Crystal Lived In Technicolor

Only the good die young.

When we first met in high school, she painted with bold, psychedelic pinks and greens.  She started out with oils, then switched to acrylics.  A short while later, she started spraying them out of a paint gun she’d rigged up from an old hair spray bottle and a hash pipe filter.  It was 1973. 

 

A creek ran through Blue Summit.  We used to take bottles of Boone’s Farm and hang them off a big rock in the middle of the creek while we sunbathed and toked up.  We collected clay from the sides of the creek bed, which she later used to make pseudo-African statues of naked ladies.  One time, a man came along and told us the clay was raw sewage.  No matter " Crystal turned it into works of art. 

 

She could do that with anything.  A wig shop went out of business in the City, and we spent a day pulling mannequin heads out of their dumpster.  She turned about a dozen of them into David Bowie’s face when he was Ziggy Stardust.  In fact, there’s one sitting on my old black upright staring down at me as I write.  The Head with its rainbow hair, glitter and blue acrylic tears.  She has more expression than most of the people around these parts.  Out here in the desert wasteland of Lalaland. 

 

I clearly recall her Room of a Thousand Marilyns.  She painted it in midnight blue, then sprayed flecks of silver helter-skelter over the ceiling.  Next came the Marilyns - she’d been cutting them out of newspapers and magazines since she was a little girl.   She glued them on the walls, overlapping them until they covered every square inch.  The knick-knack tables were covered with Marilyn Barbies, Marilyn lunch-boxes, little Marilyn angels. 

 

A month later, it was gone - replaced by a black and white mural of houses in San Francisco.  She used an album cover by Quicksilver Messenger Service as inspiration.  She added Morrison to it, though, and Hendrix and Janis.    She painted her kitchen cabinets red and rearranged her entire house monthly.  It was perhaps 1975 by then. 

 

She dabbled in most mediums, including the psychic.  She did a painting for me in 1976, right before she met her husband, Richard.  She used oils, and stole the crumbling archway from a semi-Moody Blues album called Blue Jays.  Besides that, it was pure Crystal.  A face in the sky, blowing eight bubbles - she was married for eight years - the bubbles either ended or began with a defiant looking baby boy.  That would prove to be Michael, her son. 

 

I stand in the archway, looking out, with a bow and arrow on my back.  Faceless, but that’s my restless mane, no doubt.  And there’s Crystal, lounging on an island in the middle of nothing, her arms outstretched to greet a friendly flock of gulls. 

 

Sometime in the 90’s she explained the painting to me.  It was around the time she figured out its meaning.  Unfortunately, I was too drunk to remember most of it.  It’s hanging on the wall next to me now.  I can touch it - feel its brushstrokes - and catch a ripple of her running through me, laughing. 

 

She lived her life as bold as the colors she chose.  One of her favorite lovers beat the blessed crap out of her more than once.  Then she shot him in the a*s, naked, when he got up to light a cigarette.  She was divorced by then, but he was married.  I’m not sure how he explained the gunshot wound to his wife.  Regardless, they continued as lovers for a couple more years, incurring multiple injuries in the process. 

 

After her divorce, Crystal took a liking to Black Jack and Coke.  She was most times a mean drunk, as well.  I pulled her out of fights, just like in our high school days, but it was harder on Black Jack than pot.  She was a strong, fierce warrior, with her bleach-blonde mane and smoky voice. 

 

She never drank until Michael was tucked in and the sitter paid, though.  For Michael’s sake, she kept her priorities straight on for quite a while.  Sometime in the 90’s - around the time she explained the painting - Richard got re-married and petitioned for full custody.  He hired a PI to follow her from bar to bar up in Old Northeast.  When the news reached a judge, Michael moved to Overland Park.  He lives there today with his wife and child, as far as I know.  Richard died of liver failure.  He worked on car batteries in a factory most of his life. 

 

With Michael gone, she lost a lot.  She gave up on a great many things and one was her art.  She moved in with a man she referred to as The Neanderthal (even to his face).  Together, they were closely acquainted with meth.  Her health started to fade.  There was steel rebar holding her leg together from her Fatal Attraction days.  It was starting to wear out; her nerve endings were held in place with Vicodin.  She lost her teeth.  The Neanderthal and his meth-head friends started to worship a large rock in their basement that was once the foundation for a fireplace.  Stage-diving groups of naked people were thrown into the mix.  Things got even stranger before he went to prison.   

