The story of Annie Armstrong can not easily be separated from the story of another love-interest of mine, one who lived out West. I met Deirdre Spellman in downtown Manhattan one day in the summer of 2003, she was from Arizona and was visiting relatives on Long Island. Mutually attracted to each other, we hit it off so well we even went back to NJ to my apartment, where I took a shower and changed clothes, before returning to Rockefeller Plaza for drinks and conversation, on our way to Penn Station, where she caught her train back to Long Island. I immediately wanted to make her mine. We exchanged numbers, the look of matrimony was in my eyes. We made plans for me to visit her during the winter and I did in fact visit her in Phoenix, where she worked on projects as a business manager for a company that designed ejection seats for the Federal Government. We spent the week in Arizona going to various cities, including Chandler, Gilbert, and various college towns surrounding the University of Arizona, I was wearied with desire being with her; I wanted to take her to Sedona and make love to her with an intense passion. But sadly, that was not to be, when I got there she sat me down and told me how she had met an old friend in the meantime, a man who was looking to get re-married after he had lost his wife, a man with children of his own, who already had a house in Scottsdale, which is a very nice town. Deirdre even took me there in our journeys around Arizona; she rented a black Range Rover for the occasion, as she did not want to put a great amount of mileage on her own car, which was a gold Mark Eight. =========================
Immediately prior to my trip out West to visit Deirdre, I met Annie Armstrong and here my real adventures with women began. She was an editor at a major New York publishing company, and I met her while walking the streets of Chelsea, her neighborhood, I took her phone number and gave her my card at Manhattan Life, an act which her sister despised as being that which accorded with vainglorious New York businessmen. Disappointed with this change in our status from would-be lovers to just friends, I told Deirdre all about Annie Armstrong. Now reconciled to just remaining friends with Deirdre, I checked my email from her house in Phoenix. Annie had written to me alright, she just wrote to me a line or two. There was a snowstorm back east and she said you'd better stay put for awhile, the wind could knock you down your plane in an instant - I spent the night in the AZ airport as all flight east were cancelled because of the storm, Deirdre dropped me off to go visit the man who for all intents and purposes was her new fiancee. =========================
When I got back to New York, just before the weekend I called Annie's cell phone and asked her to go see the Nicole Kidman movie, The Hours, and she replied that she would most certainly go, as she had read every word Virginia Woolf ever wrote. Afterwards she complained that she didn't like the Phillip Glass music that was featured in the film. She told me that she had six chihuahuas as pets and that she watched "Sex in the City" every week, which was then being featured on HBO. She also told me she had just come back from an island with Heidi Klum and, as we were in a taxicab in midtown passing in view of a huge poster of the aforesaid fashion model, she waved to her and said, "Hi, Heidi." Now in some ways I inwardly cringed at this show of vanity, egocentricity or at the very least a downright embarrassing falsehood, still part of my credulous self believed in her fabrications, after all she was an editor to the stars. "I do dieting, lifestyle and health and fitness books," she said to me, "and I have to prognosticate on whether in a given season, books with more optimistic tones or more pessimistic tones will dominate the literary scene." Such was the talk she led me on with, I fell for it, hook, line and sinker. A few dates later, she told me had dated an Italian man named Guillermo who had a lithography business in the West Village, she, a divorced woman who lived out her fantasies of sexual promiscuity based on the events she saw in "Unfaithful", starring Richard Gere and Diane Lane, which was a tale involving marital infidelity - a movie she went to see by herself. Just like in the movies, Annie would go down to Guillermo's residence/place of business in the West Village for their periodic rendezvous. "No words now, Annie," as he proceeded to take her to bed, she let me know in that certain way only women have of telling you between the lines that she was open to anal sex-play. =========================
Later when she called me at Manhattan Life Insurance Company, she was desperate, she was being sued by the host of a Cable-TV Home Improvement show. Todd Morris a fellow agent said to me, "She's got six dogs in this town? You know she's crazy, right?" I should have said to him, "Well, that's a good match, because I'm crazy, too." Instead I listened to her complain that on the very day she took a day off from work there was a journalist who did a write-up about the prospects for this year's publications and quoted several of her co-workers who, Annie said, were far less industrious and hard-working. "There'll be other articles in the future," I cajoled her from my desk and Manhattan Life, where I was so busy trying to sell 401(k) plans that I neglected the insurance side of things, much to my demerit. I was trying to make my territory the whole metropolitan region, canvassing Manhattan and several of the outer boroughs, across to Westchester to Mamoroneck NY (I had sold a 401k plan there while working as a broker for F.W. Leavitt at 2 Wall Street, just before 9/11), as well as covering a great swath of New Jersey, from Ramsey to Bridgewater. I was hanging by a thread on the job, I had met a Manhattan Life partner after I decided that the insurance business was my best option, as I did not see good prospects for the future in promoting stocks over the phone, anyhow an Indian fellow by the name of Rajit Mohendra had hired me but had been promoted to the Texas office of Manhattan Life and here I was telling this seriously distressed woman to rely on me, focus on me, a woman who was probably hanging on by her own very slender threads. Todd heard my end of the conversation with Annie and grinned admiringly, "Where'd you learn that?" he said, bearing his teeth, "Get them to depend on you, that's the way to do it," he inveigled me; I later found out he had several ex-wives in the city. =========================
