The Many Wives of Bulls-Eye Get-it-Guy

WARNING FOR: Mentions of domestic abuse, drugs, unsavory relationships, and unbridled hatred of Jack Kerouac. I stand by what I said.

THE MANY WIVES OF BULLS-EYE GET-IT-GUY

“For most, there comes a day where you are no longer young. You look in the mirror and say, fuck, who’s that old guy, and then you go out and buy a convertible and have sex with a prostitute and then the next day your back hurts and you sell the car because you’re not a young man anymore. You settle down and forget what it is to be alive. But I’m proud to have never had that day. I’m 69 years old. My liver’s failed, my kidneys have been hooked up to a machine for 3 years, I have prostate cancer that metastasized to my asshole and God knows where else. I’m going to die when the sun goes down tonight. I still hope the nurse that pulls the plug is sexy. I’m still alive, really alive- hell, most of you bastards are deader than me.”

He finished his speech. Propped up on his cot, dressed in hospital blue sheets, he stuck his tongue out and pressed a piece of blotter paper onto the wet, scalloped appendage. People clapped. He bulged his eyes, wiggled his hands at his ears, and grinned.

A performer till death. He’d invited all of his friends, family, and lovers, of which there were plenty, to enjoy his last moments on earth in a way that commemorated his way of life: a three day, outdoors bender-campout in the Redwoods where Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzman and other beloved musicians from the Dead scene jammed together over the dying man:

Dean Herbert Norville Albrecht Jr., Bulls-Eye, Get-it-Guy, T.O.C, Crazy Horse, Woo-Woo.

Jack Straw (We can share the women, we can share the wine)

It wouldn’t have been allowed in any other circumstance by any self-respecting hospice. But Dean was a national treasure, a poet, a writer, a singer, a dancer, a last living vestige of the likes of Kesey and Cassady and Garcia. So he got what he wanted. He always got what he wanted.

There was one thing he didn’t get.

Five things, really.

Looking over his surroundings, in a sea of tie-dye and mushrooms and ten-thousand dollar Gibsons, all five of them were sitting at a picnic table. All five of them had gotten away, all five of them were whispering and laughing, all five of them were successful in their own right. Right then he realized he didn’t have them, never did, and wouldn’t in the future.

It’s the whole problem with the movement. Dana had explained to Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show. People think they can relinquish ownership but they can’t and they don’t, you know, free-love, free-everything- it’s all a myth. That’s why Dean and I decided to split.

Dean could feel the rage bubbling up just looking at her. That night should’ve been the end of her career- ripping into him and his friends, the whole movement like she wasn’t afraid. They hadn’t spoken in years. He was thrilled to see her, wretched and old and disgusting, a bitter, jaded feminist, at his “Death Jamboree.”

But there she was at the table, golden sun streaming through the conifer canopy and stroking her long silver hair. She had a glass of wine in one hand, four cards and a cigarette in the other. They were sitting at the table, playing gin rummy and laughing like they weren’t all the ex-wives of the same dying man. Like he didn’t exist.

His eyes drifted to Tallahassee “Tally” Jane first, her bright orange nail polish glinting in the sun. The youngest of them all, they’d met, married and divorced 8 years ago, when she was 27, he, 61. She had the most cards in her hand but also the most in play- her strategy appeared to be throw it all at the wall to see what sticks.

It was Alma Rose next to her, leaning in, looking rakishly at Jane’s hand and whispering in her ear. Perhaps they were playing as a team. She never did play by the cards- not with life, not with cards. Alma Rose had no nickname: she’d chosen this one herself and wasn’t about to be called ‘something silly.’ She was the third wife, a Jewish mental nurse who believed in the power of LSD and even moreso, the power of a man with a guitar.

Andrea “Andy Sunshine” was the most beautiful of them all, still, with that giant, tousled mess of sun bleached black curls cascading down her shoulders. Dean could hear her gold rings clinking together as she contemplated her terrible hand. Their marriage was his fourth, in 1972, and caused riots. Interracial marriage was still something worth killing people over, and Andy received countless threats of death, assault, and rape.

“Baby, it wasn’t anything radical. I thought it was then but what I didn’t realize was that we was going back to slave-times. That man? He treated me like an animal. For ten years.” Andy explained to the woman across from her, Aurelia.

Then Aurelia. Dean collected Aurelia in Mexico when he was still married to Dana. She was a stunning beauty: it was no problem that she was 17, abandoned by both parents, and able to speak only a few words of English. She was 3 months pregnant with his nth child when he brought her back to California.

“You’re right- he was the exact same way with me. I think he saw a chiquita mexicana and thought I was going to be like a little bunny rabbit,” she told Andrea, her deep brown eyes darting over to Dana next. “When I found out he was married to you? I was so angry I bit him.”

“You are a little bit of an animal, Auri,” Andy grinned. “But definitely one that bites.”

Aurelia mock-chomped at them and growled. They burst out into uncontrollable laughter- Dana flailed her arm and spilled wine on Auri’s white dress, inspiring more biting and laughing and spilling.

Finally, Dana. Of course she had been the first. Her appearance- tall, narrow figure, sharp blue eyes, that signature long, flowy ponytail- it all promised tenacity and wit, two traits she had in spades. Dean knew that Dana was smarter than him, calmer and more tactful in an argument as well, and it enraged him.

