Wanda

Then things started getting weird, at the gigs I was meeting people who knew Morrison, or at least claimed to have known him. There was the woman from Oregon who said she met Morrison in a bar on Christmas Eve and they talked about the meaning of life, but the story sounded too metaphorical. Then there were those who claimed to be Morrison, by reincarnation. Those who claimed Morrison was communicating with them either by letter, possession, or from the spirit level. And finally, those who claimed to be Morrison in the flesh.

The first group, the reincarnates, those who thought they were Jim Morrison reincarnated, that was an easy one to solve. I just asked them how old they were, over twenty and it was "sorry, Morrison was still alive when you were born." That usually stumped them and sent them back to the drawing board, except for the hardier, more obsessed soul.
"No, dude, it was a transmigration of the soul. He knew he was dying a long time before he died, so his spirit left." For those people there really was no answer.

Then there were the possessions. Those who claimed Jim was possessing them either full time or only on occasion, and Jim was dictating a new book of poems to them, or was collaborating with them on a book for the purpose of clearing up the misconceptions of his life. And, lastly there were the guys who said they were Jim in the flesh and were just waiting for the right time to reemerge.

One night there was a conversion or collision of the types that presented what I thought was a unique opportunity. Between sets a guy came up to me and told me he was Morrison, this guy had long wild hair, a beard, wearing a plaid workingman's shirt, and jeans he'd been living in a little too long. His face was ruggedly lined like he'd been living outside. I thought he looked more like John The Baptist, maybe he was Morrison after all.
"Where you been man?" I asked.
"Living out in the wilderness where nobody can find me."
"What're you doing here?"
"Making sure you don't sully my memory."
"Sully?" I said, dropping my jaw, "I haven’t sullied in years."
"Don't tell anyone I'm here."
"No problem, man." Not two minutes after this encounter, a woman came up to me and told me Morrison possessed her every now and again and that he was glad I helping keep his memory alive. I saw that an opportunity like this wouldn't present itself again so I decided to have some fun with it when I went back on stage.
"Ladies and gentlemen we have a special guest tonight." The band looked at each other, then looked at me, perplexed. The audience murmured. "We have a confluence tonight, as it were, a strange alignment of stars!" I had the hook baited, "we have Jim Morrison in the audience tonight!" There was a hush. The crowd didn't know what to make of this pronouncement, "we have a gentleman here with us who says he is Jim Morrison," at this point the guy claiming to be Morrison got up and scurried towards the door, "and a young lady who says Jim's spirit visits her nightly!" The audience cheered, the woman actually stood up to take a bow.

Then there was Wanda. That's when it started to get seriously weird. The thing was, she was for real.
"I'm Wanda the Witch."
"You're kidding, right?"
"No, I knew Ray and Jim at UCLA." She looked to be about the right age, "I was a theatre student and I wanted to be an actress. I was in Ray's movie and I've been into Wicca forever. I may have been the first person to get Jimmy interested in witchcraft." She looked at me with such a look of desire, "I could tell you a lot about Jimmy," she said. She seemed pretty drunk, slurring every word she uttered, but I was morbidly interested.
"What'd you talk to Jimmy about?" I asked.
"We talked about a lot of things, like poe-ahhh-tree and Artraud."
"Artraud?" I said, taunting her about her pronunciation.
"Yeah, Antonin Artraud, the French theater guy or something." She said, waving it off.
"Tell me something else about Jimmy."
"Jimmy was a tabula rasa. He could be an altar boy, or a murderer. He was a mirror, get it!? You got what you looked for, he was amazing at reading people."
"What did you see?" I asked.
"A lover." She said, eyeing me lasciviously, "wanna go to my car?" She was in her early to mid-forties, gaudily dressed in tight jeans, denim jacket with fake fur at the collar and cuffs, a low cut blouse with more than a hint of multicolored bra sticking out. Her face was lined, and portions looked like they were about to drop, her make-up was applied thickly. She was working hard to look sexy. She was right at my break-off point, but her sleeping with Jim Morrison added another dimension and tipped the balance. It was still worth a plunge into the pool. I mean how many chances in life do you get to make it with a woman who made it with Jim Morrison?

