One night two weeks before court he was in his apartment and decided to play a pipe organ piece he had written and had decided on a name, 'Dracula’s Theme', because of the bloody whips and the hypnosis. After he finished playing the piece, his apartment seemed to be filled with a deep-space voidal sound like Star Wars or Dune or other space epics. Then, above his world map, a deeply masculine voice groaned once. At the same instant the thought occurred to Richard that it was for him. It groaned again less deeply and less disgustedly, this time for the world. It groaned again about the same, this time for Jeanine. Then it paused and asked, "Is astrology your nemesis, conundrum, or catharsis??" using a word which starts with C which Richard's father used once when he was very drunk and criticizing Richard, and Richard can’t remember. Richard said, "Nooooooo..." Then the voice asked, "Do you want this to continue??" Richard thought about the whips and again said, "Noooooo....." The no's were actually meant to be dualistic like no/know. It all stopped, Richard thought about it, thought that it was appearing to be Christ or an imitation of Christ indicating it was disgusted with the world, Richard, and Jeanine, and had plans to heal the world, Richard, and Jeanine. Richard went to bed.
Several nights later, Richard was sitting at Joe Hart's Tavern, now called Brother's, and was talking to the people around him and observing the large buck deer head with eleven points sitting above the bar. He thought that he was an incarnation of a buck deer. It amused him. While he was sitting there silently drinking his beer, he turned to the side and noticed Jeanine just walking up to the bar, rocking up on her toes like she was very happy to be there, and coming down solidly on her heels. She was buying a pitcher of beer. Richard saw her leave and went on drinking his beer quietly. Occasionally he would look in the direction of her table to see if she was enjoying herself, but would always turn around and continue to drink his beer silently.
While he was sitting silently drinking his beer with his back turned, not even thinking about Jeanine, he suddenly felt a quick, irate tapping on his shoulder. Richard turned around and found Jeanine standing between four gentlemen to each side of her and shaking her finger angrily in his face saying, "I have this injunction against you!! I have this injunction against you!! You had better leave!*&$#?!" Richard backed away from her finger, sadly, and said somewhat offendedly, "I was here first!!!!" She stopped, turned away, walking away and said, "O.K., you can stay, just don’t be looking at me!*&?%#$!!" Richard's eyes followed her up the stairs, then he turned around and started drinking his beer alone. Once it occurred to him to look at this incredibly oppressive woman and he decided he would. He looked sadly in her direction, noticed her talking sadly to her friends at the table, but then noticed her staring beyond her friends hypnotically at what appeared to be a vision. Richard couldn't determine for sure what the vision was because he couldn't see it, but after his experience with his vision, he thought it must be Christ. He turned sadly around and continued drinking his beer. He got really drunk that night and stumbled home alone.
Court came.
Denice Vivas, a girlfriend of Jeanine's, testified about the letters. Richard asked his attorney, Randi Othrow, to ask her if she had heard of Pearl Jam and Nirvana, two Alternative Rock bands Richard had thought to be involved with this whole affair. She said she had heard of Pearl Jam and didn't like Nirvana, then was dismissed from the witness stand.
Jeanine came in. She testified that Richard had been bothering her since he first came in to State Street Brats, that he had made two threatening, where he threatened her life, phone calls, that she didn’t go to the Rose Bowl because her father was a coach for Barry Alvarez, the head coach, and had been fired before the Rose bowl, that Richard had played over and over again a Led Zeppelin song and she didn't like Led Zeppelin, that he had stared at her from only this far {showing a short distance} away from her face, angrily glared at him, Richard glared back and then drew his lips {Mmmm, Mmmm, Mmmmm...}. She said he threatened to steal her afterlife, cried, stopped crying, and then looked enraptured that he had called her and said her name in French. She was dismissed.
Richard testified even though Randi told him it would probably hurt his case. Richard said he wrote the letters and threatened to steal her afterlife because he was trying to stop her and make her think deeply about him. He didn't tell them that there were three phone calls, the 3:30 am. one, the threat one, and the French one. That she was excluding the 3:30 one. He didn't frankly know if she went to the Rose Bowl or not, but it seemed likely that she was lying about that, too.
