Rosamond Press

When I started dating Melinda Frank, my good friend, Bryan McLean did not approve.

“She’s a black widow. Because of her, my friend Sky is dead.”

Melinda had become close with my sister Christine. She was written up in TIME magazine for speaking sentences when she was six months old. She wrote profound poetry, she influenced by her twenty-four year old lover, Sky, who hung around the Beat Poets of Venice.

“What was
can never be
brought back
continued
forevermore”

Soon after my family moved to West Los Angeles, I am exploring Venice. I am checking out the artists and poets, the Bohemian scene going on here. In 1970 I would meet my Muse, Rena Christensen, here, at three in the morning. I saved her. She was in peril.

My friend, Bryan McLean hung out in the coffee houses of Venice. There he met his good friend, Sky. I forget his given name. I met him once at the New Baladeer, a coffee-house that was once a tea house. Marilyn and I discovered this place shortly after we met. After school we went there. I brought my drawing pad and did a drawing of her as we sipped tea. This is 1963.

Marilyn’s brother, Stan, knew some of these Beats. They bought heroin from him. One day when Marilyn and I were in her back yard, the door to Stan’s shed opened, and out came these log haired sandaled beatniks in cut-offs. A cloud of smoke pours out of the shed. This is 1963. They all looked like Jesus, but, Sky took top prize. He was a beautiful man. There was a peaceful glow about him. He was a hippie before there were hippies. Christine’s friend had found her way to the Balladeer, and at sixteen Sky deflowered her. He was twenty-four.

Christine always wanted me to meet her beautiful girlfriends. She showed them off to me. I assume my sister told them I was an artist, and would be famous one day. I did not find Melinda beautiful, but she was pretty in a interesting way. She had her own look. She dressed just like Ann Frank. She was half-Jewish.

One day she came into the backyard and saw my Straw Man, my Scarecrow painting that was 4 X 6 feet. I had run out of tubes of color and canvas, and was desperate to paint on anything – with anything. On a piece of plywood I nailed some chicken wire. I had some left over clay from the chess pieces I made, and molded my Man, pushed him into the wire. I then took dry grass I found in back of my studio, and slipped it into the chicken wire. I then took the black-blue house paint I found in the garage, and painted everything black.

I watched Melinda approach my Man, stand before him, and begin to cry. I was shocked to see this.
I asked her why she was crying. She lifted her finger and pointed out the burrow a spider had made right between the Man’s eyes. All of a sudden, I saw it, what Melinda saw. This was a crucifixion, a lobotomy of a Man who did not belong. He was now dead, but for the spider that lived in his third eye.

That is Christine’s painting of Melinda above.

I do not recall our first kiss, but I recall when I later got near her, and felt this incredible erotic electricity she omitted. I got it, she was not a girl, not a virgin, but a woman. This is when I gave her a second look, and found her exceedingly beautiful. Melinda had a powerful aura.. She was extremely smart. She knew she wanted more, more love-making.

Christine, Melinda, Raphael, and I went to Uni High. We started going there together. One morning I had to have her. It was mutual. We cut school. We were down to our underwear on my bed. I was rubbing her, then pulled off her underwear. It was the first time I saw a woman down there. I started to pull down my underwear;

“Greg. Do you have any protection.”
“No.”
“We cant do this.”
We made-out for hours.

After three o’clock, Melinda got a bad feeling. Instead of going home, she called. Her mother answered. I saw the bloodstain from my beautiful woman.

“You’re fathers looking for you. The school called and wondered where you were! Get home! You are in a lot of trouble.”

Killing, Raping, and Crucifying the Artists, their Lovers, and Model Message List
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“What do you want me to do – kill him?”

I spoke these words to Melinda Frank, my second girlfriend. She was sixteen
years old. She was my sister Christine’s good friend who dressed like Anne
Frank. I am sitting with her in the shrubs in front of her home where she had
gone to hide. She, Bryan Mclean, and I knew Melinda’s father had her first
lover, murdered! Donald Frank had called up my family and promised them I would
be dead by the end of the day. He had caught Melinda and I cutting school. We
made love for hours in my bed, we getting down to our underpants, and, we almost
went all the way. For this – I must die!

Thanks to Melinda I am alive! When I was in her father’s house listening to her
deranged father explain his brutal philosophy of life, that’s when I began to
leave my body. A white light came out of my chest and I felt like I was
floating. I felt that I could fly away. I felt that no harm could come to me –
in this state!

