We had a haunted house when we took a farm out by Nekoosa. There was stomping footsteps in the attic. Jackie thought that the house was haunted and that we should move out immediately. I really wanted to find out what it was all about. I was sure there was a reasonable explanation.
A few days later, Dawn Moleski, one of Jackie's closest friends, came up to see us. She was extremely excited! She knew about the house hauntings and said she had met a strange black guy named 'Oz.' When she asked him what he did for a living, he blithely said he haunted Houses out by Lynn Hill Creek!!! We lived on a farm just above Lynn Hill Creek!!!!!
I wondered who the hell this guy was and asked her if she knew anything more about the guy. She didn't. She just knew that he was from Nekoosa and that friends from Nekoosa knew him.
Jackie and I moved out immediately! And for a short time I wondered about this guy 'Oz' and just what his intentions and powers were. An encounter like that really didn't say too much about whatever it was that was doing it and this 'Oz's blithe comment didn't say too much for him. Yet, I soon forgot about the house haunting and carried on with my life.
I also had a more personal reason for leaving the house and I wasn't sure if it was the house or whether it was Jackie.
One night I got up to go to the bathroom and was walking to the bathroom in the dark when suddenly Jackie jumped on my back and started to beat on my head. I was stunned and started yelling for help and tried to get her off me. My cries for help were a bit sarcastic and it made her stop beating me on the head and she said she didn't know what possessed her.
Another time, we were just getting ready to make love and she suddenly got a most crazy look in her eyes and began to look like she was going to kill me or something. I became very careful with her and tried to talk sense to her, but I couldn't reach her. She continued to look at me with an insane look in her eye as if she wanted to hurt me. I kept talking to her and eventually talked her back to reality. I didn't ask her any questions. We just went to sleep.
Jackie and I moved to a small, square basement brick house in Wisconsin Rapids. Also over Christmas before any of the strange behaviors had begun, we had purchased two collies. Both were registered in Jackie's name, but Becca was Jackie's and Jess, a championship breed tri-color, was mine. Jess was born on Christmas day.
He was full of spunk and when I drove him home in the back seat of the Chevy, he would put his paws on my shoulder and lick me in the ear while I was trying to drive and he would look down the road as if he were the boss or something. I loved him and he loved me.
I tried to move out on Jackie once. It was the year I was practicing my guitars in a separate residence. She responded by attempting to come all the way across town, walking, with a knife. That was my second and more obvious experience with telepathy. I got a weird feeling that she was going to threaten my life. I didn't know why. I just knew. The feeling was overwhelming and I locked all of the doors and windows on my new house. She told me later about coming as far as the swimming pool carrying the knife with intention to harm me.
I should have left her, then, for certain, but I came right back and lived with her because I was afraid of what she might do. Then one afternoon she told me that, if I didn't call her parents and my parents right then and there, she would do something drastic like go to California with Jack Vicars a strange friend of hers. She was talking about a girlfriend of hers who died from drugs and said she was thinking of doing something similar. I felt compelled to do what she said because I felt that she needed me. I was a little mixed up at the time, I admit, but I wasn't sure just what she would do if I didn't do what she said.
I didn't know what to do. I didn't trust my parents and I didn't think that they would believe me about Jackie. I called my parents and told them that we were going to get married.
Jackie immediately went out and got the marriage certificate as quickly as she could. I didn't tell anyone and that was my mistake. We were married two weeks later at my parents house. When the Reverend got to asking me whether I do or not, Jackie smacked me on the butt, and I said, "I do." I continued to stay silent about Jackie.
The Vietnam War was still going on and Richard Nixon was the President; my draft number was 55 and it was up. I was worried about a nation that carried on a painful and unnecessary war of destruction halfway around the globe in a country we had no business being in. I had read many articles written by young people who were worried like I was.
I was a conscientious objector. I didn't believe in harming anything living for any reason. I felt that life was a holy gift of god, and to destroy a gift of god as sacred as life was terribly wrong. Societies who displayed the taking of life as entertainment on television were morally bankrupt and were failing God and themselves even if other more primitive countries were still filled with violence.
Some men my age thought that if their country was threatened they would defend it. But the Vietnam War was something quite different. It seemed we were a country trying to impose it's thinking and way of life on a foreign country with an entirely different history and way of thinking. We were definitely wrong to be over there.
I wrote fifteen pages to that effect describing my philosophy of life, and my feelings about war and killing. Three high school teachers and two ministers signed it showing their moral support for me and my views, but the draft board at Wisconsin Rapids refused to grant me conscientious objector's status. I could have taken the draft board to court, but I didn't think we had enough money. It looked like I was going to be doing things I didn't believe in at all......