The jury went out to deliberate.
They were out three hours before the verdict was returned. They found him guilty...
He was placed on probation. He was now on different, seemingly better medication.
Richard went home. Richard thought about it and figured he owed it to the truth and Christ to write an opera about this whole affair and began to compose and tape the music themes he had been writing on piano, pipe organ, and twelve string guitar now for thirty-five years. He was only 42..
It occurred to Richard during the course of the whole affair that Jeanine was the final reincarnation of the Virgin Mary and before Christ's supposed appearance in his apartment, just before the trial with Jeanine, Richard found out from one of his court papers that this Jeanine was born on Saint Patrick's Day in 1972. Richard began writing his opera.
The summer went by relatively uneventfully. Richard met his probation officer. Then in August, he came home and noticed a message for him on his telephone answering machine. This in itself was not extraordinary, but when he played back the tape an angry out of control male voice said, "You fuckin' weirdo...You fuckin' weirdo!$*&@!??!!" and another male voice in the background said, "Hang up! Hang up! Hang up!" and then the message ended.
Richard played the message back about five times trying to fathom these two young gentlemen. Richard assumed that one of them must have been Jeanine's boyfriend, the one who told him not to come back to State Street Brats after Richard looked deeply into Jeanine's eyes and the other one must have been the man Richard first saw Jeanine with at State Street Brats. But he couldn't figure why they were angry with him in such an out of control fashion. Richard determined that both Jeanine's boyfriends were insane and therefore so must be Jeanine. How'd she get hooked up with them???
Earlier on that spring, Richard was sitting in class one day when suddenly he felt like he had been burned to death in a parallel reality to his own. He felt a sudden heat rush or flash. The class seemed to sense it too. It was terrifying.
Throughout the course of this whole thing, there was an album which was the most popular album in the world at the time. It was called 'Ten' and was performed by a band called Pearl Jam and sung by a singer named Eddie Vedder. Later, because Eddie Vedder looked like Richard, and because of the medieval flavor of a song off the album which had a very 'Arthurian' feel, and because the album was recorded and mixed in London Great Britain and the band was from Seattle USA, Richard determined that Eddie was another reincarnation of King Arthur. This could be possible because of the 'timelessness' of both God, the Universe, the spirit, and therefore reincarnation. There could be many Richard incarnations at one time.
The album was very intense and the lyrics spoke about a mother who says to her young thirteen year old son, "I'm ready for you...." Richard's mother had dangled her breasts in front of Richard when he woke up one morning when he was thirteen years old. The album began with a song called 'Once' about love with a girl once upon a time and how once upon a time he could love himself and love her. The best song on the album was "Black" about how now the air he has tasted and breathed has taken a turn and how his bitter hands grate on broken glass of what was everything. He's suicidal about a woman. The last song on the album is titled 'Release' and describes seriously going out and burning himself to death and ends with Eddie screaming bloody murder.
Richard, because of Christ's appearance, knew himself to be central to the world he lived in and also central to the Universe. He thought that he must be a reincarnation of Joseph and was the man who was married to the Virgin Mary. He had determined that after he had thought many years of his belief in God and that God, through him, was going to save the world from destruction and now that Jeanine wanted nothing to do with him, and now that the music on the radio, which he thought was inspired by God, was talking about burning to death, and that Revelations in the bible stated that Satan would be burned in a fiery furnace and the smoke would darken that sun, Richard decided that in order to save the world he had no choice but to burn himself to death and put out the sun. In 'Release' he says he'll wait up in the dark for her to speak to him. Darkened sun?? By burning to death would he then become the incorporeal God and speak to Jeanine or the Virgin Mary from the dark??? Richard decided he had been left no choice. He began to buy gasoline and towel robes and prepare for his extinction.
