An old, old pic of the lead singer of the Plasmatics.
Wendy and I were born in the same hospital, three months apart. She grew up about two miles from me, although those two miles were all water, a large bay of Lake Ontario that split our neighborhoods into completely separate communities that never mixed. Mine was suburban, barely escaping urban. Hers was rural, trying to be suburban.
After childhood, our lives were very different. By the time we were 16, she was hitchhiking around the world and I was probably still trying to organize my baseball cards, possibly up to the “D’s.” By the time we reached our late 20s, she was working in porno and sex shows, and I was probably still on the “M’s.” By 1998, as we were about to turn 50, I had already retired, having raised two families, and was enjoying my new life as Uncle Scoopy as she was putting a bullet through her brain.
There were probably times when I envied her adventurous life and her eventual international fame, but in retrospect, my incredibly boring path through corporate America was a much better choice.
The last paragraph somehow reminds me of a song on one of the best Kinks albums – generally seen as contrasting domestic Ray and nondomestic Dave.
By the mid-90s when I went to UConn, she was just this really chill lady who would roll up to the Willimantic food co-op on her bike, buy a few things, and leave. A damn shame that she went out that way that young. I guess she did burn so very brightly for a while there.