We were in her car making out and suddenly I was roaring drunk. I was seeing things in swirling disconnected images. But how had I drunk too much? I had a couple extra drinks to make it easier to make it with her, but I had drunk more than this before, without such a dire turn of sensation. Maybe it was the synergy of the beer I drank and the whiskey on her breath. I opened the car door for some fresh air. As soon as it hit me, I felt a rush from my stomach. I threw myself out of the car onto the gravel parking lot and started throwing up. As I lay on the ground I heard Wanda get out of the car and walk around to the side of the car I was on. I looked up and saw her leaning against the side of the car smoking a cigarette, hovering over me like an animal protecting its kill. I heard the crunch of gravel as someone approached.
"Is that our mini-Morrison?" A voice I recognized as one of the boys, appeared in my mind as an island out of the mists, but I couldn't tell who it was. I reached up towards the voice saying "ha, he, hel..." I was trying to say help, but in my state, couldn't.
"I'm going to make out with him some more when he stops puking." I heard Wanda say.
"Yeeeeech, gruesome." A female voice said.
"Live the lifestyle Mikey," the boy's voice said. "You can have him lady, just make sure he's back to the motel by eleven AM tomorrow, or we leave without him." And they laughed.
Wanda pulled her car into the parking lot of her rooming house. I was laying in the backseat, tattered vinyl and used wrappers floating with me in virtual zero gravity. She pulled me out of the car, dragging me towards the house, my boots pushing on the gravel, the best mime of walking I could muster, one arm draped across her shoulders, it was a minor crucifixion. The landscape was bleak the wind howled around me, everything washed out to the color of bone, the moon. It was a tundra of a parking lot. I managed to pull the house into focus, it was larger and somehow harder looking than the surrounding family homes. Maybe it was because the house, as well as the people that inhabited it weren't as well taken care of as the people in the family homes.

Once inside, I bounced off the walls of the communal kitchen. Wanda guided me up the hallway stairs, passed padlocked doors. It reminded me of a prison. We came to the last door down the hall, she opened the padlock and we fell into her room. I stood in the middle of the room, swaying, trying to comprehend. I saw all the possessions of a lifetime that were stuffed into this ten by twenty room. There was her girly dressing table covered with combs, a skirt of ancient chiffon ran around the outside of it. Sticking out of the frame of the mirror, a photograph. I plucked it out and tried to focus on it. It was a picture of her with Morrison. The colors separated, turned yellow with age. It was ancient sepia now. It must have been taken early in The Doors career, or maybe they were still at UCLA, they both looked achingly young, Morrison was still in his cruel handsome youngboy looks. I matched the face of the girl in the picture and Wanda. It was her all right, without the wrinkles, and without the feral look in her eyes. Their clothes were almost antique looking even to my sensibilities, even though I remember people dressing like that. I remembered dressing like that. It wasn't like the other photographs of Morrison I was used to seeing, Morrison, in his natural state, relaxed and in the moment, he’d always looked like a modern among the primitives to me. When I was a kid, I thought all the adults were in their fifties, they all had short hair, black rimmed glasses, and because the clothes they wore were dull and lifeless they, and appeared to be in black, white. Morrison looked more like me, and the people I hung out with, alive and in color. The picture of Wanda and Morrison was a typical posed photograph. The body language of both spoke volumes. She was trying to be close to Morrison, and he was standing rigidly, waiting for the moment to be over so he could pull away. I dropped the picture down on the table.
"Where's the bed?" I asked turning around. Tucked away in the corner of the room was her bed. I fell straight down on it and for a minute everything swirled around me, then I passed out. During the night I remember her waking me up for sex. I responded out of some sense of duty, either to legend or my own ego. I noticed the longer I was with her the older she looked. All I remember was a flash of tit and genital as I escaped back down the darkened swirl. It didn't matter I was unconscious anyway.
Some time after that I woke up, it was still dark out, it seemed like the night was lasting forever. At least I felt like I was sobering up. I looked at the other side of the bed. Wanda was awake, watching me.
"Do you have a girlfriend?" She asked, running her hands over the skin of my chest.
"No, why?" I asked.
"I can be your girlfriend, and follow you to all your gigs. I can be your lover and tell you everything I know about Jimmy."
"What makes you think I'm that into Morrison?"
"Look at you. Dressed like him, you act like him, and you even fucked me because of him."
"No. We don't need any more camp followers." I said.
"Camp followers!" She bellowed. "Well, that's the difference between you and Jimmy. He was an original performer he brought life to the stage. All you bring is a ghost and that's why you'll never be anything but a cheap imitation!" She rolled over and went to sleep.

