The Eternal Yes
Fourteen years ago, I was more cruel than kind. I was more sad than happy. I was loved and unloved. I was adored and rejected. I was supported and unsupported. Fourteen years ago, many things changed, most of them for the better. One very much for the worse.
It was late winter and there was no snow on the ground. I had been up all night writing. I wrote a lot then; the words just poured out of me. I once had a lot to say. I was braver then. No. I was less considerate then, I am braver now. I was a coward then.
I was a coward who wasn't living her own life. I was very busy. Every day there was some new drama, someone else needed fixing, and everyone else's traumas came before my own. I didn't have many of my own, because as I said, I wasn't living my own life, and I certainly wasn't examining it too closely. If I didn't look at it I wouldn't have to see the cracks and the emptiness. I had no plans. I was very angry, but I didn't... I couldn't... I wouldn't... I didn't know why, but I was on the verge of accepting it and working through it.
I was a good little fixer, looking after all of my friends, intimately involved in supporting them, helping them, guiding them. My door was always open and my shoulder available for the crying. And everyone had problems. At the end of the crying, no one ever asked me how I was feeling. I was the strong one. I took care of everything, they had no reason to shift for themselves.
Fourteen years ago, that all changed.
The sky was cloudy, not with impending snow, just an expanse of flat grey. I was on my way out to get cigarettes, as I had smoked all of mine the night before. I walked under the awnings to shield myself from the wind. I was still bleary-eyed and probably hadn't remembered to brush my hair or wash my face -- but I have never left the house without brushing my teeth. A couple of guys were standing in front of my video store handing out flyers. They had a beautiful, big black dog with them. I didn't pay too much attention to the guys, because, yeah, doggie! The tall rail of a man with the wild black hair stuffed a flyer into my hand, it was advertising a band, of course.
"I know you, you're Jerome Presley Haskel. You fixed an old boyfriend's Rickenbacher."
He put his face close to mine, "'Old' boyfriend? Does that mean you don't have a boyfriend?"
Now, at this distance, I don't remember the rest. It's all written down somewhere, in one of my notebooks. I tried to write down everything later. After. He was witty and smart and tenacious. He abandoned his bandmate (Clay) and followed me around with his dog for the rest of the day.
And so it went, a wary dance between the two of us. Him pursuing, me pulling back, battered and bruised from a very recent heartbreak. The jagged edges of our checkered pasts rubbed against each other, clashing, meeting, parting, resting. I'd come home from work at my miserable temp job to find him sitting in front of my apartment door with a stack of magazines given to him to pass the time by one of my neighbors. He'd have flowers or a book, or some little found thing. Tentatively, I turned to him. It was easy, so easy to fall into kindness, to fall into the childlike eternal yes he gave to the world. It was much less easy to believe that the kindness was genuine, that there was no other agenda.
I'd wake up in his bed with the dog wedged between us. He'd make me spaghetti in the battered stock pot his grandmother had given him, the only inheiritance he ever got from that desperately poor woman who raised him. Iggy Pop's Brick By Brick had just come out, he played "Candy" every night almost. His voice, both speaking and singing, sounds eerily like Pop. The hair still raises up on my arms when I hear "Candy."
I'd be up late at night and my phone would ring, he'd seen my light on on his way home from the bar or rehearsal. He'd ask me to read him a story.
When we'd go out, we'd never walk all the way home. There was always, always someone who would recogize him and stop to give us a ride. That was a welcome wintertime perk of dating a famous person in a city of moderate size. He was only Midwest Famous. But without him, there'd have been no Violent Femmes, no BoDeans, Jerry Harrison wouldn't have had such luck with his local recording studio, no Shepherd Express (The Crazy Shepherd merged with the little mimeographed sheets he'd made every week of who was playing where back in the 70s), there would have been no scene without him. He loved Milwaukee and Milwaukee loved him right back.
But he'd scare me too. Out of nowhere he'd say, "Baby, I'm gonna die making this record." (He was one of the very few who could call me "babe" or "baby" without earning a punch to the throat.)
or
"I'm gonna die, and you're gonna get rich writing my biography."
And I'd say, "You're not going to die. Or at least not while I'm dating you. If you die while we're together, no one will ever date me again! I'll be a black widow, the kiss of death."
"No, you'll be just fine. You'll see. You're gonna be rich because of me. And famous." He'd chill me to the bone.
He'd pull out his scrapbooks, papers, and photographs and collection of found things and tell me the stories attached to each one. We'd sit on the porch and he'd tell me the stories behind the houses across the street. He knew Milwaukee, every inch of it and its history. "When I die, all of these papers, all of my albums will be yours so that you can write my life story."
I tied a little i-ching coin threaded on a thin black thong to his wrist, on the left wrist so that it wouldn't scratch his guitar while he played.
