The Freedom of Living Regardless of Public Opinion – Mary R.
About This Speaker Tape
1961, North Hollywood. Mary R. is standing in her muumuu, drinking vodka out of a cheese glass, when a man with a "big AA smile" walks through the door. She had spent years as the "Belle of Bush Street" in San Francisco and a USO party girl in the European theater, where she once whacked a captain on the ear and nearly faced court-martial. Between the glamorous nightclubs and the "bittersweet agony" of crying to sad music, she lived as a woman miscast in the role of a housewife, scrubbing appliance lettering with a toothbrush while secretly nursing a homicidal rage toward her gambling husband.
She describes the crash as a cold gray dawn in an alley, feeling like garbage and lurching down Ventura Boulevard in a cloud of Taboo perfume to mask the 86-proof sweat. After a Higher Power led her to a "sick" clubhouse for rejects, she traded the need for public approval for a hard-nosed sobriety. She eventually paid off the IRS and found gratitude in the end zone of her son's football game.
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