It's So Hard To Type With A Gun In My Mouth (30 page)

We do some paper searching and find a bank statement. We know where the box is. Diane and Ronnie were sorority sisters and look close enough alike to be twins. Jon decides she will go to the bank and sign in as Ronnie. Diane gets hysterical. “I can’t do that. I’ll get arrested.”  And Elmer Gantry goes to work and before she knows it Diane has agreed to not only sign in as Ronnie but…. “Ya want me to drive?”.  I call them Bonnie and Clyde. But Diane got in no problem and cleaned out the box. And that’s how her life of crime began. 

Ok, so a couple of days go by. We are doing nothing but sitting around the house and talking… food is being delivered by the truckload and we are eating non-stop. One night we were starving but there was no food in the house. Just as we were foraging for anything edible, a car pulls up with six aluminum tubs of food. Jon and I thank the people and set it up on the counter in the kitchen, like a buffet. I turn to Jon and say, “Ya know, this is some racket we got going here. We could live like this for years and never have to cook again…. All we have to do is kill one of us off every six months.”  Jon starts laughing so hard I had to hold him up. He tells the rest of the group my idea and we nominate someone to kill. It was an insane time. And it wasn’t lost on us that it was Ronnie who had brought us all together.

Ronnie had been given 48 hours to live. We were there about a week and she had not passed. It was draining all of us but we were holding up the best we could. Our love for Ronnie and our deep, committed friendship to each other kept the wheels in motion. It was late at night when the woman from Hospice came around to see how we were doing. The entire group, all nine of us, piled into the dining room to have a group talk with the Hospice giver.  It was a very somber, serious talk about how we were holding up and how we would react when the inevitable happened. Diane says to the worker, “I just don’t know how you do it, going from one dying person to another. It must be so depressing.” And the woman says, “ Yes, it can be. I’ve been thinking about looking for another career.”. There is a long pause and I say to her in all sincerity… “Have you considered, Amway?”  There is a beat and Jon lets out a high pitch scream of laughter. I have never seen him laugh this hard in my life. Diane and Allan and the rest of the group follow his laugh. I said, “ I know we must look like a bunch of raving lunatics, but this is how it’s been all week. Ronnie is in the next room trying to pass and we can’t stop laughing.” And the woman says, “Laughter can be a great healer.”  And, for us,  it was.

At nine days Ronnie had not passed and we all had to get back to our lives. Diane and Allan were driven to the airport. I was leaving later that day. Each one of us said goodbye to Ronnie and made plans to fly back to our homes.  I was in the shower when a tap on the door came. It was the nurse… Ronnie had passed.  “It’s over.” Is all she said.  And like an idiot I said, “Are you sure?” And the nurse nodded.  Ronnie had waited ‘till we all left and then slipped away on her own, just like she had done at Emerson… quietly and graciously.

I got out of the shower and walked into Ronnie’s room. I sat by her bed and said goodbye. She was the most stunningly beautiful woman I had ever seen. I loved her deeply and seeing what the  cancer had done to her will remain with me ‘till the day I die. She was a shell of the girl I knew. Jon had been out taking someone to the airport; we called him back, as well as Diane and Allan, who we literally pulled off a plane. The entire group regrouped from all the different airlines. I’ll never forget the look on Jon’s face as he entered the room and asked to be alone with Ronnie. In 30 years I had never seen him cry, but tears were streaming down his face. He had lost the love of his life, his true soul mate, the yin to his yang. I wish you could all have known her… she was that special.

About an hour later the funeral director came. Jon did not want to see Ronnie leave the house and went out onto the patio. I stayed inside. The funeral director had a black body bag. He began to slowly open it.  As it unfolds, I block out the reality.  I see Ronnie at our Senior Prom. I see her lined up for the beauty pageant. I see us running down Berkley Street in Boston and throwing snow at each other. I relive a hundred memories in the sound of a zipper and in an instant he picks her up, like a suitcase at the airport, and he’s gone. I completely lose it. 