It was the most relaxed and most tense relationship I was ever in. He made it easy, he made me at ease. Even if there were no plans, there were plans. He wasn't afraid of me. He saw right through all of my bullshit. He was a man, a real honest to god grown up man.
He forgave me and took me right back when I lost my mind for a few days and tried to go back to someone else. I don't think he ever really trusted me again. I shrank from my own selfishness when I saw something break in him that day. He even offered to go kick the ex-paramour's ass in my honor. It was a ludicrous suggestion. Everyone who knew him, knew he'd walk away before ever lifting a hand to someone else, those days were so far behind him they were a hardly even dot on the horizon. He'd run before he'd swing a fist. He was the same age then that I am now. I wasn't as good to him as he deserved, I loved him, but I didn't appreciate him.
Then, one brisk night in spring just three short months after it all began, a call from a friend (That friend and co-worker was Leslie, seen early on in the video--without her I wouldn't be half as interesting as I am today). "Sam, have you heard from Jerome?"
"No, but I should hear from him... or see him at some point tonight." There was a pause.
"Sam, Jerome's dead."
"No. If this is a joke..."
He had been to rehearsal the night before, then went to the club. He was on his way home to walk his dog. Three blocks from my house, from what we gather and who knows who really told the truth, two cars full of kids passed him on the street. They shouted something at him, he kept walking. They stopped. He was one block from home.
He was struck by... something. Something hard enough to sever his spine from his skull. Only one blow.
They left him in the street to die.
I saw the video that the news would not stop playing over and over of the EMTs picking up his body. Of the EMT lifting up Jerome's left hand, the bracelet I gave him dangling off of his now fragile wrist, and dropping it back down demonstrating lack of response, lack of life.
He was one block from home. He was three blocks from my apartment. I was awake with the lights out that night. If.. if... if...
Why didn't anyone see him and give him a ride? What were two cars full of school aged kids doing out at 1am on a school night? Why did they do what they did? They didn't even rob him.
By the time I knew for sure, the next morning, life support had already been turned off. I remembered the last time I had seen him, earlier in the week, we had been on the bus. He got off before I did with a quick kiss and a "see you later, babe." And in my head, the ever present soundtrack of my life had started up the Replacements' "Kiss Me on the Bus." It was a beautiful sunny spring afternoon the last time I ever saw or touched him.
One friend showed up for the breakfast we had planned a few days before, another showed up for... help with her rental lawsuit. She started crying not out of grief or empathy, but because she had to go to court the following Monday and hadn't called Legal Aid as we'd told her to do three months earlier and now she didn't know what she was going to do. She wanted my help. I asked my other friend to remove her from my apartment.
I left town two days later.
When I came home, no one knew what to do with me. I remember very little from the summer of 1991. We were all haunted. Everyone who knew him, who loved him, was visited by him over and over again. Even the kid who went to juvie for his murder (yes, despite three previous assault convictions, the 16 year old kid who went to trial only got juvenile detention until age 18 and then had his record expunged), was visited by Jerome's ghost. We had nothing else of him. His estranged family came in and took over, they accused us, his bandmates, friends, and lovers of wanting to "make money" off his death. These people to whom he hadn't spoken or seen since the day they put his grandmother in the ground. They threw away his found things and stole the master tapes of the last album. They sold all of his albums two for a dollar in a yard sale, they said it was to pay for his headstone. No one ever saw that money. The Baldonis paid for the headstone, the cremation, burial, and a music scholarship in his name, they visit his grave every year. Jerome was like a son to them.
That was the end. There are only two people who remain in my life from that time. They were the only two people who cared for me, who took care of me when I went stone cold crazy with grief. Everyone I'd been so careful of, had taken such good care of, provided a shoulder to just ... melted away. Anyone who wasn't strong enough to help hold me up when I couldn't do it for myself was cut out of my life. It was a big lesson in balance, in give and take.
Fourteen years ago, everything changed. Fourteen years ago, I found out who my friends were. Fourteen years ago, I began finding out who I was.
Even then. Even back then, if he had lived, I knew that we probably wouldn't be together forever, but I also knew that he would have been my friend for the rest of my life. I remained unswervingly fixated on his death for many years afterward, it was hardly possible not to -- that big black line of Before and After still marks my life to this day.
It's so easy to remember all the bad things, all of the sorrow, all of the unintentionally cruel things people say when someone dies, but the one thing I remember most about him was his "yes." Someone told a story at his memorial that I think explains him best. "Jerome was the guy who would go to the store with a $20 and buy food for his cat, his bird, and his dog. And on the way home, if someone asked him for change, he'd empty his pockets and then remember three blocks later that he forgot to get a meal for himself. But he'd be okay with that, he knew someone would front him a meal later."
The childlike, not childish, childlike eternal yes. His absolute, unshakeable conviction that no matter what happened, everything was gonna be all right.