When Richard was in Madison in 1979, two gentlemen wanted him to go with them to a rough bar for the evening. At closing time, they were standing out in the parking lot when a big muscular gentleman came storming up to Richard threatening to beat him and saying, "So you think your Jesus Christ, huh?!#@&*!!" Richard looked at him, looked briefly at the other two gentlemen, and realized they had set him up. He didn't even want to be alive on this planet anymore. He drew himself up like Christ and was blacked out. The next thing he knew, his consciousness was a little bodiless point with rocks all around it which it could sense. Richard flicked angrily back and forth. A voice said, "Rick?" Richard's consciousness was agitated and suddenly zoomed a long way in one direction, zoomed back the other way, zoomed back to where he was, zoomed up into his body, and Richard strided into Dolly's Restaurant at seven in the morning the following day. Five hours had elapsed since he had been at the bar. After having breakfast, he went home and tried to go to sleep, but his consciousness was so electric and sensitive that he couldn't, so he went to the student union. His consciousness was so electric at the union that he could hear conversations all the way across the crowded Rathskeller.
Then he noticed the two gentlemen from the night before coming in the Rathskeller without visually seeing them. Sure enough it was them. Michael had a black eye. Richard said to them that if they were going to try and convince him that he had vanished in front of them, he didn't believe it and he wanted them to leave him alone and go to hell. They said he had vanished and left him alone.
Two months later, Richard was sitting in the Rathskeller having a burger when he noticed Michael kneeling on the floor next to him praying. Richard told him to get up and sit across from him and have some fries. He also said that if Michael was going to try and convince him that he had vanished, it didn't make any sense to think about it because it interfered with the normal goings on of life. Michael said that he had vanished in front of him. Richard told Michael to forget about it and get on with building his life. That there were too many more important things to do with ones life than worry about that. They parted company on that note. Richard never saw Michael again.
So you can see that Richard was convinced that if he burned to death, God would extinguish that sun just as He had vanished Richard's body.
He wrote a letter to Jeanine describing the vision of Christ in his apartment. He started with the lyrics to the Smashing Pumpkins' song "Disarm," "What's a boy supposed to do, what I choose is my voice." Then he began to describe to her the vision of Christ, what it sounded like, what it said, and how it left him sitting there alone. And then a reading from Revelations in the bible about how, if she married this boyfriend, the worldwide conditions of life and existence would slowly deteriorate for everyone including her. "The killer in me is the killer in you, send a smile over you..." {Smashing Pumpkins: 1993} This is reflected in the Dave Matthews song "Don't Drink the Water." {1998}
It was Saturday. While Richard was buying gasoline to take to the arboretum, he was filling the last gallon into the tank when it suddenly occurred to him that someone had just nailed Christ to the cross again in heaven just when he was going to put out the sun. Richard shrugged it off. That night he went to the arboretum to burn himself to death in a tunnel with gasoline to put out the sun.
When he got there, he noticed the ravenous mosquitoes weren’t biting him. They were supposed to be extremely ravenous that year. He had a sense that they were being held back in a cloud around him without trying to land on him. He walked on. Jeanine’s spirit entered his body. He said, "Good!" and walked on. He had come to the conclusion that he had to take trail E-5 to put out the sun properly so he took his flashlight and scouted it out. But when he got to where the trail was supposed to be, he couldn't find it. It was all grown over. On top of that there was a bush which had been bent over by an animal bigger than a bear, but about as tall as a deer. Most peculiar. After waiting for some kind of statement from God, Richard finally decided that he could no longer do it with dignity. He thought he heard a voice say 'Go.' twice, turned around and went home. He stared at the full moon until two in the morning hoping that Jesus knew what he was doing and that the sun would go out, but nothing happened. Richard wondered why Jesus had interfered. He went home alone.
A couple of weeks later, Richard was just starting to get ready to go to bed at midnight when something suddenly stomped in the attic. The stomping continued. There was no attic over the third floor of his apartment complex so Richard couldn't figure out what it was. Richard spoke to it assuming it to be Christ angry at him for going out to the arboretum. Richard said it wasn't his fault and that he did the things written in the bible and Christ's crucifixion isn't written in Revelations. The stomping and talking continued until 3:30am. Then Richard asked it which Mary was Christ's Mary, "Was it the woman outside the tomb when you were gardening." Suddenly he heard gigantic ancient sounding hedge clippers clipping angrily at the tree outside his window. This went on for a while and then stopped. There was a knock on the door. It was Richard's landlord. Richard said he didn't know what caused the banging and stomping, but it wasn't him. He sat quietly in his chair all night long. Richard went to class.
