Tonight, because it's Lillian's birthday, we're gonna do something a little different. Instead of reviewing last night's movie and the one before it, we're gonna get in our Time Machine and go back to the night of August 17, 1989, when she and I drove to the UCLA campus in Westwood, to see a preview screening of "Casualties of War." 'Twas a Thursday evening, and the movie, directed by Brian dePalma, was being shown at the UCLA film school one night prior to opening nationwide. We'd been invited, one of us or the other, by either my brother or his friend David Birke, who had recently graduated as a UCLA film student. David had made his final film project at our house earlier that year, over the Memorial Day weekend. I can't remember now, if they (my brother and/or David) extended the invitation to me, or to Lillian. My guess would be that my brother offered the passes to me, on behalf of David, but the invitation could've gone directly to Lillian, also, and it isn't crucial either way.
She and I weren't having the greatest Summer. Or at least I wasn't. I had other things on my mind, and as we watched the film, I just remember a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach, exacerbated by the ugly violence onscreen. Now, the funny thing is, had I been writing the blog back then, I very likely wouldn't have been able to review the movie the next day, because I wouldn't have remembered seeing it. Strange, right? But in the years since, when the time came that I could remember it, I've remembered the night more than I have the movie. And it wasn't a very happy night.
I must cut in to say that, for the period spanning late September 1989 to October 1993, I couldn't remember much about 1989 at all. But even stranger than that, is the fact that it would never have occurred to me to even think about that year. And so, to put it another way, I "wouldn't have remembered not remembering" that I'd seen "Casualties of War", or that I'd seen it at UCLA, or that after we saw it, I had a terrible night.
Lillian's night sucked, too.
But mine was much worse than hers.
But yeah, it wouldn't have occurred to me to even think about that year, so - until I did start thinking about 1989 - when a shocking memory came back to me in October 1993, I never knew anything about the night of August 17. It wasn't until I began using movies as memory triggers (because Lillian and I went to a lot of movies), that I remembered the events of that night, the main event of which was a horrible argument we had on the way home. I must cut in again, to say that - for the uninitiated, and to make a long story short - I was using movies as memory triggers in the same way that your favorite songs can make you remember where you were and how you felt when you first heard them. I have, I am learning, something close to an eidetic memory, and certainly a photographic memory. I am amazed by the things I've remembered, especially after what was done to me to cause me not to remember them. But that is a whole 'nuther story. Suffice it to say, that for 30 years as of last month, I've been working to restore my memory of the year 1989, which some very bad people tried hard to destroy.
And sometime in the years between 2004 - 06, I began compiling a list of every movie Lillian and I ever saw. I used IMDB and other internet sites to help make this list, and it also helped that I have a strong memory. And it was when I got to our 1989 movies that I remembered we saw "Casualties of War." The location stood out; I recalled we'd seen it at UCLA, on the night before it opened in theaters, as the guests of David Birke. Thus, as it's national release date was Friday August 18, I was able to place the date of the UCLA showing as August 17. And I remembered our horrible argument.
Things hadn't been going well for Lillian and I that Summer. And when the movie ended, as we were leaving, she said, "Oh...there's Mrs. Birke (David's mother). I'm going to go say hello to her, I'll be right back." Well, because I was already miffed at Lilly, (more about which in a minute) her acknowledgement of Mrs. Birke got my antennae up, and as we walked out to the car, I said, "So...how do you know Mrs. Birke?" What I meant was, "How do you know Mrs. Birke when I don't even know her and have never met her?" I'd suspected Lillian of cheating on me that year, and I thought the only way she could know Mrs. Birke is if they met at a function where I was not present.
And it turned out they had. As I continued to press Lillian as we drove up the 405, she finally said, "Okay, you wanna know? I met her at the same theater, at the screening for Dave's student movie!" Lillian was pissed that I'd caught her out, and when she got angry, she had a temper that was extremely frightening. The thing was, I'd never seen her lose her temper before. But I'd caught her in a deception, and she started yelling at me as I continued to press her. "I do a LOT of things I don't tell you about!" she blurted.
I remembered all of that, sometime between 2004 - 2006. I'd have to go into my journals to give an exact date (it was when I was first compiling my movie lists). Well, for years, I thought that was the extent of our horrible argument, i.e. me confronting her about knowing Mrs. Birke. That connection had other, very serious connotations that connected Lillian and David to a man named Rappaport, but at any rate, when I ultimately wrote about that night in my 2006 book "What Happened in Northridge", I wrote that the argument continued until we got back to my house, at which Lillian dropped me off and went home. The big "kicker" for me, as far as the book and it's mystery were concerned, was that I'd connected her to David Birke, in a way that was separate from me and our relationship. Because why else would she be invited to his student film screening when I wasn't? After all, she didn't know David. He was my brother's friend. And I was thinking, "how in the world does she know David Birke?" And of course, it opened up a can of worms.