That was his final gift to me. A truly magnificent found thing.
Jerome and D'Artagnan
It was late winter and there was no snow on the ground. I had been up all night writing. I wrote a lot then; the words just poured out of me. I once had a lot to say. I was braver then. No. I was less considerate then, I am braver now. I was a coward then.
I was a coward who wasn't living her own life. I was very busy. Every day there was some new drama, someone else needed fixing, and everyone else's traumas came before my own. I didn't have many of my own, because as I said, I wasn't living my own life, and I certainly wasn't examining it too closely. If I didn't look at it I wouldn't have to see the cracks and the emptiness. I had no plans. I was very angry, but I didn't... I couldn't... I wouldn't... I didn't know why, but I was on the verge of accepting it and working through it.
I was a good little fixer, looking after all of my friends, intimately involved in supporting them, helping them, guiding them. My door was always open and my shoulder available for the crying. And everyone had problems. At the end of the crying, no one ever asked me how I was feeling. I was the strong one. I took care of everything, they had no reason to shift for themselves.
Fourteen years ago, that all changed.
The sky was cloudy, not with impending snow, just an expanse of flat grey. I was on my way out to get cigarettes, as I had smoked all of mine the night before. I walked under the awnings to shield myself from the wind. I was still bleary-eyed and probably hadn't remembered to brush my hair or wash my face -- but I have never left the house without brushing my teeth. A couple of guys were standing in front of my video store handing out flyers. They had a beautiful, big black dog with them. I didn't pay too much attention to the guys, because, yeah, doggie! The tall rail of a man with the wild black hair stuffed a flyer into my hand, it was advertising a band, of course.
"I know you, you're Jerome Presley Haskel. You fixed an old boyfriend's Rickenbacher."
He put his face close to mine, "'Old' boyfriend? Does that mean you don't have a boyfriend?"
Now, at this distance, I don't remember the rest. It's all written down somewhere, in one of my notebooks. I tried to write down everything later. After. He was witty and smart and tenacious. He abandoned his bandmate (Clay) and followed me around with his dog for the rest of the day.
And so it went, a wary dance between the two of us. Him pursuing, me pulling back, battered and bruised from a very recent heartbreak. The jagged edges of our checkered pasts rubbed against each other, clashing, meeting, parting, resting. I'd come home from work at my miserable temp job to find him sitting in front of my apartment door with a stack of magazines given to him to pass the time by one of my neighbors. He'd have flowers or a book, or some little found thing. Tentatively, I turned to him. It was easy, so easy to fall into kindness, to fall into the childlike eternal yes he gave to the world. It was much less easy to believe that the kindness was genuine, that there was no other agenda.
I'd wake up in his bed with the dog wedged between us. He'd make me spaghetti in the battered stock pot his grandmother had given him, the only inheiritance he ever got from that desperately poor woman who raised him. Iggy Pop's Brick By Brick had just come out, he played "Candy" every night almost. His voice, both speaking and singing, sounds eerily like Pop. The hair still raises up on my arms when I hear "Candy."
I'd be up late at night and my phone would ring, he'd seen my light on on his way home from the bar or rehearsal. He'd ask me to read him a story.
When we'd go out, we'd never walk all the way home. There was always, always someone who would recogize him and stop to give us a ride. That was a welcome wintertime perk of dating a famous person in a city of moderate size. He was only Midwest Famous. But without him, there'd have been no Violent Femmes, no BoDeans, Jerry Harrison wouldn't have had such luck with his local recording studio, no Shepherd Express (The Crazy Shepherd merged with the little mimeographed sheets he'd made every week of who was playing where back in the 70s), there would have been no scene without him. He loved Milwaukee and Milwaukee loved him right back.
But he'd scare me too. Out of nowhere he'd say, "Baby, I'm gonna die making this record." (He was one of the very few who could call me "babe" or "baby" without earning a punch to the throat.)
or
"I'm gonna die, and you're gonna get rich writing my biography."
And I'd say, "You're not going to die. Or at least not while I'm dating you. If you die while we're together, no one will ever date me again! I'll be a black widow, the kiss of death."
"No, you'll be just fine. You'll see. You're gonna be rich because of me. And famous." He'd chill me to the bone.
He'd pull out his scrapbooks, papers, and photographs and collection of found things and tell me the stories attached to each one. We'd sit on the porch and he'd tell me the stories behind the houses across the street. He knew Milwaukee, every inch of it and its history. "When I die, all of these papers, all of my albums will be yours so that you can write my life story."
I tied a little i-ching coin threaded on a thin black thong to his wrist, on the left wrist so that it wouldn't scratch his guitar while he played.
It was the most relaxed and most tense relationship I was ever in. He made it easy, he made me at ease. Even if there were no plans, there were plans. He wasn't afraid of me. He saw right through all of my bullshit. He was a man, a real honest to god grown up man.