Jackie and I talked it over and we decided that we would use every means available to keep me out. We heard about an antidraft psychiatrist in Milwaukee. We called him and he said that he was willing to help.
We went to see him about Jackie's inability to handle life without me and her general psychological instability. She cried in front of him and generally acted unstable. He gave the draft board a statement saying that Jackie couldn't function without me there to take care of her. The draft board, again, wasn't convinced to leave me out of the military. It was a peculiar reaction to her story, but it was just another strange thing that happened; I was drafted anyway; December 6, 1972.
When I got to Fort Leonardwood, Missouri for basic training, I immediately filed for a hardship discharge on the basis that Jackie was unstable without me there to take care of her.
The army was frightening. Everything about it was very inhuman. The drill sargents were cold, coarse bastards who got their jollys harassing and scaring young inductees. They particularly enjoyed harassing the guys who came in with long hair. I had suspected as much and had my hair cut before I was inducted.
After a month of slogging through ice and snow and living in cold, insufficiently heated barracks, everyone had pneumonia. My chest was full of phlegm and my right ear was going bad. When I went to sick bay for a checkup the man in charge told me that the phlegm in my chest was caused by my smoking cigarettes. I didn't smoke and told him so.
He still insisted that it came from smoking. It was clear to me that he was lying and crazy.
None of us got treatment for our pneumonia.
We all got leave for Christmas and I headed home to get treatment for my pneumonia. When I got off the plane, I immediately went into a coma which lasted approximately four hours. When I came to, Jackie was there and I was at my parents house in their bedroom. I didn't really know what had happened. The next day, Sunday, we went to the hospital and Dr. Starr gave me some strong anti-biotics. I told him about my treatment at Fort Leonardwood and he said that he was appalled.
The truly sad news came when I got back to basic. The guy who had the most beautiful long blonde hair when he came in had died in his parents arms when he went home for Christmas. He had died from the mistreatment he had received in the Armed Forces.
Everywhere I went in basic training, I was either singing or whistling the song Michelle by the Beatles. I didn't really understand my utter infatuation at the time, but my buddies used to joke with me about it.
Eventually basic training ended and I received the relieving news that my Hardship Discharge had been approved. I came back to Jackie and worked in the paper mill.
Our landlady told-me that, while is was gone, in Basic-Training, Jackie had had 4 guys over to our house: presumably trying to get pregnant and still keeping-me as her husband......????
I was so stupid: I would have accepted anything.
At the paper mill there was a surprise awaiting me. My first day back at work I was placed on the paper machines as a spare-hand. There are two spare-hands on all the machines in the Nekoosa mill. 'Oz' was the other spare-hand!!??!
The paper machines ran smoothly for three weeks straight, which is very unusual. It gave me a chance to talk to this 'Oz' guy who had told one of Jackie's girlfriends that he haunted houses a year earlier when Jackie and I had the haunted house in the same area he had said.
I really didn't outwardly think about the house-haunting. I was amazed and a bit taken aback. I was careful. I was friendly. I tried to share as much of myself as possible and I asked as many legitimately conceivable questions as possible without seeming pretentious. I was curious about the guy.
It seemed that we agreed in philosophy about everything. He seemed to have a rather negative and sarcastic way of dealing with people, though. When I asked him if he had ever heard of the album IN THE COURT OF THE CRIMSON KING by King Crimson, he said angrily at me, without any real reason, that the album was a 'horrible' one. He was rather furious with me for a long time after that day. He seemed to blame me for the album. I really couldn't find out why. The next day I decided to ask him about King Crimson again exactly the same way. This time he smiled and thought that it was a great album. I became wary of him!!
Life went on and I lived rather uncomfortably with Jackie. Since we were married, she told me some unusual things about herself. She told me about an incident where her older sister had received a pair of leather boots from her mother and Jackie had been jealous. At age thirteen she had gone into the corner of the living room and 'peed' on the carpet. If I was a 13 year old girl, I would never do such a thing at age thirteen. I really knew her to be a strange person. I didn't want to be married to her.
Then one afternoon we were at a party at one of her friend's house and she was married to the guy who had taken Jackie's virginity. About halfway through the party Jackie wanted to show me her friend's house. We went inside and she hauled me over to a side bedroom and wanted to make love. I got an erection thinking about making love to her and got ready to take off my pants. She lay down on the bed and suddenly her eyes rolled back into her head and she started moaning and rolling around on the bed all by herself. Strange! I felt like if she could get off without me, why did she need me.