Before he went out to the arboretum to burn, he mailed Jeanine a letter describing Christ's appearance and his opera. He was arrested again and sentenced to two years of probation.
Richard immediately went to the University Mall to see if he could see Jeanine. He wanted to relax and maybe have a coffee. It was late August. He sat on the stone or marble short wall by Memorial Library. As he sat he looked helplessly for Jeanine and wondered if she would forgive him for not burning to death, and also wondering if Christ had beat him out of a chance to prove his mettle. While he was sitting there, he sensed Jeanine in the vicinity and became very uncomfortable. Eventually he became so uncomfortable that he suddenly got up and went for a coffee, but an inner voice which he could hear without knowing exactly what he was listening to, argued with him and told him to come back to where he was sitting, that she was near. He went back and sat down. He tried to use his psychic mind to center on where she was without really believing that she was near. He thought he knew where she was. He walked across the Mall and sat down directly across from Saint Paul's, sensed he could look in her direction, but didn't. He decided to watch the girls go by. He thought he knew she was there, but hadn't seen her. On one girl, he watched her to where he had determined Jeanine was when suddenly a girl looking like Jeanine jumped up. She was staring at something Richard couldn't see for a moment, heaved her purse across her shoulder, and stomped away. He wasn't sure it was her or not, so he continued to sit and watch the girls go by. He thought, if it was her, she had gained weight and her hair had bleached out since he had last seen her. He didn't think that her dark hair would bleach that much.
He sat for a while and then realized that something negative was happening where she went, so he got up and walked in her direction. He ran into a composer friend and started to talk to him about his opera. Suddenly a police officer accosted him for bothering her. He said that she was shaking an injunction angrily at him and saying she wanted Richard arrested. Richard explained that he was just sitting there and didn't see her until she got up. The officer let him go, but said one more complaint and he would have to go to jail. Bizarre???
Richard told his probation officer and he said that Jeanine had called him and said that she thought Richard had seen her and didn’t realize that Richard hadn't seen her. Richard breathed a sigh of relief.
The following week at the Mall he thought about it and the chalk writers on the sidewalk and figured she couldn't get him for that. He knew from past experience that she came through there about the time he ate the free meal at Saint Paul's. He sat and waited for Jeanine. Sure enough, here she came. He watched her disappear and it suddenly occurred to him to get some chalk and write to her where she was walking. The following day, he got the chalk and wrote, "I will not recover." in a rust red color, the color of her hair. Soon she came walking through. She stopped at the chalk, did a Natalie Merchant spin, and marched back towards where he sat on the steps of the Catholic church. When she got up to him, she looked terrified of him, he gave her a leary look of terror and then she walked two steps, stood for a moment, Richard thought to her, "Do you always believe what you hear??", she paused, and then she heaved her purse over her shoulder and stomped away.
Richard's life went on normally while he worked on the opera. In spring of '95 he presented it to Carlos Moser at the university. Carlos said he should take it downtown and present it to the opera company at the Civic Center.
The year passed uneventfully except Richard was constantly thinking about Jeanine and constantly, almost daily, writing song lyrics poetry and UFO songs on the sidewalks where Richard thought she might be walking to and from class or on the way to get groceries. As he was riding the bus one afternoon, he noticed Jeanine and a boyfriend walking across Johnson street and toward where Richard had coated the sidewalk with chalk writing. Richard had found a chalk which took three months to wash off in the rain. It was ideal!! Richard had chalked all his favorite songs, some about UFOs, some love songs, and many songs of relevance from the present day Alternative Rock scene.
One of the songs was 'Starship Trooper' by a band called 'YES'. The lyrics went, "Starship Trooper, go sailing on by...Touch my knowledge higher than the aim, Release as much as only you can show...Though you've seen me, please don't say a word..." Another song was present day Alternative. It was called 'I Alone...' by a band called 'LIVE.' "I alone love you, I alone tempt you, I alone love you, I alone love you..." "Leave you here chained to me!!!*&%$#!" The lyrics are incredible. Richard had come to the conclusion that the lead singer for 'LIVE' was an incarnation of Saint Matthew. Richard had determined that Jeanine was walking to see the chalk writing and maybe she would understand, but it was doubtful.
