The Other Side of Eden by Life & John Steinbeck

Author:Life & John Steinbeck
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Published: 2012-06-27T19:56:53+00:00

26. Close Encounters

NANCY

People still ask me how I managed to stay in the relationship. In those early

years, despite John’s mood swings and heavy drinking, we clung to the sweetness we saw in each other. Our survival-mode living skills dovetailed beautifully. We had

both grown up in a war zone, so we were addicted to a constant crisis and drama. As children, when insanity screamed from the rafters, no one was allowed to speak about it. We learned not to trust or even feel emotions. However, as is typical in recovery, those childhood safeguards eventually stopped working. The strength of our emotions was so powerful that we were forced to deal with feelings directly, instead of using the habitual defense of stuffing them.

As our relationship deepened, we dredged up the unimaginable and

unmentionable from each other’s psyches. Our psychic Roto-Rooting turned our safe

haven into the trench warfare of our childhoods. In his search for recognition at any price, John had become a master manipulator. Abandoned by our parents as they

chased after their own narcissistic reflections, we both had self-esteem issues, which resulted in the deleterious practice of people pleasing. Since neither of us knew how to communicate discomfort without anger, our fights became more frequent. And

then, strangely, in the midst of our mutual napalm, we could drop the rage enough to give comfort, to search for meaning and hope. We never gave up on each other.

Later, when I became personally familiar with the private lives of my

existential heroes, Kerouac, Cassady, Burroughs, and Ginsberg, I learned those guys had grappled with the same painful issues. For many years I have corresponded with beat icon Neal Cassady’s widow, Carolyn, who was also Kerouac’s longtime lover.

She is one of the few women I’ve known who can truly understand my journey with

John. Once Carolyn told me:

“People, especially feminists, ask me constantly why I didn’t dump Neal. The

circumstances he provided me were tailor-made, exactly what I needed to jolt me out of attitudes blocking my growth. Suffering is necessary in order to change. I pity those who aren’t strong enough or too blind to have known such men as Neal, John,

and Jack.”

Psychiatrist R. D. Laing’s widow, Marguerite, has also given me enormous

solace about that chaotic period. Ronnie was a consummate alcoholic, yet Marguerite stayed with him because every other man paled in comparison, drunk or sober.She

knows the magnetism of a man who reveals the full sweep of human emotions, from

drooling drunkard to a brilliant, creative cult hero. We’ve spent hours talking about what it’s like to live out the myth of Beauty and the Beast, as Ronald Colman morphs into Quasimodo.

William Burroughs watched his son die of a failed liver transplant in his

twenties because he couldn’t stop drinking and wore out the new organ. Born to a

drug-addicted mother, Billy emerged from the womb craving a fix. Although William

wrote with a tough veneer, the death devastated him. Watching a loved one possessed by the demons of addiction is heartbreaking.

145

Allen Ginsberg struggled to detach from his lifelong lover, Peter Orlovsky, when he drank.

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