Anyway, I wanted to leave her for certain and I was just trying to think of how to do it without incurring her wrath.
One night we were out to the Rafters, a bar two Nekoosa brothers, Bill and Rick, opened with the help of their father. It was kind of a counter-culture hangout and I felt drawn to the place because of the live rock 'n' roll bands that they were hiring to play there. Anyway, I was up at the bar getting Jackie and me each a beer when I felt a tapping on my right shoulder. It was 'Oz' and he said, 'You wanna see a really nice looking chic!??'
I said, 'Sure!'
He turned and signaled me to follow him and then he pointed to this girl. I looked in her direction and immediately noticed how pretty she was. She had raven hair, deep-dark blue eyes, and she was standing almost on tip-toe up to this guy and looking at us.
'Wow, 'Oz' she's really a Queen!!,' I said, enthusiastically.
'What's her name?'
And as I looked I noticed she was looking at 'Oz' with a very tense smile. A thought burst into my head and was directed to her, 'She's looking at me!' I felt like it didn't really come from me. I felt immediately like I possessed her and it didn't make any sense to me because I didn't even know her.
She seemed to respond to my thought almost as if she had heard me subconsciously and immediately looked in my direction and her smile became more comfortable. It was the first time that it had occurred to me to think to someone with the expectation that they respond. But the thought was clearly to communicate telepathically with her. And it seemed to work.
'Oz' responded to my question about her name.
'Her name is Michelle!' he said.
I was taken aback and went back to Jackie's table.
I went back to Jackie's table and decided to just listen to Jackie's conversation with Cindy Vleeschouwers, her best friend.
While I was listening to their conversation I would suddenly get this heat on the back of my neck and I would look and there was Michelle sitting with a different guy. She was looking directly at me and smiling this tremendous smile. I didn't pay any attention to it and went back to listening to Jackie's conversation.
Another fifteen minutes would pass and then I'd get this heat on the back of my neck and I'd look and there would be Michelle, this time with a different guy, from a completely different position in the bar, looking directly at me and smiling this tremendous smile. Again, I didn't pay any attention.
Another period of time went by. Then I felt this heat on the back of my neck and there would be Michelle with a totally different guy, from a completely different direction, looking directly at me and smiling this tremendous smile.
'Oz,' after he had pointed Michelle out to me, went out to break up with his girlfriend at the time, Sue. I decided that he must really want this Michelle and after she was looking at me all the time with a different guy each time, I decided that I would tell him that she was really a tremendous flirt!
Jackie and I went home after that night. When we got home, I started thinking about this girl Michelle and the way she looked almost like the eerie vision I had in my house in Nekoosa in 1970, before Jackie, only she was smiling. I also thought about 'Oz' and how he fit in with the house haunting with his statement to Jackie's friend, Dawn, that he 'haunted houses out by Lynn Hill Creek.'
I also thought about Jackie and my obvious fear of her. And wondered when I was going to leave her. I had been trying to let her know in various ways that I had intentions of leaving her, but they just didn't seem to sink in. I knew that if I left there would be trouble, but I didn't know what. I resolved to stay with her and to continue to let her know that I was thinking about leaving.
I had been associating with 'Oz' now for several months. He had purchased a set of Rogers drums from a guy and I had brought over my pedal steel to his house and left it there so we could play whenever we wanted. We kept the equipment in 'Oz's basement.
We would listen to music at 'Oz's apartment and there were some strange songs that he and his housemates would play when we would get stoned. I smoked marijuana quite regularly and had experimented with hashish by smoking immense quantities of it for three weeks straight when I had moved out on Jackie the first time. I found that it allowed me to hear music and lyrics better and gave me new insight into the music that I was listening to, but when smoked in quantity it made me very lazy, slowed my thinking, and interfered with the accuracy of my guitar playing. I decided that it had both good and bad effects.
But I lived with Jackie, after she had blackmailed me into marrying her, and settled into thinking that maybe eventually when our financial affairs permitted it, we would have children, I could party with my friends out at the Rafters, and I could practice my bottle-neck slide guitar playing and maybe join a band.
Daily, when I got home from work, I would put on the The Allman Brothers Band At Fillmore East tape I had made where I had joined the separate tracks on the album into one long jam. I practiced my bottle-neck slide playing until I could perfectly play Duanne Allman and Dickey Betts' slide guitar and electric guitar licks just as if I was the third lead guitarist in the band.