He forgave me and took me right back when I lost my mind for a few days and tried to go back to someone else. I don't think he ever really trusted me again. I shrank from my own selfishness when I saw something break in him that day. He even offered to go kick the ex-paramour's ass in my honor. It was a ludicrous suggestion. Everyone who knew him, knew he'd walk away before ever lifting a hand to someone else, those days were so far behind him they were a hardly even dot on the horizon. He'd run before he'd swing a fist. He was the same age then that I am now. I wasn't as good to him as he deserved, I loved him, but I didn't appreciate him.
Then, one brisk night in spring just three short months after it all began, a call from a friend (That friend and co-worker was Leslie, seen early on in the video--without her I wouldn't be half as interesting as I am today). "Sam, have you heard from Jerome?"
"No, but I should hear from him... or see him at some point tonight." There was a pause.
"Sam, Jerome's dead."
"No. If this is a joke..."
He had been to rehearsal the night before, then went to the club. He was on his way home to walk his dog. Three blocks from my house, from what we gather and who knows who really told the truth, two cars full of kids passed him on the street. They shouted something at him, he kept walking. They stopped. He was one block from home.
He was struck by... something. Something hard enough to sever his spine from his skull. Only one blow.
They left him in the street to die.
I saw the video that the news would not stop playing over and over of the EMTs picking up his body. Of the EMT lifting up Jerome's left hand, the bracelet I gave him dangling off of his now fragile wrist, and dropping it back down demonstrating lack of response, lack of life.
He was one block from home. He was three blocks from my apartment. I was awake with the lights out that night. If.. if... if...
Why didn't anyone see him and give him a ride? What were two cars full of school aged kids doing out at 1am on a school night? Why did they do what they did? They didn't even rob him.
By the time I knew for sure, the next morning, life support had already been turned off. I remembered the last time I had seen him, earlier in the week, we had been on the bus. He got off before I did with a quick kiss and a "see you later, babe." And in my head, the ever present soundtrack of my life had started up the Replacements' "Kiss Me on the Bus." It was a beautiful sunny spring afternoon the last time I ever saw or touched him.
One friend showed up for the breakfast we had planned a few days before, another showed up for... help with her rental lawsuit. She started crying not out of grief or empathy, but because she had to go to court the following Monday and hadn't called Legal Aid as we'd told her to do three months earlier and now she didn't know what she was going to do. She wanted my help. I asked my other friend to remove her from my apartment.
I left town two days later.
When I came home, no one knew what to do with me. I remember very little from the summer of 1991. We were all haunted. Everyone who knew him, who loved him, was visited by him over and over again. Even the kid who went to juvie for his murder (yes, despite three previous assault convictions, the 16 year old kid who went to trial only got juvenile detention until age 18 and then had his record expunged), was visited by Jerome's ghost. We had nothing else of him. His estranged family came in and took over, they accused us, his bandmates, friends, and lovers of wanting to "make money" off his death. These people to whom he hadn't spoken or seen since the day they put his grandmother in the ground. They threw away his found things and stole the master tapes of the last album. They sold all of his albums two for a dollar in a yard sale, they said it was to pay for his headstone. No one ever saw that money. The Baldonis paid for the headstone, the cremation, burial, and a music scholarship in his name, they visit his grave every year. Jerome was like a son to them.
That was the end. There are only two people who remain in my life from that time. They were the only two people who cared for me, who took care of me when I went stone cold crazy with grief. Everyone I'd been so careful of, had taken such good care of, provided a shoulder to just ... melted away. Anyone who wasn't strong enough to help hold me up when I couldn't do it for myself was cut out of my life. It was a big lesson in balance, in give and take.
Fourteen years ago, everything changed. Fourteen years ago, I found out who my friends were. Fourteen years ago, I began finding out who I was.
Even then. Even back then, if he had lived, I knew that we probably wouldn't be together forever, but I also knew that he would have been my friend for the rest of my life. I remained unswervingly fixated on his death for many years afterward, it was hardly possible not to -- that big black line of Before and After still marks my life to this day.
It's so easy to remember all the bad things, all of the sorrow, all of the unintentionally cruel things people say when someone dies, but the one thing I remember most about him was his "yes." Someone told a story at his memorial that I think explains him best. "Jerome was the guy who would go to the store with a $20 and buy food for his cat, his bird, and his dog. And on the way home, if someone asked him for change, he'd empty his pockets and then remember three blocks later that he forgot to get a meal for himself. But he'd be okay with that, he knew someone would front him a meal later."
The childlike, not childish, childlike eternal yes. His absolute, unshakeable conviction that no matter what happened, everything was gonna be all right.
That was his final gift to me. A truly magnificent found thing.
Jerome and D'Artagnan