In the story, I said that we went to see “Batman” at Mann’s Chinese Theater. My journals don’t actually say what the movie was. Batman would have been a bit later on, but I wanted to give the impression that we had “The Perfect Date,” so I picked Batman. It probably was something pretty mundane. I tried to visit Mann’s Chinese Theater (originally Grauman's Chinese Theatre, now TLC Chinese Theater) every time I visited Los Angeles. Besides Madison Square Gardens, it’s probably the most famous movie theater in existence. Honestly, whatever the movie was, I doubt I would have paid much attention as I was deeply smitten and fascinated by my companion. I think I’ve given a pretty accurate impression of how deeply passionate Julie was. There are a lot of things that happened that day that I’ll never write about. Many years later, and all that’s still pretty personal. That Sunday still counts as one of my favorite days ever.
The book “Modern Primitives” by V. Vale and Andrea Juno came out in 1989. It’s generally credited for sparking the body modification craze that took over the nineties. Until “Modern Primitives,” most people with conspicuous tattoos were either bikers or sailors. “Modern Primitives” made body modification popular among college students. Even today, if I see somebody with a developed tattoo, I tend to think “art student,” not “biker.” Jules was the type of girl who would be on the cutting edge of any fashionable trend, so I’m not surprised she scooped the world on this body modification bandwagon.
Jules (Julie, Julia) was a couple of years older than me. She had an art degree from USC. A trust-fund baby, she spent her first two college summers exploring Europe but her last two college summers exploring China and Japan. Japanese art was a passion of hers. Every motif on her arm was an exacting replica of a famous Japanese work. Her tattoo artist traveled from Japan to Hong Kong to Los Angeles. Julie said her tattoo artist had a world-famous reputation for their tattoos, and people came from all over the world to be her canvas.
Julie’s tattoo took almost three years to complete. Her art history professor helped her pick out the works she wanted on her skin, a process that took over a year before she ever had a mark on her body. Her artist used both traditional and modern, powered tattoo inking tools. Jules tried to get her tattoo done using traditional tools, but it was too painful, so she switched to the powered ones. She paid for it out of the trust fund her grandfather set up for her. She was well aware that she would probably have to occasionally go to have some of the colors refreshed for the rest of her life.
When I met her, she was “on a break” from college and planned to return for her master’s degree and possibly Ph.D. so that she could teach. I have no idea if any of that ever happened. She was great at communicating, and she loved people, so she probably would have been a great teacher.
Traditionally, conservative Jews considered tattoos a very bad idea. Julie’s mother, although she was born a catholic and converted to Judaism, hated her tattoo. Her father, it seemed to me, was mostly involved in his daughter’s life by proxy, so if he had much to say about it, she never mentioned it to me. Her grandmother had been born in Poland and seen quite a lot, so she considered the tattoo “not the worst thing that could happen.”
Julie’s hair was about six inches longer than shoulder length. In the front, it had sort of a swoosh, similar to Elvis, which she dyed blonde; the rest was dark brown, made cinnamon brown by the sun on the top layers. Her mother’s hair was perfectly straight and hung well below her waist. When I knew Julie, her mother would be in her fifties. We never met, but I saw photographs. If that’s what Julie would look like when she was fifty, then I really fucked up letting that one get away.
Her father’s story was pretty typical: a Jewish boy who grows up in LA and becomes a lawyer. I was very interested in her mother’s story, but I never got to hear very much about it. She was born in Colombia but moved to California as a child. Jules had family in Colombia and Poland, which she never met.
I’ve made several attempts through the years to find Julie. She ended up being the third woman with that name I would become entangled with. They all had unusual and somewhat sad endings. I called her father’s office a few times over the years and left a message, but never got a callback. My hope is that Julie got married and changed her name, and that’s why I’ve never been able to find her anywhere. All I really want is that considering how things happened, I’d really like to know that she was okay, that she had a happy life, and that she was eventually able to have all the things she dreamed about. Most of us don’t get to have the things we dreamed about. Considering what she was up against, I wouldn’t be surprised if things didn’t work out for her, but it’d make me very sad.
