Stormy weather ahead!
Lemmy was always right! When he said “Be careful with the Maintenance Man” … He was right…When he said, “Be careful at those Mansion parties” and around some of my Hollywood friends. He was always right!
1994 proved to be a stormy time in my relationship with Lemmy and my time at the beach was becoming increasingly dangerous.
I assumed that Lemmy was a bit jealous of the time I spent with other men. He hated when he called, and I had other plans. I guessed that he was advising me on a more selfish level. Trying to get me to stop seeing the Maintenance Man by making him seem dangerous.
If the other guy was gone…. We could go back to having me at his beck and call. But I was wrong!
The beginning of April I moved into a new apartment in Long Beach.
My life was settling into a strange combination of normal 9 to 5 life with a rock n roll flavor.
Double life shuffle
I would put on a business suit and go to work from 8 to 5. And then on the weekend and some midweek evenings I would travel to Hollywood to stay with Lemmy in his crazy rocker lifestyle; fast music, speed and going to The Rainbow wearing the least amount of clothing possible.
The party would last all night and then back at work at 8 am.; tired; red eyed and smelling of old cigarettes and alcohol.
I loved it. But I also hated being tired all the time. Lemmy and I would argue about how he did not understand how hard it was for me to stay up all night and work in an office environment all day.
He would say “I used to work in a factory, so I know all about working the grind.” Oh, how this drove me crazy. I would get ready to go home to Long Beach and he would say “Oh, don’t leave now Deb”, “Just stay a couple more hours”.
Yes, as a musician he worked hard but there is no comparison. He was doing what he loved, and I felt trapped in a job that I hated.
Back on the road
Motorhead started the second part of their U.S. tour in the beginning of April. They had a show at The Palace Theater on the 14th, but my mom was in town from Ohio for a visit, so I could not attend.
I was very tempted to take her to the show. But Lemmy would have had heart failure. I can only imagine his reaction to my mother at a Motorhead show.
My mother instead had the pleasure of meeting my Long Beach maintenance man boyfriend, who she thought was a total weird loser. She said, “I just can’t put my finger on it; there is just something really strange about him.”
A postcard from Lemmy arrived around mid-May. The postcard reads with usual Lemmy humor.
Lemmy returned home to Los Angeles and started calling straight away. He seemed to be home for a couple weeks at a time and then gone on tour for a few weeks and then home. He was never around for a long span of time, and this put a strain on our relationship. When he was home, we fought a lot!!
On and Off. Hot and Cold. Home and Gone.
And I was still dating the maintenance man which Lemmy hated.
There were times when Lemmy would call only to find that I had plans with the Maintenance man, he would be furious. He would complain that I seemed to be spending more and more time with this other guy. He said that he had a bad feeling about the situation.
And of course, he was correct. The Maintenance man was slowly but steadily turning into a freak and somehow Lemmy could sense this.
Motorhead ended their U.S. tour with a quick trip to Argentina with the Ramones.
There were several times during this time, when Lemmy and I would be lounging on the couch watching the tv and the phone would ring. I would pick up the phone to hand it to him and he would say “Answer it”. Joey Ramone would be on the other end, and I was in heaven. It was surreal.
And after a quick trip home to Los Angeles, they were off to Japan.
Then from Japan, they were off to play a short tour of Europe. It was easy for me to become attached to the Maintenance man as Lemmy was gone so much that year. But I knew where my true heart was – on the road with Lemmy.
Home from the never ending tour.. Finally
After playing a couple of festivals in August Lemmy was home for a couple of months straight through to December. I knew that dating two men would be very difficult to maintain. But at least they both knew of each other and had accepted the fact that they had to share. And Lemmy had another person in his life also. “C” would become a major problem in the future and to the very end!
That Labor Day weekend, September 1994, I knew that I had to get this Maintenance man out of my life.
After attending a football party on that holiday Monday night, I was extremely exhausted. The temperatures were well above normal that summer night.
I remember laying down naked across the bed falling asleep with the cool breeze blowing in from the open window across my body. I fell immediately into a deep sleep and slept deeply throughout the night.
The next morning, I awoke as usual and entered my dining room. There on the floor were laid a pair of shorts and t- shirt that had been on a bookshelf in my bedroom when I had gone to bed. Next to the clothes – my purse.
Next to my purse was a fanned out display of all my ID cards, driver’s license, bank cards, charge cards. Etc. And these items seemed to be displayed in a highly organized manner according to their function.
