Outbound

About three weeks into this routine I decided to take Terry with me down to Laguna, to try to get Terry to see what the real contours of falling into depression looked like, and it worked. That day marked a big turnaround for all of us, because she reached out to Jenn and they connected.

Like a lot of people around that time, I'd recently seen 2001: A Space Odyssey, and to me our time in Laguna felt a lot like one of the key passages in the movie. When Hal goes bonkers and cuts Frank adrift, and Dave goes after his tumbling body in the pod -- helmet-less. I wasn't sure if I felt more like Dave, or Frank, but I knew everything was tumbling out of control -- yet I was the only one who could stop the tumbling and set things straight.

Like Pops had set me straight after my parents died, I knew it was my turn at the controls, and I didn't want to let either Pops or my old man down. Hell, by this point I didn't want to let Jennifer's father down. Whatever was wrong with Jenn, I saw then that her old man was probably behind a lot of it -- so I'd in effect sent her back into the snake pit.

Nope. Not again. When you tell someone that you love them, you don't do that. It's a simple proposition, really. Either you mean what you say or what you say is meaningless, and now I took that to heart.

I loved Jenn. Simple as that.

And I loved Terry, too. Simple as that.

So, let me tell you a little more about Terry.

She met Pops when he was in his late sixties. They got married when she was -- like -- thirty. She was forty something now, and every bit the Hollywood starlet she had been just a few years before, and in the aftermath of her decision to rejoin the living she decided she was either going to move back to London and take up work on the stage, or, if she could, make another movie. Maybe a bunch of movies.

And she wanted to know how I felt about her moving back to London. Specifically, did I want to her remain in LA, remain a part of my life, or did I want her to move on.

Mind you, I had just turned twenty seven so I wasn't exactly a babe in the woods, and I'd never once considered her my grandmother. She came into my life when I was sixteen, when she was considered one of the most desirable women in the world. Let's just say I'd spent a few sleepless nights over her and leave it at that, and I think you'll grasp the contours of my own little dilemma.

So, I told her 'Hell no!' I didn't want her to move on. I told her she was an important part of my life with Pops, and that she would always be important to me. The problem I didn't quite wrap my head around is she didn't see it that way. She'd spend ten plus years married to a man who hadn't been able to perform his marital duties for, well, a long time, and she was just entering her prime. The biggest part of the problem was the simplest, most elemental part, too. I still found her attractive, devastatingly so.

There was a part in a film coming up, just being cast, where she'd get prime billing next to some very big names, and she'd gone to the audition dressed to kill. When she came back she was elated; she'd gotten the part and shooting began, in France, in three weeks. She wanted to celebrate and so we went down to The Bistro -- where her landing the part was all the buzz. Everyone came by to congratulate her -- and offer condolences -- and everyone looked at me like 'who the devil are you.'

Why, I'm her grandson -- didn't you know?

What followed was three of the most regretfully confusing weeks of my life, and I'll spare you the details. Sex was not involved, thankfully -- or regrettably, depending on your point of view -- but the whole thing was an emotional hurricane that left me drained. And Jenn began to pick up on the vibe, too.

"Are you sleeping with her?" she asked me one morning after I'd just walked into her room.

"What? With who?"

"Terry."

"Geez! Gawd! No!"

And I guess the way the word 'no' came out implied an air of finality, because she never brought it up again. And, a few weeks after Terry left for Avignon, Jennifer moved in with me, into Pop's house.

Because he'd left it to me. He'd left everything to me, a not insubstantial sum of money, too. Then Electric Karma's lawyers told me that as I was the only surviving band member, and there was no one higher up on the food chain in their world, all our royalties were now mine. In perpetuity. In other words, I was filthy rich, and all I'd done was write a few songs and nearly shit my pants in stage-fright a couple of times.

Herb Alpert was, literally, my next door neighbor and I talked him into a tour of the recording studio he'd just finished in his house and I decided then and there I was going to do the same thing, and a few weeks later architects and contractors were finalizing plans while contractors swarmed -- when Jenn decided we needed to buy a sailboat.