On another day, Richard was riding in the bus thinking to himself, when suddenly he went by what he had determined to be Jeanine's apartment complex. He thought that she might be on one side, turned to look, and sure enough, there was Jeanine sitting on her patio porch doing her studies. So now he knew which apartment she lived in Dayton Square Apartments.
As he was walking from Capitol Centre Foods to the bus stop on State street, he would always walk by Jeanine's apartment which was only four blocks away from his apartment on Johnson street. One day he was walking by it and playing a passionate improvised version of 'Moonlight Sonata' by Ludwig Von Beethoven, who Richard also thought he had been. Suddenly, sensing something, he looked at Jeanine's apartment and noticed a little red-headed girl about age 11 years sitting in one of the chairs on Jeanine's second floor patio porch. This little girl barely fit in the big lawn chair, but glared with the same intensity Jeanine had. Most peculiar... Richard walked on.
There was going to be a 'Honey White' concert at the Barrymore and when Richard thought about 'Honey White' he thought about Jeanine and the Virgin Mary Jeanine. 'Honey White' is a song which talks about angelfood and devilsfood and a girl named Honey White. Just before the concert, he was thinking she would either call him or go with her boyfriends. He waited. Nothing. So he went walking towards her apartment to see. When he got to the apartment, he noticed a party going on where he thought her apartment should be. Suddenly out to the window stomps Jeanine in a white slick cocktail dress with nylons. Richard walked home alone, but he thought that Jeanine had seen him outside her window.
In September, Richard was riding the bus past State Street Brats and saw Jeanine and boyfriend sitting on one of the round park benches there. Jeanine had suddenly gotten a monk cut and boyfriend looked very stiff and tense. She had hauled him out there during his shift to talk to him about something that couldn't wait.
I don't understand why, if she wanted a top shirt-and-tie job connected to journalism, she would sacrifice her journalism cut for a monk cut. She certainly wasn't going to get a great position in a newspaper or desk job with that necessarily. I, personally, am not biased, but I know 'they' are some.
Around thanksgiving he was going to bed one night when he was awakened by his telephone. When he answered it the strains of 'You can't hurry love' by Diana Ross and the Supremes could be heard along with what Richard recognized to be the voice of Jeanine’s boyfriend. Richard thought it must be Jeanine. He listened to the music for a good 20 seconds, but suddenly thought that they might be setting him up. He immediately hung up and went back to sleep.
There was a song which had come out on the radio by Joan Osborne called "{What if God was}One of us"
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Since that call he hasn't seen hide nor hair of her or heard from her. He keeps thinking that maybe she's calling him and hanging up, but he's not sure. If she did call him, playing 'You can't hurry love,' he must have convinced her at least temporarily that he was the real God. Apparently God didn’t last for her. The music continues, but Richard assumes that Jeanine has graduated from college and has traveled away looking for work.
In spring, he presented the opera to John Demain of the Madison Symphony Orchestra, but got no response from him even though he told his secretary he would definitely call Richard.
Richard went on with his life in an intensely worried state. One afternoon he was sitting in his chair watching an argument on a TV talk show, figured he was sick of trying and getting nothing, thought the entire populous was out of it's opposing sided opinionated mind, lay down on his bed with the intention of putting out the sun, and faded off. The next thing he knew, he saw a sudden blindingly bright burst of light, so bright that he couldn't see his room with his eyes open. Just as suddenly he was back in his room looking at the astrology poster on his wall. He knew that if he did put out the sun, he regretted it.
Then enter the spider... Sewing webs for the entire year of 1996.
Richard sits. He smokes cigarettes. One after the other. He likes to smoke. He smokes, sits, and thinks, and drinks eight cups of coffee daily. He likes coffee. He likes the way two percent milk, unlike cream, brings out the nutty flavor of Colombian coffee without making it thick and heavy. He doesn’t like black coffee. It gives him a disturbingly threatening feeling in the pit of his stomach kind of like he’s going to throw up and then his day will be ruined again.