My stomach rolled over, and I felt faint. My dining room window was wide open and the screen had been removed and placed against the tree right outside the window.
The refrigerator door was open. Totally freaked out, I was thinking that maybe someone was still in my apartment.
I was trembling all over and my mind was racing.
I immediately called my boss at work, and she told me to call the Long Beach police department to report the break-in.
The police arrived and took my report. The funny thing is that they asked me if I knew of anyone who would want to break into my place and not take anything of significance.
My mind immediately flashed to my “Maintenance man’ lover, but I told the police “No I have no idea who would break into my place”. I thought of the Maintenance man because he had increasingly become very bizarre in his behavior. Not anything specific, just this odd feeling that I got around him.
Of course it was the Maintenance Man!
I think the police could tell that I had some ideas, but they did not press me. They took my report and left.
Everyone that I told my bizarre story to at work assumed it was the Maintenance man, even though I had not mentioned him.
I called the Maintenance man and told him what had happened to me. He seemed concerned and told me that he would come by work at the end of the day to pick me up and drive me home.
Later that evening, he took me out to dinner. He kept asking me if I had any idea who would do such a weird thing. I assured him that “no, I couldn’t think of anyone”, all the while watching his expression to see if I could judge his reaction.
After dinner, I called Lemmy he immediately said, “It was probably the Maintenance man.
I just could not figure out why he would want to fan out all my purse items on the floor like that? I kept trying to tell myself that it was probably some crazy homeless person, but this just freaked me out.
The thoughts of me sleeping so deeply, naked across my bed and of some unknown person coming into my bedroom while I slept to get the clothes and my purse off the bookshelf made me feel completely violated. I kept picturing this figure standing over me and looking at me as I slept.
A WALK TO REMEMBER
A few weeks later, the Maintenance man came over to my place and unplugged my phone and a few other electrical items.
He was whispering and wanted me to take a walk on the beach with him. He explained that he felt uncomfortable talking in my apartment and wanted to explain why.
I was a little apprehensive, but I figured that even though it was dark the beach across the street from my home was probably still active with joggers and bikers.
I tried to get him to open to me there in my apartment, but he kept insisting that I walk with him on the beach. He said that it was a matter of life or death. So, I went.
As we walked on the beach, he explained that he really cared for me and that he “knew that either the CIA or the FBI had sent me to follow him, to become part of his life so that I could report back to them his every move”.
He confessed to breaking into my apartment on Labor Day weekend to look for my “CIA identification” or any information that would verify that I was a “spy”. I did not know what to say.
He was completely serious and as far as he was concerned ….in real danger from me.
I was freaking out inside. How the hell did I get myself into this situation? And Lemmy’s words were echoing in my head “That guy is a freak you should get away from him.”
I had always though that Lemmy was just being jealous but somehow from the little I had said about the Maintenance man he had gotten enough vibe to know the truth. And here I was walking along a dark Pacific beach with a man who was convinced that I was a spy sent to gain information on him.
I tried my best to keep the situation calm and to convince him that I was just a girl from Ohio who had moved to California to finish my college education. That I had never been nor would ever be in either the CIA or the FBI.
He remained calm but I could tell that he was still confused and did not want to trust me.
We walked back to my place, and he wanted to come in, but I told him that I was very tired and needed to go right to bed. He agreed that it had been a long day and that we should call it a night. When he turned and walked off into the night, I was so relieved.
That following Monday he showed up at my office with flowers and a big apology. I remained friends with him hoping that he would return to the nice guy that I had met over a year ago, but his behavior kept declining into the bizarre.
He continued questioning me about my CIA involvement and when I would visit him at him place, he would talk about how “they” were bugging his place and stealing his “famous” artwork and replacing it with fakes.
When I told Lemmy about my little espionage flavored walk on the beach he said, “be very careful”. He said that the Maintenance man could become extremely dangerous if he thought that I was a threat even if it were just an imagined threat.
He also couldn’t resist saying “I told you so, I knew there was something wrong with that guy.”
About 6 months later my poor Maintenance man was committed to a mental institution for treatment of drug induced paranoid schizophrenia with delusions of grandeur.
A week after his commitment he showed up at my door in the rain looking for comfort and a place to stay. He said that he just couldn’t stay in the hospital as the doctors wanted to give him drugs as part of his treatment. Oh, the irony.
I called his dad who promptly came to retrieve him to take him home to Orange County.
As I began this story… Lemmy was always right…!!