So we went down to the Newport Beach Boat Show and we looked at one yacht after another...Challengers and NorthStars and DownEasts were a few of the names that stood out, but in the end I put money down on a Swan 41, a new Sparkman & Stephens design that had not even been officially launched yet, and wouldn't, as it turned out, for three more years -- which left us without a boat for the foreseeable future.

But there was a new company just starting up in Newport, called Westsail, and they had a 32 at the show that really struck a chord with me -- and I bought her, right then and there, and after the show Jenn and I sailed her down to Little Balboa Island, to the dock in front of her father's house. Pretty soon we were driving down there almost every day, taking Soliloquy out for a sail. We started hopping over to Catalina, dropping anchor off the casino and snorkeling for so long our skin started to look like mottled white prunes.

Sailing kept me away from the house, and the construction project, but when that work wrapped I went to work on another project. I had all our master tapes delivered to the house and I got to work re-mastering the original cuts, adding some keyboard tracks I'd always wanted, then I took them over to MCA for a listen. They reissued both our albums, and I put together a gratuitous "Best Of Retrospective" just for good measure and before you could say 'Money in the bank' I'd banked so much cash it was obscene.

So, I had a house in Beverly Hills, at least one sailboat in Newport Beach, more than ten million in banks everywhere from California to the Cayman Islands and a seriously crazy girlfriend who had an affinity for razor blades -- and boats.

And with all my work done in the recording studio -- it took all of six weeks, too -- I was now out of things to do.

Ah, Terry. What about her, you ask?

Well, she had more money than God before she married Pops so that was never an issue, and I was soon reading about a secret marriage to her co-star in this new film, so presto, problem solved.

Yet within a week I was bored out of my mind.

"What about forming a new group?" Jenn asked.

And all I could see was Deni in that hotel room, telling me that she loved me, and that she always would.

"You know...I don't think so. I can record an album myself if I really want to. I can play all the instruments, do everything but sing, and if I get the urge I'll get someone to lay down a vocal track and do the rest on my own."

She frowned, shook her head. "That's not the point. Working with musicians on a common goal, that's what you need right now."

"No, it's not."

"Okay. What do you think about sailing to Hawaii?"

"What? You and me?"

"Yup."

"That sounds fuckin' bogus, man!"

Keep in mind, in 1972 'bogus' meant something similar to 'awesome' these days. 'Bogus,' by the way, replaced 'bitchin' in the California lexicon, and 'bitchin' was a close cousin of 'far out' and 'groovy.' We clear now, Dude?

I had a million questions, the first being 'could we do the trip on Soliloquy?'

"Hell, yes. She was made for this kind of trip."

"Oh?" Keep in mind about all I knew concerning sailboats was that the pointy end was supposed to go forward. Next, consider that Soliloquy had two pointy ends, so I was already seriously confused.

"Yeah, we could hit Hawaii, then head south for Tahiti."

"Tahiti?"

I'd heard of Tahiti, of course. Once. I think.

"Sure. What do you think? Wanna go for it?"

So, my suicidal girlfriend wanted to get me on a 32 foot long sailboat a thousand miles from the nearest land. To what end, I wondered?

"How long would it take to get to Hawaii?" I wanted to know.

"Depending on the wind, two to three weeks."

"Weeks? Not months?"

"Yachts sailing in the Transpac Race do it in eight days. It's not that big a deal."

"Have you done it?"

"Twice."

Of course she had.

"But this will be just you and me, no pressure, no finish lines. We could really get to know one another, I guess."

"When?" I asked.

"Best time is June and July."

"So...a month or two from now?"

"Yup. Would you like to do it?"

"More than anything in the world," I said. "But, well, maybe we'd better get to work on her. My guess is Soliloquy isn't geared up for this kind of thing."

She looked at me and grinned. "I already have."

"Ah." Of course she had.

And so the worm turned.

+++++

I'd never considered myself a sailor. Never, as in 'not once.' I'd never been on a sailboat until the day my shrink invited me out on her husband's J-boat, the day I met Jennifer, and yet I was hooked from that first sail onward. If you've ever looked at an eagle or a seagull and wondered what it's like to bank free and easy on a breeze, well, sailing's about as close as you'll get in this life -- and unless you happen to believe in reincarnation and hope to wind up as a bird in your next, that's the end of that. Bottom line: after that day I began to consider myself a sailor -- and I know that sounds ridiculous -- until you consider sailing is a state of mind, not simply a reflection of one's experience.

