Jay Jaffe played baseball at USC and went to the College World Series. He batted .306 and had a three-night tryout with the San Diego Padres. They expressed interest and never called him back. He went to law school and gravitated to the criminal defense field. He liked the combat and the mix of people in trouble. He liked to explore motive and mitigation. He’d handled some big cases. He won the celebrated “Burrito Murder Case.” The LAPD tried to shaft an innocent Mexican kid. Jay got him off.
He was still hungry. He loved his work the way he loved baseball.
Lizz Gill wrote TV movies. She fell into it. People told her she was funny and urged her to get her shit down on paper. She had a bad run with booze and cleaned up in ’75.
She knew the Big Joke then. She still knew it. Other people sensed her gift and pointed her on her way.
Berko Berkowitz went to Vietnam. He defecated in his pants quite a few times. He returned to the States and got strung out on booze and dope. He ran a string of businesses into the ground and cleaned up twelve years ago. He made a big wad in real estate and watched it grow. He works as a homeless advocate and digs on his wife and two kids.
Jill Warner was a teacher up in Oakland. She had a daughter with her ex-husband. I told her I used to stalk her. She applauded my good taste and asked me if I defaced her house in 1963. I said, No. Jill laughed and got up in my face like she did atJ.B.
Howard Swancy played all-city sports at L.A. High School. He tried to get on the LAPD and Sheriff’s Department and flunked the screening process. He sold TV ad time for seventeen years and became a minister. He had a congregation in Carson.
Howard looked hungry. He still had alpha dog eyes. He liked to run the show. The raw language at the table torqued him the wrong way.
I spent some time with Donna Weiss. I described the Big Stakeout of 1961 and the unrequited crush that inspired it. Donna praised my stalking prowess. She never spotted me–a 6-foot, 13year-old boy-on a candy-apple bike.
I was invisible then. The world was out to ignore me.
Donna spent time in Spain and studied at the University of Madrid. She learned the language and came back to L.A. She taught in the city school system and spent three years down in South Central. Some Chicano kids were stranded in an all-black school with no English language skills. Donna got the little fuckers fluent.
She quit teaching and went into real estate. She’s been at it twenty years. Her husband’s a voice coach and the locally lauded “Cantor to the Stars.”
My crush burned out thirty-seven years ago. Donna’s presence did not resurrect it. I was irrevocably in love with my wife.
Tony Shultz starred in the first New York stage run of Grease. He worked as an actor for twenty-plus years and burned out behind the inherent frustrations. He sold real estate now. His turf bordered Donna’s.
Leslie Jacobson went to Berkeley and lived two blocks down from Tony. She became an antiwar activist and street agitator. She got a teaching credential.
She married Husband #1. She entered the mental-health field. A colleague got raped. Leslie viewed the brutal aftermath and took it as a signal. She studied rape and post-rape trauma. She ran a rape crisis hotline and an innovative antirape program. She went out on rape calls with the Huntington Park PD and trained cops in rape awareness. She ditched Husband #1 and married Husband #2. He was a doctor.
Leslie became a psychotherapist. She built up a practice. She studied breast cancer and its ramifications and counseled afflicted women. She and her husband collaborate and stage breast-cancer seminars.
I listened to my old classmates. I felt the restrained warmth that you feel for decent people you shared a past with and don’t really know. I observed thirty-four individuals over three nights. I detected one significant difference between them and me.