Well, for years, I thought our argument was all about Mrs. Birke, but earlier this year, I realised that she was only the tip of the iceberg on that terrible, terrible night.
Let me explain. For years, regarding the massive amount of information I've had to process and organize as it pertains to What Happened in Northridge, I had a "single-image" memory, like a mental snapshot, that showed Lillian standing on the doorstep of a man named Marshall L., who lived across the street from my family back then. That's all the memory was: just a snapshot of her standing there, on his porch. It didn't amount to much, so I put it on the back burner, because with so much information to process, it didn't give me much to go on. By 2006, I did know that Marshall had been one of two people to come to Rappaport's door after he kidnapped me, during the time I was held captive in his house. The other person was Dennis Janovitch. Both Marshall and Dennis knew that he'd kidnapped me, and both urged Rappaport to let me go, which he refused to do. They may have been worried he was going to kill me, and they were very nearly right. And of course, both Dennis and Marshall were connected to him.
But to get back to Lillian, while I didn't know why she had been standing on Marshall's porch, nor when that "snapshot image" had been imprinted, there was, on her account, already a Rappaport Connection, which now included Dennis, Marshall and David Birke. And, as all of this pertains to Marshall, for years, I thought he was what you might call a "shady neighbor" who knew what Rappaport was up to, and tried to talk him out of it. And I never tried to "develop" that "snapshot image" of Lillian standing on his porch, because, in my amnesia, I didn't think it amounted to much.
Then, in February of this year, I began meditating, and after 30 years of frustration, several mind-boggling memories came back to me, one of which was the origin and larger context for my "Lillian on Marshall's porch" image. I was staggered, as the larger, continuous memory connected to our horrible argument on the night we saw "Casualties of War" came to light. As it turned out, the argument hadn't hinged on Lillian's acquaintance with Mrs Birke! That was only the starting point. Nor had it ended when we got back to my house. In fact, because I'd refused to get out of her car, it continued late into the night, getting uglier and uglier by the minute. She turned off her car's engine and got increasingly frustrated as I badgered her with questions, provoked by her statement on the freeway: "I do a LOT of things I don't tell you about!" As my full memory now returned, I realized I had seen her several days prior to our "Casualties of War" nightmare, sometime in early August 1989, park her car on the west side of my house, but instead of coming to see me, she went across the street to see Marshall L! That's where the "snapshot" memory came from! Marshall, in those days, was called The Bodybuilder by some of our friends. He was older than us, perhaps by ten years, and he had a stocky, clean-cut look.
Well, imagine my surprise, when the full memory of her visit to his doorstep came back to me 34 years later. And it was not a happy memory. And in her car, on the night of "Casualties of War", Lillian admitted to me a secret "lifestyle" she'd been part of, that included Marshall and his girlfriend. She spat these admissions at me with a temper described above. It was like being next to an entirely different person. She said horrible things to me that night, in a sarcastic tone of voice, and I learned that she really didn't like me very much, to put it mildly. I in turn was shocked at her admissions, which I'll say no more about now, but come back when I finish my new book (hopefully next year), and I'll tell you everything. Because now, I don't think she's a very good person, to put it mildly. And it disgusts me that she's allowed to keep working for Walt Disney and soiling the company name. And that she's never gone to prison, or suffered one single consequence for her actions. But then, none of the bad guys have ever suffered a consequence, because they've all had protection. By now, we have a good idea from where that protection comes, but I'm sidetracking. Anyway, back to the story....
Well, in February of this year, by which time I now knew of her involvement with Marshall L., I thought that was it, as far as the extent of our argument that night. I knew it had gone on long after she parked her car, and in meditation I remember her, tired and pleading, "please, will you get out of my car? It's 2am. I have to be at work in the morning."
I continued meditating daily through March of this year, at which point nothing new was coming, so I stopped and devoted my efforts to finishing my two latest books, the ones I finished recently and hope to publish next year. In October, I finished both of them, then began writing my new book (an updated and more complete version of "What Happened in Northridge"), and - in an effort to fill the gaps in the 2006 version of that book - I began meditating again to improve my memory. And I picked up where I left off, at our "Casualties of War" argument, because I wanted to see if I could recover exact or even approximate dialogue from that night. And I got some, but what is even more astounding is that I remembered that things got so ugly, and Lillian so much wanted to go home, that she opened her purse and showed me a stun gun.
And when I remembered that, it was like: Boom! Goodbye Mr. Spalding.
Because I knew then, as the memory played in my mind, that the stun gun was the same one she and Terry used on me 15 nights later in his apartment, when they very nearly ended my life. And I knew that it had been given to her by Marshall L, an electronics manufacturer. Well, I meditated the next day, to see "what happened after that." I was on a roll, and the floodgates had opened, releasing other absolutely game-changing memories that we haven't the time for right now. All of this has happened in the last ten days or so.