At that point sailing was, for me, heading out the Newport jetty around ten in the morning and dropping anchor off Avalon 5-6 hours later. Soliloquy was a heavily built, very sound little ship and weather was never a factor; in forty knots with six to ten foot seas she just powered through the channel with kind of a 'ho-hum' feel, like -- you'll need to throw some heavier shit my way to make me sweat. She imparted a confident feel in bad weather, something I came to appreciate later that summer, but something I was, generally speaking, clueless about those first few months sailing with Jenn.

No GPS back in the day, too. Navigation was old school, and I bought a Plath sextant, a German made beauty, and Jenn taught me to use it so we shared navigation duties. I'd always been strong in math, and I guess that's what carried me through music into composition, so sight reduction tables and the spherical trigonometry involved in celestial navigation wasn't a stretch. Still, the first time we motored from Avalon to Newport in a pea-soup fog -- and nailed it -- I was proud of Jenn for being such an accomplished navigator -- and teacher.

Anyway, we stocked the boat with provisions, including everything we'd need to bake bread at sea, and a few other necessities, like a life raft and a shitload of rum -- because sailors only drink rum, right? -- and I went to my favorite guitar dealer in Hollywood and picked up an small backpacker's guitar, an acoustic beauty made in Vermont, and so equipped we were good to go.

We left Newport on the first of June, 1972, and we sailed to Avalon and baked bread that evening, and when the sun came up the next morning we pulled in the anchor and stowed it aft, then, once we cleared the southeast end of Catalina, we set a course of 260 degrees and settled in for the duration. Call it twenty-five hundred miles at an average of 125 miles per day, and though we racked off 150 most days, we had a few under a hundred, too. The stove and oven were propane, most lighting came from oil lamps, and we had an icebox -- not refrigeration -- so we went about a week with things like fresh meat and milk then switched over to canned goods and Parmalat milk for the next two. And the thing is, I found I just didn't care. We figured out how to make things we liked using the things we had on hand, and we made rice and homemade curries that were something else. And then you have to factor in the sunsets out there...a million miles from nowhere. Sitting in the cockpit with the aroma of freshly baked yeast bread coming out of the galley, while I played something new on the guitar and as the sky went from yellow to orange to purple...well...yeah, it was all kind of like magic.

One day the seas went flat, turned to an endless mirror, and the only 'things' we saw all that day were the fins of an occasional blue shark or United DC-8s overhead on their way to or from Honolulu, and I'd never felt so utterly at peace in all my life. We'd bought what we'd need to rig a cockpit awning so we did that day, if only to keep from being roasted alive under the sun, and I think we started in on each other by mid-morning, and kept at it through sunset. Like, literally, nonstop sex -- for fifteen hours -- and it was one of the most surreal days I've ever experienced. Pure sex, cut off from everything else -- not-one-other-distraction. Just intent, focused physicality -- one soul focused on another.

I didn't know Jennifer, not really, not before those hours, and I'm not sure she knew herself all that well, either, but we never looked at one another the same way after that. We were reduced to pure soul out there, and not one false, pretentious emotion guided us. Soliloquy was hanging in that water, no wind stirred the sea and we'd drop a cedar bucket into the crystalline water and wash ourselves down from time to time, but other than that the day melted away -- leaving pure love in it's wake.

And that night the wind picked up, our speed too, then the wind really started blowing, the seas building and we sailed for three days under a double-reefed main and staysail, the steering handled by the Monitor wind-vane self-steering rig Jenn had installed by the factory. And still Soliloquy just powered through the seas, never once did we doubt her ability to carry us safely onward.

And a few windy days later the trip was over.

Jenn's father had shown up a few days before our expected arrival and he'd secured a berth at Kewalo Basin, near the city center, and it turned out he was as excited as we were about the trip. The fact that it had turned out so peculiarly uneventful was icing on the cake...and because I think he had it fixed firmly in mind that the crossing would be something like making it to the summit of Everest he'd never considered making such a trip. Now he was on fire to do it, and was itching to make the trip back to California.

