by Jake Brown
After a while, I cut down my days dancing, and stopped altogether for a while. I was nearing graduation from Columbia at this point, which meant I could start working more regularly. Before graduation, I landed a job working as an investment counselor in the financial district in downtown Manhattan. I did financial consulting for investments. At that point, Dick enrolled full-time in community college, and also expected me to be his in-house tutor, which basically meant doing his homework for him. I remember one day I was trying to help him with his French class, and he wasn’t getting it, so he slammed the book, threw at me, and screamed, ‘You stupid cunt, you can’t even help me with this!’ So things kept deteriorating from there, he slowly but surely stopped having sex with me, and was going away more with his buddies and leaving me in the city, so I started finally to lose a little interest. Around this same period, my dad died of lung cancer, I was 20 years old. I had no one to support me through it, because my mother was bitching about everything and my boyfriend went out to a strip club and then to some Korean whore house with his friends the night my dad passed away. It was April 14th to be exact, and probably the worst night of my life, and in general, arguably the most difficult experience of my life. For a brief period, I signed over every single legal right I had in the world to my mother because I was emotionally very unstable for a period. It was very fucked-up how things went down, because my dad had quit smoking for 10 years and he ended up dying of lung cancer anyway. His family were such assholes through the whole thing too that I had to go to probate court at one point and I just hope they all die in hell, and don’t care if they read this too. It’s sick that while my father was slowly but surely dying on a respirator, none of his family showed up until he was on the verge of death. It turned out that he had a will that had been revised enough times that his Estate, which was left almost entirely to me, was suddenly being challenged left and right. His whole family tried to drag me through court, and the stress finally took such a toll that I signed power of attorney over to my mother to deal with it.
I was trying to deal with my father’s death, finish school, deal with Dick, and just trying to have a life in general, so I was in no shape to deal with fucking Probate Court! When she convinced me to sign over Power of Attorney, I was almost relieved, but it put me more in the dark. To date, I don’t have any idea what happened with the money. I found out at one point later that summer that I had some loans in my name that had been defaulted on that I had never even taken out, which means my mother had to have set them up having power of attorney. When I called to inquire about it, she called me a ‘loose whore’ for going on the road to do some toy shows. When I did get back later on that summer and brought it up again with her, she got this extremely strange look on her face that was the equivalent of a bitter piercing glare. I suspected she was trying to fuck up my credit so that I couldn’t move out again. On top of that, when my mother took a break from trying to manipulate and control me, Dick picked right up where she left off: convincing me in my vulnerable state to withdraw $10,000 of the money my father had left me to invest in the toy business. Like an idiot, or maybe more like a confused, emotionally drained and vulnerable 20 year old student at an ivy league University who’d just lost her father, I stupidly agreed. Of course, I never saw any of that cash again. Giving money my father had left me away wasn’t like losing another part of him, but it did feel like another of the last shreds of dignity I had left had been stripped away by that asshole. I had people coming at me from every side trying to manipulate me. My sociopathic boyfriend, a controlling and paranoid mother who refused to let me grow into a young woman even after I was legally already one, and a bunch of Chicken Hawks who I’d once considered relatives trying to steal my father’s money from the Estate.
