wrote this.
[He] has gone to the Yucatan… I feel his main reason for going was because on Tuesday he told my mother to get her head out of her fucking ass repeatedly. Not a good or a wise thing to do. She hates him now, as well as he hates her. For months I have been straining to bring them together. But that was the cause and Tuesday was the effect. It was my painful need to have peace. Now I am in hell. But I release them both. I will live this life for myself. Only for me. There is so much work for me to do on my own soul that any attempt to help others is falsely represented… If a goal is forced upon you, it only ends up working against it. So, yes, I desire for them to be at peace, but I will let the universe take care of that. This whole experience has left me physically chaotic. Hope the underlying effect that stress has on one will not result negatively in the future.
That last sentence chills me now, knowing all that is to come.
Yet even with the plain fact that my mother hated him, the progression of the relationship was swift, though I hardly sound deliriously in love.
We live together. But me? Well, I feel sort of lost… The one constant in my life is [him]. We have so much to learn about each other still. But it will happen in time. I’ve begun to really enjoy sex. Even though it’s hard for me sometimes because of my body obsession. But all in all I suppose I’m happy…
…
Six months. We have been together for six fucking months. It’s a miracle. There are so many hardships. But that’s all part of it… He’s crazy, I’m crazy. But we click so intensely where it is almost painful. I suppose a great deal of that pain is because love is such a rarity. Clawing to hold on. The jealousy. The rage. It all stems from love, passion, fear I suppose. My fear of being without him and at times with him. I’ve let go almost completely of all outside human contact. I don’t want to be around anyone, only him. So unhealthy… We thrive on drama. And [he] and I deserve the Oscar. But I love him; I love his soul, so confused, like mine… Each day he becomes more and more beautiful to me. In my eyes he is the most beautiful man on Earth. It’s funny, here I am writing all this and at the same time we’re in a huge argument. I feel pretty mellow about it though. I can’t let it get to me. I can’t stomach it.
No more.
Bye for now.
My career was taking off in new ways. I smiled for the cameras while promotingMarried…andDon’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Deadto hide everything that was happening in my relationship. These roles allowed me to move into a log cabin on Lookout Mountain Avenue by my early twenties. It was ten houses due west from where Joni Mitchell had lived two decades earlier. Maybe there I could feel “unfettered and alive.”
That log cabin was the most beautiful property I could have imagined, with every kind of fruit tree thriving on the grounds: apples, oranges, tangerines, pears. There were avocados and grapes and thirty or forty rosebushes of every variety and color. I could live off the fruit and sometimes did, lasting a whole week or longer on the windfall of my yard.
When I bought it, it had already been christened Rogues Retreat. I kept the name, and the original old wooden sign with the name etched on it. There was wisteria that had grown around and into and on top of a pergola—it looked as though the pergola had disappeared and this powerful wisteria vine was magically suspended in the air. Out back we had a fireplace and picnic tables. To get to the house itself required navigating nearly eighty stairs up from street level—I stole a shopping cart from somewhere so that when I got groceries, I’d be able to get them up the initial ramp, though that would still leave me with a hefty climb. I’d drag ten or fifteen bags allthe way up to the kitchen so I would have supplies for the night’s festivities—the house was always full.
Everyone came up and hung out at Rogues Retreat. I had a yard, which was a new experience for me and for all my Canyon friends. The idyllic childhoods we’d all missed were now played out as adults in the confines of my house and garden. Sometimes we’d make a slip-and-slide and hoot and holler all the way down to the edge of the property. Or I would put together an Easter egg hunt, stashing a hundred bucks in the golden egg, and watch as my friends knocked each other over and rolled all the way down the hill to try to score the cash. We were an out-of-control gang of young adults screaming and fighting and shoving each other and screeching with laughter. It was magical.
I’m sure the neighbors hated us. We didn’t give a shit.