The next "film segment" that came up in my daily meditations (this one about three days ago) continued after Lillian showed me the stun gun. When I apparently still wouldn't get out of her car (and may have taken her keys out of the ignition), at some point Marshall himself came out of his house. I don't know if it was because he heard all the yelling, or Lillian summoned him, but he came first to her driver's side window and she told him what the problem was. She'd already "explained" (by yelling and degrading me) that he was her boyfriend now, not me, and then.......that was when I remembered her diamond ring!
Oh, the power of memory! You really do have a "film of your whole life" inside your head. It's actually inside your Spirit, which is why it can never be successfully erased. You do have to work hard to get at it, but I'm a pro by now, and I remembered that Lillian had on a big, gaudy diamond ring that night, and that was what provoked our Nightmare Evening, not Mrs. Birke. She was only the final straw. Now, keep in mind that our whole relationship had been in trouble dating back to (at least) mid-1988, and likely earlier.
And I'd always thought the trouble began with Terry, who Lilly was also having a sexual relationship with, and that the situation exploded at Concord Square on the night of September 1st, which began the Event known as What Happened in Northridge. But now, to my utter amazement, I am seeing that it began, or exploded, on the night of "Casualties of War", provoked by the diamond ring she was wearing. Her "Mrs. Birke" comment was merely the final straw. I'd been stewing at that ring the entire evening. That's why I had a pit in my stomach as the film played.
But that wasn't all. As my meditations continued, over the past three days, I learned that Marshall illegally detained me that night. Using some strongarm method (still to be determined, but likely a pistol or the stun gun) he forced me into his house. I pulled up a memory of sitting in his living room, in handcuffs, that played in my mind like a movie. I could see his mantle, the clock above it, and the yellow-painted living room walls. Marshall had detained me, through use of force, because I'd been yelling, and because Lillian had divulged their secret. The argument was loud, and the cops could've come, which would've screwed up a whole bunch of people's trips. Our argument was so ugly, you'd have thought we were mortal enemies, and that she'd hated me the entire ten years we were together. And Marshall came outside, at 2 am. He forced me out of Lillian's car, told her to drive away, then forced me into his house, where I sat on his couch, in handcuffs, and looked at his cuckoo clock.
But then, it got even weirder, because tonight The Walls of Jericho came down.
In tonight's meditation, I remembered.....(get ready).....that Marshall had made a phone call, and that Howard Schaller responded! Holy smokes! Howard came to Marshall's house, while I was sitting on his couch in handcuffs! Yessirree! Marshall was connected to Howard, who later attacked Lillian in the Northridge Hospital Parking Lot on the night of September 1st! Howard was of course a speed dealer. I doubt the swingers used speed, but maybe Howard sold cocaine, also. Unfortunately, he's deader than a freaking doornail now, so we can't ask him (though I suppose we could go down to Hell and look him up).
But even that's not all, because then Howard Schaller called Dave Small, and told him to get his ass over there right away, because they "had a situation" on their hands, "involving your buddy Adam".
And so good old Davey Small, the middleman between Howard and Lillian in their drug deals, (and she had two other middlemen, Dennis and The Evil David Friedman, for her drug deals with the sociopathic Gary Patterson) came over to Marshall 's house that night in the wee hours of the morning. I can remember looking out his window as the sky turned purple just before sunrise. I still had the handcuffs on. He was "apologizing" for what had happened. Howard wanted Marshall's assurance that nothing would "get out" and that, if it did, that his name would be kept out of it. Marshall assured him that he'd handle it, and negotiated with me to let me go. I did the old "I promise you guys I won't say anything" routine. Dave Small acted strangely unlike his mild-mannered self, like a lower-or-middle ranking "drug professional". "Sorry about this, Ad. Don't worry, Howard. He won't say anything." In my memory, I could picture the shirt he was wearing.
Once Howard had their promises, and mine, that there wouldn't be any trouble, he left. And Dave left soon after that. I'm still working on what Marshall did to me before letting me go home. I think he had an electronic device that works like Rohypnol, it emits sounds and tones that "sound like they are coming from inside your head". And perhaps he drugged me as well. Because I didn't remember the incident the next day!
So there you have it: game, set and match. You have Lillian, Marshall L, Howard Schaller, and Dave Small, all wrapped up in one package, with a pretty bow tied around it for Lillian's birthday. Oh, and you have me in Marshall's house, in handcuffs as the sun was coming up. And, man oh man, does this situation connect about a hundred dots! And I've been working on this puzzle for 30 long years, while I've been twisting in the wind.
So Happy Birthday, Lilly! I hope you had one hell of a doggone nice day. And that goes for the rest of you clowns. The good news is that there's much, much more to come. :)
We'll resume our movies next time. The picture is razor sharp! ////
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