I don’t like saying I was “in love.” I don’t think I knew her long enough for that. I was clearly fascinated by her and remain so forty years later. Many years ago, in the shadows of the bar at Scrooges, my friend Janie asked me which of all the girls I’d been entangled with did I wish had worked out and become the forever girl. I gave her a name, then thought about it, and gave her another name. Forty years later, and I’d probably still give the same name. The thing that made that girl different from all the other girls was that she never wanted anything from me. She just liked spending time with me, and talking to me, and just sort of being in my presence. She wasn’t social climbing or looking for a savior, or a benefactor, or a guardian. She just enjoyed my companionship. We still talk. She’s had a completely different life from me, but I’m sure she still knows there was, and is, something special about her–at least where I was concerned.
Julie was the same way. Socially, I probably would have been seriously reaching above my grade. Some of her dad’s clients were awe-inspiring, not to mention famous. I have no idea what drew her to me. I asked her a few times, and all she said was that she “saw something.” What she saw, I guess I’ll never know. Had she not been schizophrenic, who knows what our lives might have been like? She was schizophrenic, though, and that changes everything.
I’m aware that because she was schizophrenic, maybe I shouldn’t trust her attraction to me. It might have been a symptom of her disease. It might have been gossamer or a vaper, like the hallucinations schizophrenic people sometimes have. I’m confident that my feelings for her were genuine. An art student who grew up in Hollywood, with obsidian black eyes and actual art imprinted on her body, would have been like a wish from a birthday cake for me. Birthday wishes aren’t real, though, and I would never have wished for the perfect girl who had trouble telling the difference between reality and the voices in her head. That’s almost a cruel joke.
I’m not the right person to go to if you have a loved one with schizophrenia. I have very harsh feelings about it. What I know is that the current research suggests that the principal factor deciding who suffers from it and who doesn’t is genetics. They’ve known that for quite a while. Among other things, that suggests that whatever was in my brother that made him Schizophrenic is very likely also in me. It’s possible there’s a common factor between the genetic markers for schizophrenia, ADHD, and major depression, which would explain a lot.
There’s ample research suggesting a link between the use of narcotic and psychedelic drugs and a trigger for schizophrenia, especially among boys as they finish puberty and women after childbirth. One of my best childhood friends had a mother who suffered pretty rough schizophrenic episodes after the birth of her third child. She also, like many women in her generation, depended on narcotic tranquilizers to deal with being a mother in the sixties and seventies. My mother would always bring that up when I had something to say about how she handled my brother’s illness. I also pointed out that it didn’t really help to know that other people were having to go through the same shit we were going through. I was just sixteen and going through pretty rough problems of my own, but none of that mattered if the whole goddamn world had worse problems than me. I would have to wait my turn, but my turn never came.
Schizophrenia isn’t really curable. You can become so much less symptomatic that it eventually becomes unnoticeable. That being said, it must be pretty horrible living your life wondering when or if the voices would return.
My brother never became completely asymptomatic. I think, at some point, being symptomatic was such a part of his life that he just incorporated it. He never returned to being the person he was before the onset of schizophrenia. My brother was an extraordinarily gentle creature. The schizophrenic version of himself was not. Fortunately, that part of him never fully took over. There was always enough of his core personality involved to prevent anything like that. I don’t think I ever gave him enough credit for keeping all that in check.
I always thought that having your own mind betray you was about the worst thing that could possibly happen. I know what it’s like when your body rebels against its master, but losing your mind is a particularly horrible fate. As I’ve gotten older, I realize that schizophrenia was just the first assault that might try to take over your mind. Later in life, you’ll be beset on all sides by forces wanting to rob you of your memories and personality. Dementia and Alzheimer's are, in many ways, worse than schizophrenia. Toward the end of his life, my father-in-law forgot that he was no longer my father-in-law and would call to check on me like he did when we were still related. It hurt me to know that his memories were going, but no assault of age could take away his gentle personality. When he called, I simply tried to be whatever he wanted me to be, knowing that he might not remember it later.
My brother’s at peace now. He never had the life he deserved. His doctor, the one I yelled at, moved away from Jackson, and he got a better doctor, but never anyone who could make it all go away. I don’t know what happened with Julia. She took a piece of me with her wherever she ended up. She deserved happiness and every success, but knowing what I know about schizophrenia, it may never have happened.
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