I woke up early the next morning. Light was finally starting to pry its way through the lone window in the room. Wanda was snoring next to me. I pulled on my pants and shirt. Next to her bed was a scrapbook, one of those huge old-fashioned kind where you can keep adding more pages. I sat on her dressing table chair and looked through it. It started with typical childhood photos, proud mother and father holding the baby, growing up modeling different chiffon dresses and Wanda smiling broad toothless smiles, first communion. Then there was a newspaper clipping of a little girl, Wanda in a tutu, a production of Swan Lake. The caption gave the little girl's name as Stephanie Mulgrew, but it was Wanda. I could still see the little girl in her face. I turned the pages, there were more pictures and reviews; from high school plays, the perennial production of Our Town, followed by pictures of her in college at UCLA, the plays now Ibsen and Beckett. Then some reviews and programs from small L.A. playhouses, this was her rise to stardom! I noticed a few early Doors reviews interwoven. There was an early connection. Then a movie ad, I read it over carefully, her name wasn't anywhere on it. But she must have had a part in it, or else why would it be in her scrapbook? Then it became a scrapbook about Jim and The Doors, culminating, of course, in Paris. Then there were a couple of blank pages. They were yellowed and brittle like the pages before them. When it resumed the pages were newer, cream colored. It became a diary and there was a ferocity in the entries until towards the end they became manic. I realized I had been wrong it wasn't a scrapbook chronicling her rise to stardom. It was a scrapbook chronicling the death of her dreams. How many years did the blank pages represent? Where had Wanda come from? A character she carved out of, perhaps, her conversations with Morrison, like Alice Cooper in Morrison's conversations with a young Vincent Furnier. When did she go from being Stephanie to Wanda? When Stephanie became powerless in life and Wanda offered her that power and control again? In the clarity of the morning light, and my clearing head I realized the look of want I had seen on her face the night before wasn't for me. What I had mistaken as desire for me was really a desire for what I represented and the desire to try and rewrite history. A desire to change this leaden reality of her life and restore the golden dreams of her fantasies. Maybe she and I weren’t that far apart. She looked deep inside for the simmering essences of truth; she had found madness. She moved a little in the bed, even asleep she didn't look at rest. I pushed a lock of sweat matted hair off her forehead, I could see the hurt child with dreams that was in her, that had made her this madwoman.
"Peace, Stephanie, peace." I said, softly.

I stumbled out into the cold morning air I pulled my leather jacket tight around me against the cold. The wind still tore through me, the word mourning bouncing around my hung over head. I looked around trying to get my bearings. I seemed not to be too far from the bar and motel. I started the cold trek back in the direction I thought I should go. By the time I was at the end of the gravel parking lot, Wanda was out the back door yelling at me.
"Just like Morrison, asshole!"

(The Last Stage is available on Kindle, Nook Books, or if you would like a signed copy of The Last Stage they're available from my website (only $20!) at Jymsbooks via Paypal (jymwrite@aol.com, please don't forget your mailing address!)

Meeting Ray

Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek were one of the best teams in Rock 'n' Roll history, but nobody seems to have given much credit to Morrison/Manzarek and they never achieved the legendary status of Lennon/McCartney or Jagger/Richards, but maybe it was because the credits on the records read The Doors instead of Manzarek/Morrison. Ray was the linear mathematically precise keyboard player from Chicago who loved the blues. He met Jim Morrison at UCLA when both were there in the film school; the rational and irrational working together. Soon after, Ray met John Densmore and Robby Krieger at a meditation center, and The Doors were born. Morrison lived on the edge and pushed the others to those extremes. He was the artistic center of the band, the spark, the indefinable something that led The Doors beyond their boundaries of the rational into the irrational fires of creativity, a landscape never before seen; their new world, a sensuous wild west. Robby, who wrote most of the 'hit' songs followed Morrison's lead, adapting Morrison's imagery and themes. While all three were talented musicians, after Morrison died they never again hit the creative or popular high Morrison had driven them to.

Ray was playing with Michael McClure at Lounge Ax on the North side of Chicago. The trendy Clark Street area where the St. Valentine's Day Massacre had happened, but now was just old buildings filled with Starbucks, bookstores, and upscale theme restaurants "owned" by sports legends. The club had always enjoyed a cult status, even to a suburban boy like me, as one of Chicago's premiere clubs to see bands. So, when we got there it was disappointing. The reality clashed with my idea of what it was going to be like after years of hearing how cool it was. We walked right past it at first, we stood on the sidewalk looking for the address. When we turned back the way we had come, three girls came out of a blackened storefront. They were dressed in spandex and lace tops. I yelled to them “Hey! Is this Lounge Ax?” They looked back and sized us up before answering.
“Yeah,” she said. I looked over the facade, there was nothing announcing its presence, no sign that said Lounge Ax, no fancy logo, or neon sign just the blackened out front window. I guess you were just supposed to "know" this was it.
“Is it open yet?”
“Yeah, go on in.”