 

For a while, it seemed like Crystal might return.  She got off the meth and bought a pair of dentures.  Michael started spending the summers.  She got herself a decent man who loved her to his depths.  His name was Fred.

 

When all seemed to be moving steady, MS struck.  It was a bipolar disease, the MS.  She’d be fine for weeks, maybe months, then wake up blind.  When her sight returned, she couldn’t move her legs.  She was put on interferon and lost her hair.  She gave it up, saying the cure was worse than the disease.  She started praying and meditating and listening to Mahavishnu Orchestra.  Birds of Fire.  And so her life had been. 

 

When I got the call from Fred, I sat on the floor and stared at the wall.  I can’t recall a single thought going through my head for hours.  I don’t know why I was so stunned.  Somehow, she seemed invincible.  Images of Amazonian Her played with my thought process.  The Queen of Black Jack couldn’t die. 

 

I boarded a plane and ordered Heinekens in pairs.  I laid over in Denver and switched to ice cold Guinness on tap.  Who the hell would name an airport bar “Cheers?”  Who knows your name in a f*****g airport! 

 

Yes, Guinness for sure.  I was heading home.  The golden dome of St. Patrick’s still glowed on the streets of downtown.  I remembered 1986, when we won the I-70 World Series.  There was George Brett astride his horse on parade, tipping his silver flask while the children waved and cheered.  Yes, my hometown, more Irish than Dublin.  But Crystal had been German, and myself, well maybe half Irish, but also half Ukrainian Jew. 

 

A small service was held in a store-front church.  It had previously been the Green Gables Saloon on Truman Road, just to the north of Blue Summit.  OK - it was called Dogpatch in those days. 

 

The preacher had never met my friend, but he was, indeed, a Christian man.  He kept his mouth shut and let her friends wax nostalgic.  Fifty people shared their tales, while the rest of us laughed and cried.  She would have wanted it like that. 

 

I wanted to speak - I really did.  People started looking at me after the first twenty or so but I could not.  Her poor mother, smelling of beer and cigarettes, well into her 80’s - she was looking at me, too.  Michael was there in his suit and tie.  His beautiful wife was dressed in black for a mother-in-law she never knew.  

 

Fred had gathered photographs, taped them onto cardboard and placed them on the pulpit.  He invited us to take the ones we wanted - the ones of Crystal when each of us knew her best.  Not wanting to be selfish, I only took two.  One was a black-and-white Polaroid I’d taken at the creek, with Crystal hoisting the Boone’s Farm.  The other was taken in the early 80’s at one of the many costume parties she liked to host.  Both of us were s**t-faced drunk, cigarettes held proudly.  I, in my nurse’s white mini, and Crystal wrapped in scarves with a rhinestone in her navel. 

 

As the crowd thinned out, I noticed an old upright at the back of the stage.  Man, it was terribly out of tune!  I was thinking about Elton John’s Tiny Dancer.  I was thinking about Crystal belly dancing wrapped in scarves, laughing and laughing, with everyone cheering her on.  Some of those folks were in the room that night, but some had passed before her.  I was hoping they’d paved the way. 

 

With all the music we’d shared together - Janis belting out Piece of My Heart, Todd Rundgren lamenting Hello, It’s Me, scores of rowdy drinking songs and Skynyrd - I could only think of a one song.  

 

Keep a fire burning in your eye
Pay attention to the open sky
You never know what will be coming down.

I don't remember losing track of you
You were always dancing in and out of view
I must have thought you'd always be around
Always keeping things real by playing the clown
Now you're nowhere to be found.

I don't know what happens when people die
Can't seem to grasp it as hard as I try
It's like a song I can hear playing right in my ear
That I can't sing
But I can't help listening.

I can't help feeling stupid standing round
Crying as they ease you down
Cause I know that you'd rather we were dancing
Dancing our sorrow away
No matter what fate chooses to play.

Just do the steps that you've been shown
By everyone you've ever known
Until the dance becomes your very own
No matter how close to yours
Another's steps have grown
In the end there is one dance you'll do alone.

Keep a fire for the human race
Let your prayers go drifting into space
You never know what will be coming down.
Perhaps a better world is drawing near
And just as easily it could all disappear
Along with whatever meaning you might have found
Don't let the uncertainty turn you around.

Go on and make a joyful sound.

Into a dancer you have grown
From a seed somebody else has thrown
Go on ahead and throw some seeds of your own
And somewhere between the time you arrive
And the time you go
May lie a reason you were alive
But you'll never know.

 

Jackson Brown - For A Dancer