2/6/23
Newsletter #240
The Crack of Dawn
In junior high when I was 14 and Leigh was 15 we went out for a couple of months. With big brown eyes, long wavy chestnut hair, and a slim dancer’s body, Leigh was stunning. She was also extremely smart, weirdly remote to the point of aloofness, and didn’t seem to have any friends. She was also a year older than me, and very few 9th grade girls had anything to do with 8th grade boys. Still, I pursued her. She was too pretty and too intriguing to leave alone. And my persistence paid off.
As it turned out, Leigh loved to kiss like a maniac, all the time, any time, but that was it. Once as I attempted to get to 2nd base, Leigh pushed my hand away. I asked, “Why?” and she said, “Morals.” I couldn’t think of an arguement and we went on kissing. Our kissy, and ultimately stifling and aggravating, affair lasted for two snowy months in the winter of 1972. I have a vivid image of Leigh wearing a fur-lined hood, just breathtakingly pretty, standing in front a background of white snow and a clear blue sky. I could not help but but grab her and kiss her.
We broke up amicably and remained friends. The next year I was in 9th grade and Leigh went off to high school so I didn’t see her at all for a year.
When I got to high school the next year Leigh had completely changed. She was the school eccentric: always dressed in full-length beaded dresses from the 1920s, with a tangle of necklaces, rings, odd pocketbooks, high-heeled slippers, and was now kind of a spacy goofball. Her only friends were me and my friend Steve, and she was a tad too kooky for both of us. We loved her, but she was clearly getting weirder all the time. I left high school after 10th grade ( I took the GED, or “Good Enough Diploma”).
Four years later I was 18 years old and living in a $65-a-month apartment across the street from Paramount Pictures. I was pecking away on my electric typewriter trying to figure out how to write a screenplay when there came a knocking at my door. Opening the door, there stood Leigh in an ankle-length khaki overcoat, her hair unbrushed, and she looked utterly frazzled. She stared straight down at the floor, a suitcase sitting beside her. I quickly brought her in.
She explained that she had completely cracked up and had spent some amount of time in a psychiatric facility. When she got out her parents had the brilliant idea that she ought to travel the world and find whatever she was looking for — find herself — all expenses paid – all by herself. So off she went on a round-the-world extravaganza — all by herself — cracking up bit by bit in all the capitals of Europe, which somehow brought her to my door. Once she cleaned up she was still beautiful, but completely crazy. She couldn’t look me in the eyes, and when she did look up she had the 1,000-yard stare. She slept on the floor and I couldn’t touch her without her recoiling. We went out walking on Hollywood Blvd. and she began taking photographs of every single star on the sidewalk. After perhaps 25 in a row, of mostly folks she’d never heard of, I had to take her by the arm and lead her into a restaurant and sit her down. I don’t think she had film in the camera.
I had no idea how long Leigh intended to stay, and at some point she stopped talking to me entirely. The washer and dryer were in the basement of the creepy old building, and I found myself spending more and more time down there, reading, not wanting to return to my own apartment. After a week I told her she had to leave. She called her parents and they booked her a plane ticket to come home to Michigan. I asked, “When’s your flight? I’ll drive you to the airport.” She said, “I’m taking the bus to the airport. It leaves from the Hotel Roosevelt. Do you know where that is?” I said, “Sure, that’s where the first Oscar ceremony was held. It’s across the street from the Chinese Theater.” Leigh said, “Take me there.” I really tried to get her to let me take her to the airport, but she wouldn’t have it. So, I dropped her off at the Hotel Roosevelt. As I drove away I glanced in my rearview mirror and there she was: wearing a burgundy dress, flats, and a wide-brimmed straw hat, her one suitcase beside her, and staring straight down, waiting for the bus.
Several months later I received a letter from Leigh saying that she had cracked up again, had been hospitalized again, but was out. She wrote, “I can never trust myself again,” and “I wish I could be the girlfriend you want me to be,” and it went on for a couple of pages. After a couple days of thoughtful consideration, and being 18 years old, I took Leigh’s letter, tossed it in the drawer with all the rest of my correspondence, then put her entirely out of my mind.
A couple of months after that I was talking to my old friend Jim in Detroit and he said, “Oh, did you hear? Leigh killed herself.” I didn’t ask how, and I still don’t know. But what I did think was, what if I had just answered her letter?
All I know is that I’m gonna rock & roll all night, and party everyday.