Before my dad passed, I was lucky to have had a few years to get reacquainted with him. We’d been out of touch some years prior when my mom moved us back to New York, but my dad relocated back from the Virgin Islands when I was a teenager, and we’d gotten reacquainted again very quickly and naturally. I remember one day calling his office and telling his secretary it was his daughter Jasmin calling, and he picked up the phone right away, and it had sounded like whatever call he’d been on prior was fairly important. Anyway, it didn’t matter, whatever it was, it could wait when I called. I remember him telling me that day that I’d made him ‘the happiest man in the world.’ I remember those words exactly coming out of his mouth and that’s how he always made me feel. He was very happy to hear from me and we’d started seeing each other again. At first I didn’t tell my mother I was seeing him again, and then when I finally did, she threw a fucking fit as expected. My grandmother got really angry with her at that, and it was one of the times I really remember her speaking up to my mom on my behalf, like, ‘Why are you yelling at her? It’s her father. She needs him. Get over it.’That calmed her down a little bit, but she’d still make fucking sour faces and remarks whenever I said I was going to see my dad. We had this routine where we’d meet for pizza after school and go to the movies. I’d go see him on weekends, and we did all kinds of fun stuff- from going hiking in the Pocono Mountains to horseback riding. I had my own horse named Chief my dad bought for me at Cloverleaf Stables on Staten Island, and every Saturday I’d go to ride him. My dad also taught me how to drive before I was even old enough legally to have a permit. We would do crazy shit like go to the mall together, and we would make these barking sounds sometimes to fuck with people and they wouldn’t know where it was coming from. To a little kid, and even thinking back on it now, it was so funny. He was so laid-back and so cool. He had a really good sense of humor. He was on the immature side, but like, when it was right to be immature. He always supported me in what I did, which was really important to me. We had a great relationship in that aspect. I think my fondest memory I have of my dad is when there was a tropical storm. I was there for tropical storm Fredrick and Hurricane Emily, like all of those. I was in St. Croix at that time. I was little girl, and I think my fondest memory is sitting there on the balcony of our house when my dad was smoking a cigarette and he just held me there. And it was like the most amazing thing, the storm. You know all the winds and everything, the gusts; all the leaves blowing all over the place. It was so scary, but it was so cool because I was just watching it there with my dad. I just felt so safe.
When I think back on that time now, the only thing that got me through it was the memories of my father. From the time I was an infant on through to when he passed away, I was always daddy’s little girl, I was his princess. I had fun. My dad was awesome. My father was a very, very tall man; he had a couple of tattoos. He was very good looking guy, and very smart. His ethnic background was Russian and a hint of Dutch while my mom’s lineage was Brazilian mixed with Portuguese specifically, which I think helps to explain her draconian ideas on child rearing. My father was a friend to me when I really needed one, but also there when I really needed my father in my life. He made me feel very safe, very loved, and very supported in many ways. He was really the perfect father. As such, by the time he got sick, given the kindness I felt in my heart toward him comparatively to the other men in my life during that time, it saved me from being bitter about his dying when I needed him most in my life. If he’d ever known what Dick had been doing to me, he would have killed him, but I couldn’t bear for him to know that was going on while he lied dying a little each day in that awful hospital room. I’d come to see him, but a lot of times, I couldn’t go because I was black and blue, and makeup wouldn’t cover it up. It would have been harder on my dad to have seen me like that and have been too weak physically to do a thing about it. So that kept me from seeing my father as much as I’d have liked to. He knew Dick and I were having problems, and would give me money from time to time to help pay off Dick’s debts, but I know he wished he could have done much more. He was just too weak by that point. I got to visit with him one final time before they put him on a respirator, and I remember he couldn’t talk much, but
seemed really happy to see me. That’s all that mattered to me at that point.
Following his death on April 15th, 1992, the funeral was just as much of a fucking mess as I was. My mom kept his family out of the wake and had him cremated. She even made me go with her to watch his body burn — that was extremely devastating. That fucked me up pretty badly, to the point where I became really non-functional for a while. I felt alone…I had nobody to turn to. That made things even worse with my mom, because she had hidden his ashes from me, than convinced me to sign over my Power-Of-Attorney rights because my dad’s relatives were suing me in Probate Court over my dad’s estate. Whenever I’d try to bring something up about my dad or want to talk about his death, my mom would just bring up something negative about him that just wasn’t true. She wasn’t the most supportive person during that period, and I don’t know if it was her trying to be protective in her own twisted way, but it really made things hard for me. I tried to kill myself. I was alone and without my dad. A big part of me died when he left this world. I sliced my wrist vertically trying to possibly see my dad again and escape my hell. Unfortunately, the nosey neighbor came downstairs and stopped me. I left the door open by accident and she had come to invite me to a movie. I wish she just let me die in peace.
