Straight Life - Art Pepper [193]
I didn't visit her. I wrote her and said, "Wow, I'm sorry, but something came up and I couldn't make it. I'll be up next weekend without fail. Be all ready. I'll be there at such-andsuch a time." Again, I didn't go. I wrote her. I said the same thing and then I didn't write again. Not a word. And that was the end of it. I never saw Diane again. She got out and went back, and when she got out again she was dying, and she tried to reach me, but by the time I heard about it, it was too late. She was dead.
(Ann Christos) I think Art's fame attracted Diane. It was important to her. She liked important people, being with important people. I think Diane would have made it to a higher level if she hadn't got involved with Art and drugs. I think Diane started using because she couldn't control Art. She told me she decided to join him, maybe that would work. But they tormented one another. She attempted suicide. He did. One time Art said he was going to slash his wrists, and she went and got him a razor. Just games. And for Art, I think it was habit that kept him with Diane. Art's balled lots of women, but he's a moralist, a purist, and when he gets involved with a woman he usually sticks until something breaks it apart. They had established this niche, and they were alone. I know because I've been in those niches.
When Diane came out of CRC the second time, she got tight with her kids; her boys came to live with her. Then she found out she had cancer. Diane got all the morphine she wanted for her pain, and her son started to rob her of her pills. He was a doper. So she went to live with her mother. (Her mother was a dyke, dressed in manly clothes and things like that.) That's when she requested to see Art. He was in Synanon and they didn't give him the message: they didn't want to upset his tranquility. She wasted down to under eighty pounds. I was at CRC at the time.
Actually, Diane was the only woman I could ever talk to and discuss things and banter with without, you know, how you say something and people get offended-they take things personally. You could just talk to her and be honest and be critical, and she was the only woman that I'd ever encountered that had this open type mind.
(Marie Randall) We were both born here in L.A. Our parents were divorced, and we were much closer than sisters usually are. It was she and I against the world. Diane never felt loved as a child. Being the older sister, she said that when she was a little child, she would try and hug and kiss my mom and dad, and they really didn't go for it, and she said, "And when you were little, they'd try and hug you or something, and you'd just turn your back and walk away." She didn't admit it to me until not long before she died: "They'd be nice to you, and you'd just walk away from them." That's probably why they were nice to me-because I wanted no part of them. So this, I think, was the beginning of all her problems. I've had all these years to think about it.
I was five and Diane was seven when our parents were divorced. In our conspiracy against the world, if we were living with one parent and we didn't like what was happening there, if they didn't let us do something, we'd say, "Okay, we'll go live with our mother." Which we would do, until things cooled down, and then we'd pull the same jazz on whoever we were with: "I'll go live with my father." It was easier living with our dad. He was the stronger of the two. Our mother drank.
Neither of us had to study in school. We both got very good grades. And Diane was extraordinarily bright. Gee, on her Stanford-Binet test I think her score was a hundred thirty-five.
Diane was very wild as a teenager, very wild. Well, it was really shocking at the time, but she'd have one boyfriend at a time. She didn't go out with everybody every night. She smoked early. So did I. Things other girls didn't do at those times. She met Ted, who was her first husband, and she had a baby when she was seventeen. I guess she thought she found the love she was looking for. But he was