There are whorehouses in New York City. You can read about their temporary locations in the back pages of the village's community newspaper, I did so and found about the location of one in midtown Manhattan. There were two short Filipino men in front of me. When I got inside I met the master of ceremonies and featured performer, a man who can only be described as an African-American version of the character Jaws from the James Bond film Moonraker, complete with the wiring effacing his "grill." Annie lived about fifteen blocks south of there. "Jaws" took one glimpse of my face of disgust and put me in a room with a short Spanish woman. So I knew about the neighborhood, so to speak. =========================
Through my relationship with Annie, I was able to indulge, if not in some small way attempt to gratify, my fiery obsession with Judith Reagan, the publisher, who had edited Howard Stern's autobiographical book titled Private Parts, which my mother had purchased for me when I was at Bard College. Another writer/editor of a similar namesake, Ann Coulter, had recently come on to the scene with a book about the circumstances surrounding Bill Clinton's impeachment proceedings, Annie appeared to know all about her when I brought her up as being similar to her as far as her manner of speaking went. "Well, we're both from the South," she fibbed, I have since learned that Ann Coulter is from Connecticut. I would say Annie Armstrong fulfilled my desires to have a relationship with a working-woman of the world, although I cannot say I was able to possess her, my somewhat strained relationship with her pleased me because here was a woman who had the creativity of Judith Reagan, the vitriol of Anne Coulter and the titillating speech of WABC Radio's Monica Crowley, who I listened to as often as possible. =========================
At least a working-woman was what I thought I wanted; however, on several of our dates between January and July in 2003, at the end of the date, when the time came for her to return home, she would invariably find a reason to be brusque with me, always pick a fight or start an argument with me or even with the cab driver, choosing to be angry with him because of his being in the wrong lane -- even in the beginning of our relationship, when I took her to the Yale Club at Manhattan Life's Christmas party, I was always hoping that I would be able to set my eyes on her in her own natural surroundings and feast my eyes of that library she claimed to have. I guess my reason for dissatisfaction with her was that traveling to Manhattan was so tiring, and the streets of New York so crowded and hectic, she never gave me an opportunity to take shelter in a place where we could relax and get to known one another. Against my better inclinations to break off the relationship and start off again with someone new, maybe even a return to Mary Ruggerio, I decided to stick it out until the summer; I was determined to get inside her apartment and find out her secrets, at least see her library which I relished with much anticipation and desire as I had for Annie herself. ==========================
In April I brought Annie Armstrong to a pastoral setting that was very important to me, the Don Bosco Marian Shrine complex being less than two miles away from my mother and father's house in Thiells NY. We drove from Manhattan up to Rockland County NY on Easter in 2004 to spend the day. First we went to an outdoor mass where there was a great big statue of Mary. It was bigger than life, about two stories tall, and it was very inspiring. I felt good going with Annie Armstrong, she was very receptive to going to mass with me but it hurt me when she did not go up to receive communion. That told me something about her religious nature. I guess she was Protestant, she came from South Carolina and to be honest I never brought up the question of religious affiliation with her. I don't even know to this day whether she was Baptist or Protestant or perhaps another denomination. I really didn't know at the time and still don't know; all I know if that - at the time - I was one hundred percent devoted to her, completely, thoroughly. ======================
Still four months into our relationship, while we were affectionate, there was barely and kissing and petting, much less actual sexual relations. What was the reason for her reluctance to spend the night with me? I questioned myself. I reasoned to myself that perhaps this was the mark of her excellence, or perhaps the mark of
my excellence. If she could give herself freely to an exotic foreigner and have a wild time with him, perhaps she was taking a more cautious approach with me because she looked at me as husband material or as long-term material, at the very least. As I thought to myself, she's finally over her disappointments in love; I had wanted to be her knight in shining armor and bring her a balm of healing, forgiveness and love, what's more, I wanted to share with her my experience of love, which in reality was only my mother's love for me.