So coming out of that horrible spring, the summer just continued in the dysfunctional pattern it had for the four years prior. We kept going to these conventions, which I tried my hardest to find some enjoyment in, despite the company, but even that was hard when I would put in most of the effort and watch Dick reap the reward from me every time. We would routinely clear $3000 a weekend and Dick would always keep ALL of the money, not the lion share, all of it. During this same period, he decided to make a wise business investment in this crap-blue van that eerily resembled Buffalo Bill’s from Silence of the Lambs, or perhaps something you might see a child molester driving around in at 3 in the morning on some dark street. The fucking thing even had one of those cheap murals on the side that looks like some cheap painting from a Chinese Fast Food Take-out Restaurant, or a white-trash art print you’d by at the carnival in Coney Island. Dick made me buy the van in my name since his credit was as shitty as he was. Prior to that, he’d driven this shit-brown station wagon, which I almost lost my life in once. It seemed like each year that went by, Dick got a car that was that much shittier, and symbolically parallel to the level our relationship had sunk to by that point. It was bad enough the way Dick treated me, but that he’d gone from a Firebird to a shitty brown grocery-getter to a child molester van just didn’t help from a matter of presentation. Not so much in the way I wanted to be seen, but in terms of how much he thought his shit didn’t stink! It was ridiculous the way he and his wanna-be Ramone, white trash Jersey buddies would strut around the toy conventions, acting like High Rollers on the floor of some Vegas casino.They certainly didn’t have limos or high line sports cars sitting outside and what was more pathetic than anything was that Dick treated his piece of shit cars better than he ever did me.
A prime example was the before mentioned shit-brown grocery getter station wagon. I almost lost my life in the previous winter. We’d been on the way to a toy show, driving through North Bergen to get to the Jersey Turnpike via Tonelle Avenue, which is the busiest Avenue for traffic in North Bergen. It was very icy out, and Dick had decided to take a shortcut down this really steep hill, and ended up in even worse of a traffic jam than we were already in. So while we were stuck for the moment in a line of cars, he told me to stay with the toys, and got out to check with some cop regarding the traffic situation. When he did, he left the car on, sitting pointed at a steep, downward angle in park, running without the parking break on. So while I was sitting in the station wagon, the cars in front of us began moving, and then some other car started sliding behind us, and Wham!, rear-ended our car, which sent the station wagon racing, slipping and sliding down the hill toward Tonelle Avenue, and all the oncoming traffic. While I’m freaking out watching my life flash before my eyes as we head directly for a major intersection with no cars in front of ME to stop the car, I can hear Dick slipping and sliding behind me yelling ‘The toys, the toys!’ I didn’t know what to do, I was trying to press the emergency brake, it wouldn’t work, and I just kept sliding toward the intersection. He clearly didn’t give a shit about me, and that’s what I was focused on more than anything. Well, thank GOD, about 10 feet before I WAS about to slam into the traffic, the car slid to the left into a curb and then a wall. Now with any other guy, you’d think that when he reached the car, the first thing he’d be doing was checking on his girlfriend who’d almost just lost her life, right? Not Dick, who, upon reaching the car, yanked the door open and franticly asked ‘Are the toys okay?’ His next comment after seeing his merchandise was intact was to remark, ‘Good thing the car is okay.’ He never made mention of me once, or showed even the slightest sign of concern about my well being.
