When I went to college I made friends with a psychology major. I stopped in at one of the snack bars and it was crowded. There was a woman sitting at a table for two and I asked if she would mind sharing.
Dressed in tee shirt and jeans, no make up and with buzzed hair, she practically screamed BUTCH. Looking over the text book at me she shrugged. There was a hard edge to her voice.
“Sure, but don’t expect anything, I’m gay.”
In mock surprise I said “Really? Damn, I was already thinking of names for our kids.”
It wasn’t what she was expecting. She didn’t know what to say for a second, then grinned.
“Sorry to break your heart. But if my girlfriend and I ever need a surrogate, I’ll look you up. I’m Angie.”
“Wiley,” I said extended my hand and pulling it back in mock pain after we shook.
I looked at her text book.
“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar,” I quoted.
“Freud. I’m impressed.”
She looked at mine.
“The knee bone connected to the thigh bone, the thigh bone connected to the hip bone….”
“Yeah, physical therapy.”
We had a nice friendship. She was gay and I was a musician, go figure. She had to interview someone and create a psychological profile for a class project. She chose me.
It was a little irritating at first to have someone follow me around to watch my interactions but she soon faded to the background. She met the people I associated with and interviewed them about me. Notes and voice recordings piled up. She wouldn’t let me read it when she was done, but she got an A.
I finally nagged her into sharing her findings about me. One night after she, her girlfriend, and I had consumed two bottles of wine, she opened up.
“You’re an onion Wiley, an enigma hidden in a riddle surrounded by a puzzle.”
“You like people, but you don’t trust most you meet, including all women. You know lots of people but have very few friends.”
“You keep your thoughts to yourself. Highly compartmentalized, you keep people segregated. Your school friends know nothing about your work friends, or the people you do volunteer work with, or the people you interact with through your side business, and none know anything about your family. You, re a chameleon, Wiley, different things to different people, and you get very uncomfortable when they blend. I don’t think anyone will ever know the real you, including yourself.”
“You’re a Gemini by birth, so you’re supposed to have a split personality. But damn, Wiley, there’s a whole crowd in your head. It’s one of the reasons I like to hang out with you. I never know who’s coming to the party.”
“If it’s any consolation, only highly intelligent people tend to compartmentalize. Bill Clinton is the most prominent figure I know of who does compartmentalization. It’s the reason he could look the American public in the eye and say he never had sex with Monica Lewinsky. In his mind, he had separated it completely from the real world definition of sexual activity.”
With that speech, she passed out on the couch.
Wow.
Compartmentalized. A fancy word for fucked up.
………………….
She was right. I didn’t like anyone to know too much about me. Sammi lived with me, and she had no idea what I did when I was away from her.
She knew I bought and sold vintage guitars, but she had no idea how many I had or the volume of business I did.
She didn’t know I volunteered at the hospital. I had been doing it since I was fourteen, when I had been at the hospital with Chip.
Most of all, she didn’t know what I owned or what I was worth.
I owned the house I was living in out right. The man I rented from came to me after I had been there two years to tell me he was retiring and moving out of state, and putting all his holdings up for sale. I liked the house, and the neighborhood. Most of the neighbors were middle aged or older. Everyone, included the landlord, was afraid I would be having wild parties and be loud.
The fears eased when that didn’t happen, and because I was around in the daytime a lot I ended up helping out some of the older neighbors with odds and ends when they needed me. A lot of them asked for advice in dealing with grandkids. I gave what advice I considered reasonable, reminding them I had no practical experience with kids.
I also owned some property with mini warehouses on it. This came about by accident but was a very nice investment.
All right, I was thirty years old and played in a band for a living. Where was the money coming from?
I actually made pretty good money playing music. After expenses I usually netted about forty five grand a year. The buying and selling guitars varies widely from year to year, as high as fifty thousand some years, as low as fifteen others. This was a cash thing, no IRS.
I got around twenty five thousand a year off the storage units after taxes and upkeep. So, I didn’t look like much, but made more than a lot of middle management types.
The seed money for all this came from my mother. She had an insurance policy for both Chip and myself, 50, 000 each. It was double indemnity, and had a clause that if either one of us happened to pass away at the same time, both policies went to the survivor.
The big truck that hit my Mom was from a national chain. They offered my Dad 100, 000 to settle while Chip was still alive. He was in no shape to talk to them, so that offer slid. After Chip died they offered him fifty percent more. He settled for four times the original offer, after lawyer fees. Normally he wouldn’t have gotten so much, but the trucking firm subbed out maintenance, so both companies were on the hook.
My money was in trust until I was twenty five, a good thing. I don’t think I could have handled it at twenty one. At twenty five it was still a pretty big temptation, but I had been living on my own since I was nineteen, and had a pretty good grasp of how the real world worked. The only splurge I allowed myself was to buy a bass guitar I had always wanted. Collector item of course, a Dan Armstrong Ampeg with the clear acrylic body.
Oh, and I bought my house.
My accountant, a genius, incorporated me. Crazy Coyote, Ltd. He instilled the habit of meticulous record keeping. I had a company card I put everything on while on the road. Everything was on my laptop I carried with me everywhere, plus printed hard copies I kept in a file cabinet in my spare bedroom.
Nobody except my parents knew what I was worth.
……………………
Things were going really well for Sammi and I. Co-habitating went smoother than I expected. There were minor clashes, I was a neat freak and her less so. She hated most of the music I played at home. Her procrastination drove me crazy. My tendency to over analyze things made her grit her teeth.
But we got used to each other, each agreeing to give in and compromise on most things.
The one thing that really got to me was her complete indifference to car maintenance. Her 2001 ugly brown Camry was held together by faith and imagination. She ran out of gas constantly because the gas gauge didn’t work.
I had my mechanic check it out and his best advice was let it die a natural death. He did a patch job on most of the major problems but made no guarantees. Still, it ran much better when we got it back. I gave her a serious lecture about preventative maintenance that went in one ear and out the other.