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It was then that I recalled a certain metaphysical experience I had in the years previous to my head injury, when I had just started attending Rockland Community College in the Fall of 1990. My English Composition professor, Dr. Samuel Draper, who had studied under Mark van Doren, was adamant about the new students in RCC's then-new Mentor/Talented Student program reading the New York newspapers every day but, to be quite honest, he mostly cared that we read the Sunday edition, which was devoted to literary topics. Well, following Dr. Draper's advise, I began browsing through the newspaper when I read an article concerning a famous diet doctor whose pronouncements and regimen for proper eating were making news in the early Nineties. That day in 1990, as I perused the article about the doctor, and I recall I was determined to learn for myself what all the fuss was about regarding this eminent physician who everyone, from housewives to professional men, were following this rigor and alacrity. As I read the article about the doctor, I fell in love with the journalist's description of the doctor's personal assistant, who was none other than Annie Armstrong, who was also mentioned in the article but who I was not to meet until 2003. Making that connection one again, I went online to the newspaper's database and did indeed confirm what I had long suspected. It was she! The two of us must be connected by some sort of physic wires, I thought. If I was already obsessed with my love for her, this revelation took it to a whole new level. Perhaps a psychiatrist would term my condition a 'psychotic reaction'. =========================
Then came May 1st, my birthday. She had previously let me know her thoughts on the subject, saying, "You know what I'm thinking on for you for your birthday? I think I will book a hotel and we can spend the night there. What do you think about that?" she asked inquisitively. That was music to my ears, that was the day of "assignation" I had been longing for with every fiber of my being. I croaked out my happy agreement to these arrangements, not really believing they would take place, as she was known for making speculative statements like this all the time, like when she said the dogs would be climbing all over us in bed someday.
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Did I mention that I was having vocal problems at the time ? During my stint in the U.S. Army, I had strained my vocal chords, actually they clicked with an audible "pop" while I was training and screaming my head off. I had wanted to be the best soldier possible, the top fighter, a true combat soldier who would receive medals for bravery and valor. I joined the Army about three months after 9/11. First I tried the Marines, I told soldier at a recruitment office in New Jersey, "I want to join the Marines because I'm the best there is." He said I could apply for Officers Training Candidate School after Basic Training. I felt I was fulfilling my destiny, I thought that George W. Bush was correct, that there would be world-revolution starting in the Middle East that would change the face of the globe and, what's more, I wanted to be a part of it. =========================
I ultimately would up rejecting the idea of joining the Marines, which would have been a more accurate way of following in my father's footsteps, probably because I was afraid of firing weapons, which a properly-train Marine is supposed to be an expert at. I would wind up choosing the army, as I found a friendly recruiter in Rockland County NY, who presented a less-warlike view of the Army lifestyle, to me it was more culture-friendly. I also had the idea of writing a book about the war, a view which Norman Mailer shared when he went into World War II and, like Mailer, I also had political ambitions, and I thought that by serving with distinction as a soldier in the army, I would have gained experience, through work and through combat, and plentiful material for my future writings, and a part of my thought this could be translated into a political career; the less ambitious part of me thought there was a possibility that I could find myself getting the training I needed to be an executive at America Newswire, as there had been managers above me who I had heard relating their time in the service; I believe Myers, the new Implementation manager, had been in the U.S. Navy. Perhaps I ought to have told Annie about my experiences in the armed forces, perhaps that would have made me more worthy of admiration, or least more of an object of desire, to her.... =========================
Anyhow, to make shorten a long story shorter, three months after I set off for the Fort Jackson military base, I came home. As Mary Ruggerio's mother said to her daughter, "I didn't know he could get out of it so easily as that?" True, back I was, back in New York, and looking for ward to my day of "assignation" with Annie Armstrong. On my birthday I left my apartment in Rutherford NJ, as it was a work-day and at a time when there was no direct service, I caught the bus to NYC at 4 PM, which brought me to Manhattan at 5 PM. As I was walking to her apartment, confident that I would finally get an opportunity to relax and spend some time inside her building, which was 440 W. 34th Street, I received a phone call on my cell phone, which I had just gotten from my friend in NJ who owned Telcom Global in River Edge NJ, (he had even obtained for me a "917" area code number, which was becoming all the rage in Manhattan during those days and perhaps even now), Annie called me with some anger in her voice. =======================
"Where are you?" she shouted at me, and when I explained that I was walking 8th Avenue towards 34th Street, she said, in an very exasperated voice, "You never check your messages!" Apparently she had called me when I was in the Lincoln Tunnel, when cell phone connections could not be made, or perhaps she had called me at home in NJ, I really don't remember, all I recall is that she said to me that she was in a taxicab and that she would swing by and pick me up on 34th Street and Broadway. She said that name of the hotel she and I were to stay at. My head felt almost awake at the idea of spending the night with her, which I had longed to do for all these past months. ========================
SECTIONS TO WRITE: How Annie reacted on our night together -- Getting into Annie's apartment by myself
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On our last date, I had taken Annie to one of George Bernard's singles parties at Tavern on the Green in 2005, shortly before my stay in Bergen Regional Hospital. I introduced her to George, she said to him, "George Bernard Shaw's my favorite author." He spoke to her about an unfinished novel he had in his desk. He appeared to approve of me bringing her there, I considered. I also recall asking her what she thought about the new Lucinda William latest CD, "World Without Tears." She had mentioned to me how she had shared one of that singer's previous albums, "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road" with her ex-boyfriend Guillermo.
