Three Strange Days
Because of the Hazelden rehab community, the city and surrounding area of Minneapolis, Minnesota has historically been a destination for addicts of all kinds to clean up and dry out.
Mary Hesser was not one of those people.
Six feet tall and a natural beauty, Mary was my roommate for a year when I lived off-campus my second year of college. She was a huge consumer of cannabis, nicotine, and beer and was never home. On those days she was, it was in the middle of the day (she didn't have a job and rarely attended classes) and we'd watch Little House on the Prairie while she smoked from her bong. I had never seen a bong before, let alone one made from an apple.
"You're so easy to talk to," Mary would croon, her eyes half-mast as she studied me. It was a compliment. But it was also what interesting people said to uninteresting people.
She also told me that when I grew up she bet I'd look like "Ma" from the show. "She's gorgeous," Mary would insist, her striking light-blue eyes all big, and I got the message: but you're not really there yet.
I didn't know Mary well. On the rare occasions she was home, she'd disappear behind her bedroom door and turn Blondie way up. I swear she only listened to one song: "Dreamin'." Mary was ruining Blondie for me with her obsession, and for that, I wasn't sure I'd ever forgive her.
My other roommate, Fiona Burley, I did know well, but she kept disappearing with each new boyfriend. She was from England and was an actress and I only saw her on campus, when she'd make a huge deal that we were reunited for the moment and give me an elaborate hug while her boyfriend smirked in the background and then she'd be off again.
Some women constantly remake themselves into who their boyfriends want them to be, and that was Fiona. She always had a different look, as if she were trying on different roles. The last one I saw her in was a black pullover tunic sweater, black leggings, and a black headband in her red bobbed hair. I told her she looked like she belonged in a French film. She kissed me on both cheeks and departed.
Our duplex was about a mile from campus. We lived upstairs and some engineering guys lived downstairs. I had transferred from a private-school disaster and needed a room, badly, while attending the U. When I met Fiona in Theater History class she said they had a room I could stay in for a deep discount. It was actually a closet in the front hallway. My mattress was up on this shelf. There were no windows. I paid them $100 a month.
When I think of sleeping on that shelf, I shudder, but the neighborhood wasn't too bad and the rest of the duplex was decent in a cheap, dingy kind of way. Large bathroom, full kitchen, even a small balcony. Of course, Mary and Fiona were never there, so I often felt like I lived there alone and left my bed-shelf in the closet for the living room couch at night.
There was a song by School of Fish, a one-hit wonder called "Three Strange Days" that talked about despair:
For three strange days
I couldn't put a smile on my face
So they dressed me up in all of their clothes
And took me somewhere else.
This was my state of mind that summer--adrift. I was flopping around in my hippie clothes and wore these black flat-soled slipperlike shoes I had got at some hippie Cedar-Riverside store near campus. They didn't support my feet enough and they were made of thin cotton so when it rained they were like little wet pillowcases clinging to my feet.
I flopped this way and that looking for a job that summer, after classes ended for the semester. In 1991 you didn't have online jobs to apply to--you went from business to business asking for an application. I finally found one at the 24-hour Perkins about six blocks from the duplex. I'd start hostessing during the graveyard shift and, after my mettle was tested, work my way up to waitressing.
My first shift started at 5 pm and I didn't get out of there until 3 a.m. On my way out I overheard one of the waitresses ask Chad, the manager, "how's new girl?"
"Ok. A little flat-chested." It was going to be a long summer.
Besides being a safe place for addicts to gather and start over, Minneapolis is known for a nightclub featured in Prince's movie "Purple Rain." Called First Avenue, it's in a corner of downtown, a block from the skeezy bus station.
It does not look like it does in the movie. It looks like a club a block from a skeezy bus station, and it actually was built to be a bus depot in 1937 and operated as such until the late sixties, when the buses moved a block away and the building became a nightclub. With a huge stage and dance floor and a balcony/bar area lining the upper deck, you often feel like you've been swallowed up by a massive ship painted almost completely black.
I was recovering from one of my late nights working at Perkins when Fiona and Mary surprised me by being home one afternoon at the same time. I stumbled out of my closet having only slept a few hours to find them on the couch, talking.
"Are you really from England?" Mary asked, taking a huge hit from her bong.
Fiona laughed. "Of course, darling! I'm as English as Jane Austen!" A word about Fiona's laugh. The laughing yoga people have nothing on her--punctuated by individual breaths, it was like Fiona was mistaking her actress breath warmups for actual laughter: "HA! HA! HA!"
She turned to me. "Karin, you're up! We were just planning a girls' night out tonight at First Ave. You are absolutely coming with us for Danceteria."
"I don't--what's Danceteria?"
Mary and Fiona looked at each other, sudden compatriots. Fiona said, "You'll love it."
None of us had a car, so Mary somehow convinced her sister Martha to come get us. Martha was out of school and worked in neighboring St. Paul. The only other times I saw her was when she came to pick up Mary for church (!) on Sunday mornings. They dressed in bizarre all-white dresses and sunglasses and when Martha picked up Mary in the minivan she drove, it was like Mary was climbing into some kind of cult kidnapper vehicle as the sliding door shut behind her. She got in the back, as their father sat in the passenger side while Martha drove. I couldn't figure it out, couldn't connect this Sunday Morning Mary with Apple Bong and Beer Mary.
Now, Mary nudged my elbow. "You look a little tense."
"I'm okay."
"When's the last time you went dancing?"
"Can't even remember."
"We just thought you needed a break from your graveyard-shift grind. You look so tired all the time."
"I am tired all the time." Up in front, Fiona stopped chattering and flipped the visor down so she could check us out in the mirror. "Everyone ok back there?"
"Just ducky, Princess," Mary returned. She took a cigarette out of her pack and stuck it in her mouth, left it unlit, and leaned back in her seat, closing her eyes. I glanced at her. She opened them then, and winked at me.