Inside, Jim and I stopped to pay the ten dollar cover charge. As we ventured deeper into the narrow space the rest of my romantic illusions were thoroughly dashed. The nightclub was wedged into the storefront. The bar ran almost the length of the club, at the back was a riser for the 'stage' that rose maybe eighteen inches above the floor. The space between the bar and the stage was four feet of linoleum for a dance floor, and opposite of that, of all things, were wooden bleacher seats, four or five seats high. It looked like there were five or six of the stage risers stacked on top of each other and bolted together. In the middle of the linoleum floor was a music stand and a keyboard, surely Ray's. The keyboard was being given a respectful space by the growing crowd in the shrinking room. The crowd seemed an even mix of women and men, but every third guy had on leather pants and a white shirt, concho belt optional for individuality, waiting to be discovered by Ray. We got a couple of beers and chatted away time until the show started.

Without announcement Ray and Michael McClure came out from behind a black curtain. Michael McClure, the beat poet, was friends with seminal beat writer Jack Kerouac who was an early influence on the young Jim Morrison. Later, after The Doors and Morrison's fame, McClure met Morrison, and they became friends. On this night McClure was dressed all in black with a Dr. Whoish multi-colored scarf . While he was arranging his manuscripts on the music stand, Ray adjusted himself behind the keyboard. He turned the power knob on and waited for McClure. Ray's graying hair was in a short spiked crew cut, he was dressed in latter day Carnaby Street fashion. Ray looked to McClure who nodded and Ray started to play. The crowd pressed in, a solid mass from stage to door, the waitresses pushed their way through the crowd. I lost track of Jim, but could feel his presence close by.

Ray played the accompaniment to McClure's words. Filling in the holes where words ended. Ray added his own statements, describing the indescribable. And McClure's words complimented the music, filling in the holes of Ray's music, giving form to the formless, interweaving to create aural textures. I closed my eyes bopping my head, grooving to the whole thing and let the eurythmia carry me away. McClure's words invoked Morrison, Ray played the ribbon of notes that make up the iconic opening of Light My Fire, “do-do-do-dew-do,” the crowd pressed forward as one, I opened my eyes, and for a moment I saw colors! The music had taken me on a trip! They had stripped away the boundaries of ordinary perception. For a moment I had stepped through the doors!

Ray looked up from his keyboards, "any questions?" He asked the audience. While McClure leafed through the pages on the music stand
"What was Jim like?" Someone yelled from the back.
"I could tell you what he was like, man," Ray said, in his gravely voice, "but what you really want to hear is, he was a cool guy, and fun to hang out with. He was, but he also could be a jackass, but that was only when he was drunk."
"Is Jim dead?" Another disembodied voice asked.
"Now, that wouldn't be much fun, would it," there was a kindly, but condescending tone in his voice like a somewhat stern schoolmaster in his twentieth year of explaining an overly simple problem to students, "if I told you Jim was alive, and living at 1349 California Avenue?" It couldn't be as simple as going to that address to find Jim Morrison alive and well. But what if it was reverse psychology? I let myself be intoxicated by the thought for a moment. What if Ray were telling the truth? What if it could be so simple as to find Jim Morrison alive, as to just knock on the door at that address! What would I find? A middle-aged Jim with a white beard and a world weary smile relieved it was all over? Or a cantankerous Morrison, pissed off at being discovered? Either way, I would be the greatest hero of the Doors world! Maybe of the Rock 'n' Roll world! Maybe of the world! But my imagination reined in from its fantasy, I knew Ray had been born and grew up in Chicago, I figured that address was probably his families old house or his Grandparent’s house or something much more prosaic like that.
"Seriously," Ray said, "Jim was a great guy but he denied himself his birthright, to see the future. So take his example and lead as an extraordinary a life as you can, push beyond your boundaries, see as much of the future as you can, and report back." During all this McClure had been standing at the music stand listening to Ray, without a signal Ray went into their next piece.