When the cop got down to the car, the first thing he did was check on me, and when he heard Dick commenting about the car and the toys, gave him a disgusted look and offered to call me an ambulance. Dick, of course, refused for me, because he had a toy show to get to after all! I couldn’t believe the next comment he made, which was ‘Well, it’s a good thing we got hit now we’re past the traffic jam.’ For the next hour and a half driving to the show, I was in silent but visible state of panicked shock, which Dick clearly saw but ignored. Even when we got to the show and Dick went around telling everyone about how close his toys had come to getting destroyed, he didn’t mention me once. When his friends did make any inquiry into how I was doing, Dick said, ‘Oh, she’ll be fine. If she says anything else, she’s a fucking baby.’ I was still so shook up that I was setting up the show a little slower, and he told me ‘If you can’t set this stuff up, then you’re a whiney little CUNT, and you shouldn’t be here.’ I should have seen from that day how out of whack his priorities were, but still I didn’t leave him. As bad as that story was, a contender for my worst experience with Dick ever was at a convention in Atlantic City a year later once he had moved from the shitty, brown grocery-getter to the Buffalo Bill Serial Killer/Child Molester crap-blue Van. This was one of the biggest toy conventions of the year, and we were in the hotel room getting ready for the show, and Dick saw a bunch of money I had from dancing. Well, naturally, since he never gave me any, he assumed I had stolen it from him, accused me of stealing from him, and slapped me. He, of course, also accused me of cheating on him. I guess by that point I was starting to get tired of not fighting back, so I slapped him back, and he pulled a knife on me. It wasn’t that he carried a knife on him regularly, he just happened to have one for the show. He held it to my throat and told me he was going to ‘stick a knife in my CUNT’ if I ever stole from him, those were his exact words. I was so frightened that time that I actually stood up for myself, kneeing him in the balls, for which he ended up slamming my head against the wall so hard I passed out briefly afterward. After that, I started carrying a switch blade on me.
For as unfortunate as the way Dick treated me at the trade shows, I actually did enjoy them outside of that, namely when Dick was off strutting around the convention floor like Tony Soprano with his Guido, wanna-be Ramone buddies. After a while, I had started collecting vintage Barbies, which I wanted to sell at the shows, but of course Dick wouldn’t permit it, so I had to make deals on the side while he was off strutting. I actually met an ok person there, Mike a.k.a. Sickie. The circumstances of that were actually pretty funny, because like many other urban legends, Sickie was born in the back room of a tattoo parlor in the Bronx. Basically,
the toys!! the toys!!! 5 3 Barry, another regular at the toy conventions, told me that Sickie was the one who’d told Dick about my dancing, which had earned me one of asshole’s famous physical and verbal lashings. Naturally, I was pissed about it, and had been dying for months to know who had ratted me out. I called Sickie pretending to be someone else, which would become our theme in the years to come, and
confronted him on why he’d outted me to Dick? Well, he denied it, and told me it was actually Barry who’d seen me there, which meant he was the only one who could have told Dick from that circle. It made sense once I got to know Sickie. Even though I yelled at him pretty hard that first time we spoke, he came up to me at the next toy show and gave me a Casper Bobble-Neck toy as a peace offering and we became fast friends after that. He’d feel very bad for me, because he always used to watch me sitting there like a beat-up dog, so he used to bring me little presents from time to time to cheer me up. What really made us bond though was our fourth or fifth phone chat, when we started making prank calls together. Sickie and I were like a couple of 14-year-olds in terms of our sense of humor, we were both very immature and pranked everyone from his ex-girlfriends to other toy dealers to random strangers, a pastime that we’ve continued through present day. Socially, we mostly saw each other at the toy shows and he was always by himself. I tried to invite him out with Dick and me to lunch, but Dick didn’t think he was cool enough. I think I needed a friend in that business, I felt like such an outcast. I felt like no one wanted to talk to me, and they talked down when they talked to me, because I was Dick’s girlfriend. He was more like a friend to hang out with and bum around with. We’d go to different weird toy stores, flea markets, different close-out sales, and he’d teach me about the business: how to pick what merchandise to buy, where to buy stuff from, how to price things, things like that. He was very low profile at the shows, and mostly bought and sold stuff in bulk. We’d go out to lunch at Mumbles, just terrorize the town; we were basically hang-out buddies. Ironically, I spent more quality time with Sickie than I ever did with my own boyfriend, and Sickie certainly took more of an interest in me than Dick ever did at that time.