At the funeral and I spoke through my tears. Sue Salter, Ronnie’s closest friend from Emerson asked me to say a few words for her; she wasn’t able fly down to Florida. I was glad to. I knew how much they meant to each other.  It was emotional and draining and probably the saddest day of my life. Ronnie was part of my history, part of my independence and my growing up and now she was gone. My love for Jon was strong. I worried how he would handle it all when we all left him with HIS memories.   The very next day we all got on planes and went back to our separate lives. But each one of us carried with us a little bit of Ronnie and a memory of our final week together; our own personal St. Elmo’s Fire.

POST SCRIPT                           

Ronnie was laid to rest in a cemetery in Jupiter, Florida just two plots down from Perry Como and his wife. Ronnie loved Perry Como and so when Jon erected her grave stone, on the front it had the usual information birth, death, name and description… but on the back… in the lower corner… in tiny letters.  Written for all to see. Jon had engraved… “Hi, Perry!”  It would so have made Ronnie laugh!

And THAT is why I love the guy.

August 5, 2006 –
JON AND BOB

I think of all the things I’ve written about, the essay about Ronnie Adler has been the most rewarding. But I wanted to share with you a story that will explain to you why I loved Ronnie so much and why I love her husband, Jon. Jon and I along with our other roommate, Bob Fisher, shared one of the most hilarious nights of my college life… and it was long before “Animal House”. As a matter of fact, I remember watching “Animal House” and thinking, “Shit, there goes MY movie.”.

I was in Europe in the summer of 1967 and could not be around when Jon and Bob went looking for our apartment. This would be my first apartment on my own, my very first place.  I told Bob and Jon to find something nice. After all, Boston has so many gorgeous brownstones. Surely we’d find something elegant, something with charm and history, a brownstone fronted, walnut paneled little place we could call home in our senior year.  They assured me they would find us something wonderful.

I returned from Europe and got the message that they have found the perfect place…. 90 Warrington Street.  I was elated. 90 Warrington Street, what a classy address. Then I drove there. It was smack in the middle of the combat district, down a one-way alley that faced the stage entrance to the Schubert Theater.  It was a path that hookers used to get their tricks. It was a brownstone; sort of… the stones were brown from years of people throwing shit at the building. It had history… more like a rap sheet. It was, how should I put it, a death trap encased in a shit hole.  I refused to live there but Jon turned on his magic charm. This man could sell shit to a manure farmer. I couldn’t believe I agreed to move in. 

On my first day there I spent three hours cleaning the bathroom. I had never moved into an apartment that had the chalk figure of a dead body in the living room. I was scared shitless… wait; maybe that’s why the building was brown.

The very first night the guys left me alone in the apartment I dragged furniture in front of the door. They were gone about two hours when the buzzer rang. I went to the intercom, “Who is it?” and a muffled response came back. “WHO IS IT?”, again, the same muffled response. And so I said, “If it’s Jon, ring twice.” And the buzzer buzzed twice. I let them in only to realize that it could be any mass murderer outside the door trying to get into the building. It was, however, Jon and Bob and for the next six months all I heard was…. “IF IT’S JON… RING TWICE.” About six thousand time. They never let me live it down.

Ok, so I got used to living with hookers, thugs and murderers. I settled into life in the combat zone. My two roommates were complete slobs. I was anal-retentive. To my horror they went to see “ The Odd Couple”  and Jon dubbed me Felix. If he saw me cleaning the counter “Hey Felix.”. If I picked up a piece of paper off the floor. “Hey Felix.” To this day I hate that fucking movie. 