He jerked his head towards Bob Weir, who was taking a break from singing, sitting on a bench nearby and tuning his signature Gibson ES. “Ace! Roll us a joint, buddy!”

So he did because Dean “Bulls-eye” “Get-it-Guy” gets what he wants. The clouds of hash smoke concealed the women. For a while.

It was his death bacchanal and he wasn’t going to have it ruined by five bitches playing rummy the wrong way.

…

“Dana, I used to hate you. But really you’re very beautiful. And very fun,” Auri stated plainly, once they had stopped cackling like witches in a secret coven. They were surrounded by the stench of the crowd; sweaty people wearing natural deodorant, smoking joints, throwing up a mix of booze and stomach acid… but they were so strangely alone. And so strangely whole.

“I’ve always been a big feminist,” Dana explained, “but when I found out that Dean had knocked you up? I called you a whore. I think this man made us all cuckoo, because that was nuts! I’m so embarrassed I said that!”

Andrea laughed. “Lord, me too, me too. He had me believing the craziest things about myself and my girlfriends… Dana, did you really love him?”

She threw her head back and laughed. “Well, the idea of him, sure- a revolutionary writer? A feminist man? Yeah, the idea of him made me wet. But really, he was pathetic. Just like they all were. Like Jack Keroauc? The God of all douchebags? I fucked him, didn’t even get to finish, held him while he cried- then he stole my writing and proceeded to critique my book as ‘feminist drivel.’ Now, they haven’t done shit that mattered since the 60s- did they ever? They were all phonies, and that’s why their movement is dying today. But ours? Ours is just getting started.”

“I know!” Alma took cards from Tally’s hand, and laid down yet another three card run. “Dana, I read your book you wrote last year, and it was so good I bought a copy for all of my friends! I wanted to try and reach out, but, you know-”

“If Dean did one good thing, he got us five all together at the same table,” Dana interjected.

Tally added, “And soon he’ll do a second good thing- the bastard’ll die.”

They burst into laughter again. Tally beamed- the older women felt like an impenetrable wall at first. All more serious, more accomplished. They looked to her now, ready to hear her story.

“Tally, why did you get with him? He must’ve been 60 when you got married!” Andy reached over the table and grabbed her hand.

“I don’t know… he made me feel special, with those poems- he can still write! And he made my parents mad.”

Alma Rose laughed. “Me too. He called me his ‘moon lover’ and wrote hundreds of poems for me. While he was sleeping with two other women…”

Andy almost choked on her giggles. “Who else did he call that?”

They all answered affirmatively. Except Auri.

“Amante de la luna,” she corrected. Another wave of feminine laughter went crashing on the shore.

“I can’t believe I hated you all,” Dana admitted. “I don’t think I was a very good feminist.”

“I hated you bitches too,” Andy agreed. “All of y’all. Dana? That song, Miz High n’ Mighty? That was about you- the you that Dean told me about. And Auri… I had my team try to find dirt on you. Just because I hated you. But they couldn’t find shit, of course.”

Alma sighed, “I think I might still hate you all, at least a little bit, because I’m still in love with him- or at least that idea of him, because there’s no man who’s really like that in real life.”

Tally rubbed her shoulders. “That’s okay Alma. I think any good friends have to hate each other a little bit. Like, I hate you because you’re so smart- I mean, you’re literally a doctor now, that’s crazy!”

“You’re right,” Auri added. “I can tell you all the reasons why I hate all of you, and they’re the same reasons why I love you.”

She did, proceeding to list off all of their best characteristics. Andy’s sultry voice and eclectic sense of style, Tally’s youthful exuberance and sense of humor, Dana’s strong sense of self and massive body of work, Alma’s poetry (better than Dean’s ever was) and work in research labs…

“I think I’ve got my next book right there,” Dana explained. “They make us hate each other and compete with each other when we’re really way smarter and stronger than they are.”

“And prettier. And cooler,” Tally corrected.

“Just better altogether?”

“And that’s why they’ve got to keep us fighting,” Dana nodded.

They talked and laughed and played a few more rounds of no-rules rummy until the moon appeared overhead.

“Look,” Auri pointed. “Moon’s out.”

The air shifted and turned cold. The band stopped playing. Everyone looked to Dean for his last words. Tally, shivering in her tiny halter dress, clung onto Alma for warmth.

“That’s all she wrote,” Dean grimaced. There was a pause while he waited to die. The nurse and the doctor hurried to administer the drugs, the last ones his veins would ever meet.

“Would you hurry up already?” Dean critiqued. Laughter and tears from the crowd.

He closed his eyes and saw them all. Dancing in a circle around him, a blur of moon-white dresses and forget-me-nots and light and dripping with stunning beauty and morning dew.

He reached for them.

They laughed.

And with one last exhale of patchouli and hash, Dean died under the moonlight, just like he said he would.

The band started playing a slow rendition of Jack Straw. People slow-danced and cried and took long rips off of Dean’s favorite bong.

Alma won another game of rummy. Dana proposed a toast.

To the last of the bastards.

The band went on playing, We can share the women, we can share the wine…

They laughed.