Straight Life - Art Pepper [194]
Diane met Art the day he got out of San Quentin in a shiny blue suit and white socks and brown shoes and ten dollars or something. She was in her early twenties. She was gonna save him. Hahahaha! She had actually led a reasonably sheltered life, and she was gonna save Art from old demon dope. Even though she'd been working in a jazz club and all that stuff was around her all the time, she didn't even know how to drink. One time I took her to Reno and she's trying to be very sophisticated. She ordered a screwdriver in a zombie glass and needed a water chaser for it. And she spent the whole night on one drink, chasing it with water.
Diane was working in a jazz club. She needed the money, and she liked the hours. Neither one of us ever liked to get up in the morning. Ever. And she could be with the kids in the daytime. I had done it first, and she saw that I made a lot of money and my hours were very short, four or five hours a night, and it was easy work that any dummy could do.
I've always thought Art looked like Marcello Mastroianni He was a very good-looking man in those days, and Diane was always attracted by good looks. She didn't care how nice someone was, they had to be handsome. Well, she was gonna straighten Art's hand. I said, "What about the kids?" She said, "That's no life for them being around ... " But she didn't mean that, because she was a very selfish person and she just wanted to be alone with Art. She didn't give a damn about the kids. Even before Art, when she was their mother, she would buy them fifty-dollar suits, which was a lot of money for a five-yearold kid in those days, or very expensive presents, with the money she made, but she didn't give them the love that she didn't get. Bought 'em things constantly.
I think Art connected the night he got out of San Quentin. She fought it at first, but it would have happened whether Art had come along or not. You see the signs. She used to sit down and eat a whole banana cream pie sometimes or bake three dozen cookies and eat every one of them. Now, that's compulsion. And it's only a symptom. As drugs are only a symptom. And if it hadn't been drugs it would have been alcohol or some other excess because she always had a problem.
When I saw this happening, it really disturbed me. That's when Art and I would have terrible scenes. They would be broke constantly because they were shooting everything up their arms and they would come and bum on me, stay with me. If I knew Art had something, I'd threaten to call the police, and he'd have to go flush it down the toilet and want to kill me. I know he would have killed me if he thought he could have gotten away with it. And I thought it was all his fault. I blamed him for everything. But I had great feelings of ambivalence because I really liked him when things ... when bad things weren't happening. You know, we'd go to a drive-in movie, the three of us, and they'd stop off at a pharmacy first to buy a quart of Cosanyl, and we'd sit at the movie and have a ball. They'd pass it over to me: "No, thanks." Brown bagging it. They must have liked me to offer to share it. Hahahaha!
They had a great deal of affection for one another, using baby talk. He tried to please Diane. I was married to a man in Palm Springs, and they came down there, and Art went into hock for her. He bought her a beautiful diamond and sapphire ring for Christmas one time on the Friendly Credit Plan. He bought her a Lincoln convertible. My husband didn't have any money, but his mother was a millionaire, and Art wanted Diane to look as well as I was looking. And that's certainly affection and love and not just status.
Art bought her a poodle at about that time. Zsa Zsa. That was a very neurotic dog. She used to eat everything-furniture,