So my mother was working for a catering company at the time. And since she could not cook she would bring home leftovers from Bar Mitzvahs and weddings. The food was delicious but after you had eaten it for dinner every night for six months it got old. I refused to eat it.  As a matter of fact, she would bring it home and I would take it out to the trash. To this day I will not eat rolled, boneless, stuffed capon.  One day when I was out my mother had called and told Jon to come over to her house. She had some food for us. Not knowing how I felt about this food, Jon accepted the offer and got the food. I got home from class and see the bag with the capons in it and I go crazy. “Does this shit follow me. Is there a homing device in my pants. HOW DID THAT CRAP GET HERE?”  Jon tries to defend the food. “But, look,  she brought us a wedding cake.” And he holds up a slab of white, thick frosted cake. And like in classic slapstick comedy I hit the cake plate and it goes flying into his face.  He stands there a second ,frosting dripping off  his nose, and grabs the first thing he can,  a capon. He throws it at me. I retaliate with a swirl of yam on a pineapple ring. He throws a bag of knishes at me ONE AT A TIME. He is screaming with laughter. Wham there goes a box of kishka. Bob walks into the room, he knows nothing about what’s gone on. Jon picks up a canister of sugar and throws it in Bob’s face. Bob, without missing a beat, Bob takes the box of Morton salt, snaps off the top and hurls it at Jon. At this point all hell breaks loose. A gallon of milk goes flying, a dozen eggs, two loaves of bread, a tub of butter, a tub of margarine, jam, honey, flour. The whole apartment looked like a recipe for pineapple upside down cake.  At one point Jon calls “time out” he stops and opens a can of Heinz vegetarian baked beans “Ok” and the action resume as he hurls it at me. Bob opens a can of Campbells tomato soup. I look like spin art.

We literally emptied our fridge. The house is covered in food. It’s on the walls, on the floor, the ceiling, the cabinets…it’s everywhere. The carpeting is covered in three inches of melting, steaming, yucky batter. I have never laughed so hard in my life, not before and not since. It was a freedom that I have never experienced… and I loved every minute of it. Jon and Bob and I had/have a friendship that is stronger than brothers, it’s soul mates. It’s a shared heart. It’s the kind of friendship I wish for each and every one of you.

Just then the phone rings. It’s Ronnie and Sue (Salter), Bob’s girlfriend. They are both drunk. Jon and Bob are furious, in a 60’s kind of chauvinistic way, that their girlfriends had been out drinking. They leave the apartment promising to come back and help clean it up.  I sit there with egg dripping off the light fixture and my eye starts to twitch. The Felix in me comes alive.  I couldn’t let it sit there another minute and I cleaned the entire apartment by myself, stem to stern on my hands and knees.  I bitched and moaned about doing it but truth be told, I loved every moment of it. Why? Because my brothers had given me something that no one had ever given me. They made me feel “part of”,  and I never felt “part of” before… and still don’t to this day.

Bob, Jon and I had one adventure after another. One time Jon was bringing Ronnie’s parents over to the apartment. He was very uptight because they were Jewish and he was a goy. (Still is by the way) Everything had to be right… everything. He was so nervous HE cleaned the apartment, something he had never done before. Now I don’t know how but somehow I came home drunk. Not so much drunk as three sheets to the wind. I was flying.  I walk in and Ronnie, Jon and Ronnie’s parents, Frieda and Lenny, are having a quiet evening in our apartment. I enter the living room and try to pull it together. I say. “You must be Ronnie’s parents. I’ve heard so much about you. HOW THE FUCK ARE YA!”  And Frieda sprays her drink across the room.  You could hear Jon’s balls drop in his pants. Ronnie looks at her mother. “This is Steve, Jon’s roommate, Mom. ”  “Hey Frieda, you are one hot little momma.” And Frieda starts laughing. The more she laughs the funnier I get. Her father is laughing. I get going and I can’t stop. I’m serving them drinks like a French waiter. I’m talking like I’m from New York… “Ta make you fuckers feel at home.”  I thought Jon was going to have a coronary right there.  It was a wonderful evening and turns out Frieda and Lenny loved me. So much so, I moved into their house after I graduated from college.

But the stories go on and on. We would play practical jokes on each other. Jon comes into my room and says, “Let’s get Bob.” He takes a bottle of talcum powder and covers Bob’s white sheets with it. Then he remakes the bed. Bob had been working at a radio station and came home late. He went into the shower and plopped into his bed. All we heard was. … “ MOTHER FUCKER.”  And we walked into the room and Bob is lying under a mushroom cloud of talcum powder. This little trick went back and forth between us maybe five times before it finally got tired and we moved on to something else.