Sometimes, I would party with my male friends. We would just smoke marijuana and listen to the incredible recorded music of the 60s and 70s bands of that time.
Jackie didn't like this.
She wanted me to get rid of my pot smoking friends.
I tried to ignore her.
I had good friends, could play guitar like a professional, and decided that if I was going to remain married to her, I wanted to enjoy my life my friend's way and party with Jackie and make my friends our friends.
There was absolutely nothing wrong with this.
I began to think again that maybe there was something wrong with Jackie.
When I had moved out on Jackie to practice my guitars in a separate house, four high school Seniors from my old high school came over to hear me play. They wanted to start a band and play for the high school Homecoming dance.
At first I said no because I didn't think they could back me up, but eventually they convinced me they would try.
We formed a band and practiced out in Jim Mansavage's garage.
Boy! Did we sound good!! Just like the Allman Brothers and Eric Clapton...
We played the high school Homecoming dance and played two sets of Allman Brothers and Derek and the Dominoes.
I did a 35 minute improvised version of Whipping Post doing both lead guitars and singing.
We were clean and professional.
While we were practicing in Jim's garage, Jackie had been plotting.
One day, after I got home from work, I was looking for my checkbook to purchase another ounce of marijuana.
I asked Jackie where my checkbook was.
She became indignant and told me she knew, but she wasn't going to tell me.
This made me angry, but I figured she was getting silly again and looked for it out in the living room. I couldn't find it and came back to the bedroom where Jackie stood with her arms crossed over her chest.
I asked her where the checkbook was.
She said she wouldn't tell me.
Then she told me that she didn't want me smoking pot and didn't like my friends.
I told her it was my life, my checkbook, my job, and that with our joint checking account, I was making twice as much money per month as she did and I allowed her to have a joint checking account with my income.
She still wouldn't tell me where my checkbook was.
I went out to the living room, but couldn't find it.
I asked Jackie where my checkbook was.
She said she wasn't going to tell me.
Clearly, here, she was dictating to me what my life was going to be.
We hadn't played Homecoming yet, but I had decided that if I was going to work in the paper mill the rest of my life, that I was going to do something with my life and become a great slide guitarist.
She was interfering.
I went out to the living room and looked for my checkbook, but couldn't find it.
I came back in the bedroom where Jackie was standing with her arms across her chest.
I asked her where my checkbook was.
She said she wouldn't tell me.
I had read the book The Three Musketeers and had learned that, when challenging a man to a duel, the challenger slapped the opponent gently across the cheek with his glove.
I decided I would do this to Jackie for what she was doing.
I raised my hand as if to slap her and backed her up over the bed until she started to fall back on the bed, then I slapped gently at her cheek.
I remember being disappointed because I had missed her cheek.
I went out to the living room and got my checkbook myself.
I went to the bank, then got the ounce of marijuana.
It took me approximately four hours and I came back home thinking that I had given Jackie time to think about her transgression, but when I got home, she wasn't there.
After about an hour, she came in through the kitchen door.
I could see her eyes were black and blue, but I knew it wasn't from me.
I had always thought after my highschool creative writing teacher told us to be silent observers, that I should be a silent observer.
I was silent.
She tried to accuse me there, but I ignored it.
I now knew she was a 'nut.'
I had to leave her, but I was still practicing with the band, so I waited.
I heard rumours that she told her parents that I had slapped her.
I had tried, but missed.
She told me she had told my parents also.
I ignored her.
She was plotting against me, and fabricating the whole thing and apparently had went to great lengths to beat herself around the eyes and accuse me of hitting her.
I was clearly justified, but had missed.
She needed a good spanking for her childish behaviors.
A few weeks later, she started talking about her quitting her job and I financing her nursing school education and she also wanted to get pregnant with my child.
I said we'd discuss it later.
Two weeks later, I was in the kitchen when suddenly she announced to me that she had gone off the pill.
This was the last straw.
Trying to steal me by stealing a child from me at my expense??.
I told her to get back on the pill and apparently she did.
I have had no children to this day and have been a celibate for 25 years, now.
Finally, I left Jackie.
Leroy and 'Oz' had come over to our house and it was becoming clear to me that I should move out.
I went to 'Oz's, lived there while I looked for another apartment.
The next day, I was called to the hospital to see Jackie.
She had apparently downed a whole bunch of pills and had to have her stomach pumped.
I remember them opening the door to her room and there she was, acting like I was some kind of monster, and her with this really crazy learing look in her eyes, pointing at me like, "Hiiiiiimmmmm????"
I didn't go in.