I wasn't, however, not with him, and not on a 32 foot sailboat.

Yet Jennifer was. She thought it would be a good time for she and her father to mend some fences, and wanted me to come along. As referee, perhaps?

And again, I didn't want to be a part of that whole thing, and I let her know it in no uncertain terms. So, she told me to fly back, that she and her father would bring Soliloquy home to Newport.

Fine, says I, and I exit, stage right, on one of those United DC-8s we'd watched arcing across the sky. The thing is, there's no easy way back from Hawaii to Southern California. Wind and currents make it much more doable if you arc north towards British Columbia, and then ride the current south past the Golden Gate to LA. It's a much longer trip, and it takes a lot longer -- as long as 4-5 weeks. Another drawback? You have to go much farther north, well into colder, arctic influenced waters where both storms and fog are the routine, so the trip is tough. More like the Everest expedition Jenn's father didn't want to experience, as a matter of fact.

So, a few days later I packed a bag and went to the airport. By myself. I flew to LA and took a taxi home, and like that it was over. The trip, our sudden affinity for each other -- over and done with, like the whole thing had been a dream. Or a nightmare. It was like this thing she had going on with her father was a toxic, manic depressive beast where she had to convince herself she had to put things right, and fixing that busted relationship was a much higher priority than her relationship with me.

Jerry Garcia wanted me to help out on an album so I flew up north a few days after I got back, and we worked in the studio for almost a month, and by the time I left I had it in my head to do a solo album. Those sunsets came back to me as I dreamed music, playing that little backpackers guitar while Jenn baked bread down below, that sun-baked idyll, the buckets of seawater washing away our sins. I spent two weeks down in my basement studio laying down the tracks for just one song, and when I finished I carried it over to MCA and everyone who listened to it said it was the best thing I'd ever done. Could I carry through, create an album out of the experience?

Hell yes, I said.

And when I got home there was a message on my machine, from Jenn, in Victoria, on Vancouver Island. She and her father had had their gigantic falling out and he'd left her there; could I call her at the marina? Please?

I called the number she left on the machine and some dockmaster ran down to Soliloquy to fetch her while my fingers drummed away on the kitchen counter, and when she finally got to the phone she was breathless and in tears.

The whole trip had been a nightmare, she sobbed.

Was I surprised? No. As in, Hell No.

And when would she learn? How many more times would she let that mean-spirited asshole tear her apart. How many times would she run home and start the whole process all over again? What was I missing?

"What do you want, Jenn?"

"Could you fly up, help me bring Soliloquy back to LA?"

"Then what?"

"What do you mean?"

"Just that. What happens next?"

"We get on with our life. Together."

"Really? Until the next time you need to run home to Daddy?"

"What do you mean?"

"Maybe you two were meant for each other. Maybe I'm just getting in the way, ya know?"

"Aaron...no. It's not that way and you know it."

"All I know is what I see."

"Is that what you see?"

"Yes."

She hung up on me.

The dockmaster called me at six the next morning. Jenn, it turned out, had found some razor blades.

+++++

I was up there by late morning, and her psychiatrists at the hospital were convinced this attempt had been a classic 'cry for help,' that her cuts hadn't been deep enough to damage the tendons. But there was another complicating factor.

Yup. Pregnant. Timing worked out about right, too. Our sunbaked idyll had been more than productive musically. And now she wanted to abort the fetus. There was no point, she'd told her docs. She'd destroyed all her chances for happiness, just like she always did, so why bring a kid into that world? Why not just kill everything about us? Take care of business once and for all time.

Maybe I was beyond caring that day, but it was beginning to feel like she was using suicide as a weapon to hurt everyone around her. Me, certainly, but her mother and father, too, and now she was going to carry that to the next logical step, in her world, anyway. Kill the truly blameless, and I was stunned. Too stunned for words.

When I went in to see her I told her as much, too, and that scene devolved into a big fight. Kill that kid, I said, and you'll never see me again. Simple as that. I left the hospital and went down to the marina, listed the sailboat with a broker and flew back to LA that evening.

Yup. Cold. Heartless. And tired of going round and round on her psychotic merry-go-round.