When it was over Ray said, "I'll only sign albums or things like that, no bar napkins." A collective groan went throughout the crowd, "really, what's that anyway?" He asked facetiously, "a napkin?" He and McClure were immediately surrounded by their admirers, the crowd around Ray was a little larger. As the admirers dwindled, a line formed. I stood at the end of the line and watched as Ray signed albums and chatted with girls. I stood there like an acolyte awaiting consecration, ‘but of what?’ I asked myself. While standing in line, I don't know how many times I heard people ask 'what was he like?' or some variation of that question. I wondered how many times Ray had heard that question in the almost twenty years since Morrison's death, and how many times would he hear it in the next twenty, thirty, forty or fifty years. Finally it was my turn.
"I don't have anything." I stammered out.
"Well, good luck," he said, smiling down on me as he stood up and went backstage.

Jim and I sat at the bar having another beer, waiting for I don't know what. Hoping to glimpse, one more time, the life I wanted. The styled hair, the fashionably elegant clothing, enough money in my pocket to buy whatever I desired, people hanging on my every word and rushing towards me. Or hoping Ray would see something in me, or that he'd even leave by the front door. I was beginning to feel like a stalker. I was tired of being a spectator I wanted to be on that stage. I wanted to be the one people were screaming for, trying to be with. I saw a long white limo pull up. From the back, Ray and Michael McClure came walking towards the door.
"Mr. Manzarek," I blurted out, just before they were safely out the door, and then I didn't know what to say. I knew I had only milliseconds to formulate, and say something to him, so I said the first thing that came into my head, "I'm going to start a cover band. Maybe you can come see us and give us a recommendation?"
"Sorry man, but I've been down that road. If that's your path, it's success or failure is your own challenge." And they left. I felt even more foolish than before, like a tourist caught on the wrong side of the velvet rope.

A couple of minutes later Jim and I were walking back to the car. It was about midnight, the night was cool and crisp, the sky dark blue, the streetlight halos like a starry, starry night, our breaths frosted puffs in the November air.
"Let's do it!" I exclaimed.
"Do what?" Jim asked.
"Let's go to that address Ray mentioned. 1349 California Avenue and see if Jim is there."
"You're crazy, it's not close."
"Closer than Madison." I said.
"So, we're going to knock on these people's door in the middle of the night and ask if Jim Morrison is there?"
"Sure, why not? We'd be the greatest heros of Rock 'n' Roll!"
"Or just two drunk guys arrested for bothering people in the middle of the night instead of going home." My enthusiasm deflated, I knew I wouldn't knock on that door by myself. I'd never know what was on the other side of that door. You either are something or not, I was neither. What did I have in life? My trailer? My Collections? Maybe Deidre was right, and I didn’t even have her any more. Where was that new world? I trudged on to the car. Then, I had the one moment of pure genius in my life, maybe there was another way to find Jim Morrison. It ceased to be a dream and became something more tangible, it turned to power as it manifested in my mind and I saw how I could do it! I'd been flirting with it for months and even said it to Ray. It was like I had been wandering in a wilderness and the path was now before me, the dream was over, I had woken up!
"I'm going to do it!" I exclaimed, jumping around, flapping my arms. Maybe it was from my new found sense of purpose, the excitement of meeting Ray, maybe it was the cold, or maybe because I was just a little drunk.
"Do what?" Jim asked.
"The cover band, The Doors cover band idea I told you about!"
"You were drunk." He said, as we walked down the street.
"Yeah, and I am now. The more I think about it, the more I see it can work. I can't get it out of my head."
"Well, can you sing?" He asked.
"No."
"Are you in a band?"
"No!"
"Do you know anyone in a band?"
"No! Jesus, don't be so hung up on the details. If you let the little things like that stand in your way, you're never going to get anywhere. I'll start this band, then maybe Ray will come and see us! And maybe even endorse us!" Then I had a vision, "or even think I'm good enough to perform as Jim, and we'll get together with Robby and John. I can tour with The Doors!"
"You're crazy."

It was a long drive back to Madison. As we sped deeper into the night, I tried to sleep, but couldn't. I rolled around fitfully in the seat, no matter which way I turned I couldn't get comfortable. I couldn't wait to get back to Madison to put my plan into effect. I knew I was running out of time to do something in life, but did I really have the balls to open that door?

(The Last Stage is available on Kindle, Nook Books, or if you would like a signed copy of The Last Stage they're available from my website (only $20!) at Jymsbooks via Paypal (jymwrite@aol.com, please don't forget your mailing address!)

Chapter VII: The Master Plan