Richard sits and smokes, and thinks, and drinks coffee with two percent milk in it.
He thinks about how everyone he has ever known has fouled up his life. He thinks about the two people who almost got him locked up. He has tasted the life of humans. It writhes and spits and marvels at it's own spit. He thinks about the male doctors who left him impotent on their "medications." He thinks about the young male who called him and spit on him. For the average male it goes something like this, "If you don't know what to do about a competitor, spit on him, denegrate him, smear him, and shine in the eyes of your woman." The women, Richard found out, followed the rapist male blindly like little ducklings behind the authority figure and only turned from what they thought they were doing, "something normal with a normal male, good to them, but lousy and denegrating to whoever he chooses to be denegrating to," if God entered the picture and then with some hesitancy. Most of the human-rapist males think they have that right and when they exercise it, it is the ideal all other males worship. He thinks about the supposed appearance of Christ in his room, where he was denegrating towards Richard. Richard wanted nothing from this intruder. Richard hopes that the true Christ had nothing to do with it, but doubts whether his wishes are well founded.
He now thinks about how he is going to the Virgin Islands to write a novel about the real Dirk Courtney and find out the truth about whether Dirk and Roxanna ever really got together, because he's not so sure about it here...
The telephone calls have continued since Thanksgiving 1995 and the "You can't hurry love..." phone call. There have been 120 of them between Thanksgiving 1995 and his birthday 1998. They always start with him saying, "Hello??" and then no response. Then he says, "Jeanine??" then it hangs up. 120 of these. Around Thanksgiving 1997, he got one and said, "I can't hear anything coming from your end of the line??" Suddenly her heard very clearly, like it was being amplified, a deeply enraptured girl's sigh which sounded exactly like Jeanine. He was stunned... He said, "I think I had better go now??" and hung up. One week later he received a call at 3:30 am on a Thursday morning. His consciousness which was asleep, started rising suddenly and speedily {it seemed to take a long time to surface} to the surface. When he reached the surface, the phone rang. He reached over to his old fashioned gold and white phone near the bed and said, "Hello??" No response. He hung up and went to the bathroom. There was a song out by Matchbox 20 called 3am. "It's 3am, I must be lonely." Was it still Jeanine?? Too crazy.
Also a song was out by No Doubt entitled Walking in your Spider Web!. "It's all your fault!*&%$##!!?"
One night she also seemed to crash into him. He was up and thought she had been calling him. He said, "Hello??" He began to tell her he thought she might want to watch the Walter Cronkite Special on TV that night because she was a journalist. No response from the other end of the phone line. He hung up.
That night he was theoretically psychic. He thought he knew she would be watching. He thought she was crying in front of Walter Cronkite. The amazing thing that stunned him is that even Walter seemed to sense it. Walter Cronkite, in the middle of his special, suddenly stopped doing or saying anything for a good 20 seconds.
All I could perceive was Jeanine crying in front of her TV set and Walter looking at the foreground sadly and silently for 20 seconds while she did. I didn't like the special because they edited out Walter during the sixties. No Hippies. No Peace Movement. The Editor of CBS news is a fascist. It's true!
It was two days before the Fourth of July. I was psychic about Jeanine again. She seemed to be walking angrily towards my apartment to haul me to the fireworks because she had become angry for the dead phone line whenever she called.
I was sitting in my chair looking out the window. Suddenly, when I thought Jeanine had reached the corner of Hamilton & Johnson Street through two houses, the street outside The Hamilton lit up in glorious fireworks for about 10 seconds. This was no small display. I thought that they might be magic fireworks.
Then I could hear firecrackers coming in a line around back of my apartment complex through a back alley between two houses and up to my window.
I waited for her to come up, but no one came. I went to bed.
I thought maybe she had come below my window and had been vanished back to her bed magically. I myself have vanished.
In 1997 Crash Into Me came out by Dave Matthews. Also the Volcano Girls had a song, "Leave me lying here, 'cause I don't want to go. I thought that even if it was a long shot, maybe it happened...
On my birthday I waited for the letter, but got none.