Sunday, Sep 7, 2008
The boyfriend who took me in when I ran away to London was 22, agoraphobic, and given to migraines that could last for days at a time. There were long silences when he would lock himself in the bedroom with a cloth over his eyes. His parents had purchased a garden flat for him in a row of mock-Tudor buildings right next to Hampstead Heath. They believed I was 19, an age Ned and I had settled upon as plausible when we set up house together.
"You look as old as 20," he'd said, rather skeptically, "but you act about 17." I'd taken his word for it, though at 22 he looked about 16 and sometimes acted even younger. "Maybe, when they come over to see me, you can just read a book. Look very absorbed. That way you won't have to chat." Neither of us wanted them to catch on that he was harboring a 14-year-old runaway.
Had they known that this person who roasted the occasional chicken, watered the hedges, cashed checks for their son, picked up his antidepressants, and ordered supplies from the milkman -- and had time to explore the hotel bars at night -- was actually 14, perhaps they wouldn't have been so quick to label his girlfriend "understandably immature." In other words, he couldn't expect to attract a mature 19-year-old. I accepted the slight as a compliment to my camouflage.
When I told him, over a midnight snack of hot cocoa and oatmeal, that I loved him, he smiled patiently as if his mind were very far away -- in another universe. Our lovemaking was one of the best things we had; he was the first guy I ever had time to relax with, now that I had no curfew. So he became the first lover I really needed to fuck. I felt new sensations and wavelike emotions when he was inside. And maybe I shouldn't assign all the credit to our circumstances. He was a good lover, and I knew he was very fond of me.
Though he sometimes did strange and terrible things -- once, during a 24-hour headache, he tore up a glittery nylon jacket that was my favorite possession -- he never locked me out of his home. In fact, he made me feel that this was my home, too, though I now realize that it never really was. He made sure I went to the doctor and the dentist, encouraged me to do all the household shopping (which meant I had a constant stream of cash), and sometimes -- very rarely -- got into a sufficiently normal mood so that we could go out together. In his own way, he took care of me.
His idea of a really good time was tinkering with the stereo, putting together Revox reel-to-reel tape recorders using spare parts, and then playing Mahler or the Moody Blues -- loud. Sometimes I went to a shop on Mornington Crescent with a strange-looking list and picked up the bits and pieces that were required to add the finishing touches to a tape recorder. When I think about Ned, which I still do occasionally, I wonder if he blew out his eardrums listening to "Days of Future Passed" on that big cushiony headset that looked like Darth Vader's helmet. I also wonder if he's alive. I have a feeling he is. Crazy people have this strange ability to hang in there.
Between the help from his parents and the dole money he collected (Mummy and Daddy officially rented the flat to him and then doctored his rent book so he could collect extra money), we had an easy existence. Ned was "on the fiddle" -- the middle-class fiddle -- and it suited us both.
But his black moods reminded me that I couldn't stay there forever.
The first time Ned locked himself in the bedroom, he locked me in there with him, too. When he refused to let me out, I became completely hysterical. At which point he unlocked the door, stormed out, yelling and swearing at me, and locked himself in the music room with a chair up against the door. It was terrifying, but -- too young to know any better -- I tearfully pursued him, banging on the door, demanding an explanation. Some part of me thought this was romantic. Soon that part of me had been deeply wounded. We didn't speak for days. He called me terrible ugly names that I had never heard before. And when his mood had lifted, he was incredibly sweet again.
"Why did you do that?" I asked him. "Why did you lock me in the room?"
"I don't want to talk about it," he said, sulking. "I'll never do it again."
"But -- but -- you have to talk about it!"
"I won't talk about it," he replied. And on went the headphones.
Only a runaway would tolerate such a housemate, let alone boyfriend. Only a boyfriend on a steady diet of MAO inhibitors would be so easy to snow. When I started turning tricks, he chose to believe any story I told him. And since he was sleeping off a headachy fit half the time, it was easy to sneak in and out of the flat. Ned had some deep flaws, but he wasn't nosy. He was much too involved with his headaches to be a snoop. And geeks were not yet regarded as hot property. In 1980, very few attractive girls -- even runaways -- were interested in snagging (or shagging) a geek. And how many geek groupies, even today, would enjoy picking up spare tape recorder parts for a melancholy agoraphobic? We both had a pretty good "deal," if you want to look at it that way; but I never called it that. I really did love him. He gave me a chance to make my way in the world.
When Ned made it clear that he was unable to discuss his craziness with me, I came to a private decision.
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