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Then it hit me: Summer had arrived, and still my relationship with Annie was on life-support. I hardly saw her, much less made love to her morning and night, which is what I dreamed of. Although I had only been involved with Annie Armstrong for six months, I was in love with her to the point of obsession. (I guess I wanted immediate gratification.) Our relationship wasn't working out they way I wanted and, just miserably in love and feeling quite depressed about it, I left an almost tearful "goodbye" message on her cell phone. She must have become very concerned for me because she called my parent's telephone number; I had given her their number hoping that she would call my mother sometime, as Annie needed a mother, her own having passed away, and my mother needed a daughter, her own having dropped out of her life after marrying a Canadian who lived in North Carolina shortly after I graduated high school in 1990. Anyhow, I don't know what Annie was thinking, but she told my parents that I was following her and was possibly even lurking in the darkness outside her building, which was completely untrue. However, they believed her every word and, shortly after her phone call, my parents informed the police in Rutherford and the next morning, they came to my apartment. At first, the police wanted me to meet with a counselor and put me on the phone with this person, a woman who sounded concerned but completely flustered as to where I lived. She asked for directions to my place, mentioning that she was at the junction of Routes #1 and #9, just the very place where I got totally confused myself. In fact, this was the major reason why I took the NJ Transit train rather than drive my Saturn SC1 to work at Amerian Newswire in Jersey City, because the roads got so confusing to me in this area, my having double-vision and my being unable to see due to vision loss and, as an aside, also the reason why I never explored Hoboken NJ, although I always longed to. =========================
However, when I told the counselor not to worry herself, that I would handle this myself with the police, declining the offer of counseling, I made an error, for the cops immediately said to me, "You didn't want counseling, so we have to take you in," they were very direct with me. They put me into the back of the police car, two cars were parked outside my apartment and I can recall the old women who lived above me, perhaps I did not know her name, she called out the window asking what was happening to me. "It's all right," I entreated her, "I'll be back directly." Instead, the police transported me to Bergen Regional Medical Center, where I spent the next three weeks. I was in a state of great terror, as I had no idea where I was and little clue as to what my status was or given direction as to who was in charge. No one ever addressed me or spoke to me directly, they just started giving me a little pill which I later learned was 1 mg of a drug called Zyprexa, which had the effect of putting me to sleep when I took it, and they gave it to me both day and night. Consider my situation: Here I was falling helplessly in love with every woman I had the slightest relations with, which eventually led me to the psychiatric ward. I didn't know I had a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, I would have understood my condition at once if someone had come out and leveled with me in a more forthright manner; paranoid schizophrenia was something I had studied and wrote about, both on an undergraduate and graduate level. Not knowing my diagnosis, I was left to hypothesize to myself that I appeared to be suffering from a form of erotomania that led to a general degradation of my sensibilities.
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After they released me, I was to continue taking Zyprexa and for a time, and I continued going to Bergen Regional as an out-patient and continuing to live in Rutherford, sleeping all day and all night because of the medication. (Currently I take drug equivalent of 40 times the amount of Zyprexa they gave me in the hospital, as I now take 8 mg of Risperdal a day, 4 mg morning and again at night - and only when Dr. Charles increased my Risperdone to 4 mg a day did my vocal troubles disappear.) =========================
I actually did met Annie again on one occasion, never in my life have I disclosed this to anyone, but one day, while walking 8th Avenue in a northerly direction toward 50th Street where I was dating a woman by the name of Jane Russo, who had been a Broadway dancer but was now on the near side of 60 years old, I walked almost head on into none other but the person of Annie Armstrong herself. She was a little surprised to meet me but not overly so, she took meeting me as a natural occurrence. (Think of the odds: I had met her in Manhattan two times by chance, and in different areas of the city!) Perhaps by way of making conversation, she asked me if I knew what street she could take in order to pass through between the two main buildings of the Port Authority in order to get to 9th Avenue, which was a somewhat unusual question to ask for a native New Yorker. The fact is, I met her on 8th Avenue a little north of 42nd Street, but a little south of an X-Rated video parlor, a porn shop where for $5 you could watch women have sex with dogs in your own private cubicle. I think it's of some literary interest that I had my last meeting with her was at 43rd and 8th, whereas in Theodore Dreiser's novel, "The Genius", his protagonist last encounters the woman he is obsessed with at 42nd Street and 5th Avenue.