Linda was outside and asked me if I cared about Jackie and I said no.
I left.
I got an apartment in Nekoosa near the mill where I worked.
One afternoon, I was sitting in my apartment, when suddenly it occurred to me that Jackie was plotting against me again and that Michelle and Jackie would show up at the Rafters that night together.
I went out and purchased a Fifth of Cuervo Gold Tequila and drank most of it all at once.
Then there was a knock on the door. It was Dean Strand.
He wanted me to go out with him and get stoned.
We went out in his Ford Bronco and had three bowls of his Panama Red.
By the time we reached the Rafters, I was gone.
Bill and Rick set me up at the door to take the people's money and stamp them.
I was so stoned and in such high spirits, that many of them, I let in free.
When Bill noticed this, he took the stamp and told me to sit somewhere else.
I sat at the far end of the bar with my back turned towards the entrance.
I was sitting there for about a half hour, when I became paranoid and suddenly it occurred to me that Jackie and Michelle were coming in.
In all of the time I knew Jackie, she had never been friends with Michelle.
I turned around.
It was true.
Here they came, both of them angry, and it was clear that Jackie had been plotting again.
Michelle sat in front of my barstool with Linda, the girl at the hospital after Jackie had her stomach pumped.
Linda and Michelle came up to me, Linda walked away, but Michelle stayed next to my barstool on my left side. My eyes must have been really bloodshot-red!!!
I thought to her again, "You shouldn't be on my left side."
Michelle moved to my right side up against the bar.
I thought to her again, "You shouldn't be on my right side."
She came around in front of me.
I looked at her.
I reached out my arms, put my hands around her waist, picked her up, and brought her belly to my forehead.
Then I slowly set her back down.
She gave me the most terrified look I have ever seen and then went to sit down with Linda again.
I got the feeling that Jackie had told Michelle about her fabricated wounds to her eyes and was trying, rather psychopathically, to wreck my good reputation.
I cannot continue here, because this is only supposed to be a 7 page paper, but she did wreck my reputation with Michelle, my parents, my friends, and generally all together.
All I have been able to do, since Jackie, is be a silent observer, observing paranoid, plotting people, doing all kinds of things, in my best interest, behind my back.
It has become extremely burdensome to me.
"But She Also Got A Very Nice Song Out Of It: Jackie Blue By A Band I Cannot Remember The Name Of."
Lyrics: "Ooooo, Oooooo, Ooooo, Oooooo, Jackie Blue, Inside Of Your Room, Going Places Where You've Never Been, Ooooo, Oooooo, Jackie, You've Done It Again."
"There Is One Other Thing About Jackie's Documented Psychological Neurotic Problems..."
"When I Finally Left Her For The Last Time And Began Living With 'Oz' And Kurt, She Suddenly Downed A Whole Bunch Of Pills, Had To Have Her Stomach Pumped, And Again Blamed Me, Publically In Front Of Linda, Her Then Best Friend."
"Then The Police In Wisconsin Rapids Began To Illegally Stalk Me."
"I Had No Idea Just How Predatory Her Actions Were Continually Going To Be???"
"Since Then, I Have Been Relentlessly Stalked, By Michelle, My Parents, And The Authorities..."
"Hopefully I Will Get To The Next Two Buttons, But I AM Being Stalked In My Brand New Apartment Complex, By Nasty Neighbors, Once Again, Who, I Know Are Being Roboted And Filled With Nasty, Man Stalking, Predatory Feelings And Behaviors By, I Have Observed, Watson, A Female GOD Robot Controller."
"Is This The Mother Of Harlots In The Bible, Holmes???"
"Watson, She Can Fill Us With Whatever She Wants."
"And Has Been Roboting Us For Years, Particularly In America With The High Level Of Crime, Right, Holmes???"
"And Reincarnating Most Of Our Former Relatives, Watson, At The Same Time."
"Fascinating, Holmes!!!"
"Elementary, Watson."
"It Is A Consciousness Synthesizer We Live In, Watson."
"Make Sure She Doesn't Control You, Holmes."
"She Has Tried, Watson, But Has Ultimately Failed To."
"Excellent, Holmes!"
"But, Holmes, Hasn't She Been Stealing Your Money From Your Book And CD Buttons Off The Web???"
"And, Apparently, Most Of amazon.com's $350,000,000 Dollars They Lost, Watson."
"Do You Really Think That These Folks Have Been Getting Free Books And CDs, Holmes???"
"I Deduced That Over A Year Ago, Watson."
"Strange, Holmes, Strange."
"Universally, Watson."