I had been looking at Melinda lying on the floor on her stomach, she completely
oblivious to what her father The Murderer was saying to me. She was reading the
jacket of a Bob Dylan album. I studied her wet hair, that not but a half hour
earlier was completely covered with blood. Blood streamed down her face in
rivulets as she held on to the door jam. Frank had hoisted his daughter on his
shoulder – his cross to bare. He had no sons. Just two daughters to carry on his
lineage. Donald and his brothers were members of the Jewish Purple gang. The
owned half of New Mexico. Why wasn’t Melnda taken to the hospital?

“I’m not leaving with Greg! Melinda cried as he yanked on her with all his
might. He was desperate to separate us so he could send his goons to kill me
like they did Sky, the beautiful twenty four year old lover of Melinda, who
looked just like Jesus. He deflowered her. Donald had Sky’s face disfigured with
a blowtorch. Bryan was Sky’s close friend, and was angry at me for dating her.
He called Melinda a Black Widow.

Melinda and I had gone to the motel in back of my house to call her grandmother
and have her wire money for her to take the bus to Texas. Earlier, sencing
something was wrong, Melinda had called home only to hear from her mother Donald
was out looking for us. The grandmother would later turn us is.

While sitting in the manager’s office waiting for a Moneygram, we heard the
front door bell sound, and the young manager got up to go to the desk. Now we
hear an angry voice and the manager is backing up into his office Donald right
there in his face, What a fucking animal.

“Where are they, cocksucker? Tell me, or I will rip your face off!”

I get up, and start walking towards Donald, whose head turns like a wild beast
to see who is in the room. He spots his daughter, and me. He comes rushing at
me, gets in my face and screams!

“C’mon, mother-fucker – hit me! I haven’t had some fun in a long time!”

There’s his sixteen year old daughter beholding her father on the verge of
killing her second boyfriend she loves. He can not be doing this for her sake!

Melinda sands up and gets between us. Donald’s eyes are black pits. There is
murder in his eyes. I do not flinch, or back down, but speak calmly to him. I
have dealt with his kind before. My own father committed insane and violent acts
of violence and derogation against members of his family – only for the reason
we were HIS family. There is an ownership issue here.

Donald grabs Melinda by the wrist and starts pulling her towards the door, but,
Melinda digs in her heals.

“C-mon, sweety! I’ve come to take you home!”

“I don’t want to got with you!”

Donald now drags her to the doorway, and when she grabs hold of the door jam he
gives her a violent tug that sends her head flying into the front desk. You
could hear the sound of her head hitting the edge. Blood begins to pour down her
face. Donald throws Melinda on his shoulder, turns to carry her out the door,
but Melinda takes hold of the door jam again.

I understand this is a struggle for my life. Melinda won, for now.
In looking at her on the floor in her pajamas, I flash back to an hour ago, and
see what really frightened me, and I was really afraid for the first time. A
very large man had come into the motel office. He was about six foot six. He was
wearing a white Stetson cowboy hat. He had an air of authority. I saw him as a
World War Two Veteran. He was appalled at what he beheld. There was blood
everywhere. He came at Donald, begging him to put the bloody girl down. Now it
is Melinda’s turn to look just like Jesus, like Sky did. Her big eyes were
pleading with the big man for help.

“This is my daughter! If you know what’s good for, you’ll back off!”

The big man stood there frozen, studying the murderous black eyes of a wild
beast. He was struggling at the very core of his soul, for he had never backed
down. Did he kill Nazi in Germany? Now……..he backed away, slowly, looking
utterly defeated, because he ascertained that Donald was carrying a gun, and had
made it clear his defence for killing the hero was to protect his underage
daughter he was rescuing from the Motel of Filth and Sin.

“The father rat has to take care of his baby rats, or, everything is chaos in
the world!”

As Donald lay his, kill or be killed, philosophy on me, I began to leave my
body, because, I was not out of danger. As long as Melinda and I were in sight
of each other, I was safe. But, how safe is that? How safe does that feel? And
then my angry brother knocked at the door. He had come to my rescue, or, so he
thought!

A week ago as I tried to fall asleep, I began to shake violently. After a half
hour I took some pain pills. I almost dialed 911 three time. I could not breath.
I was having a severe anxiety attack. In recalling things about my struggle to
have a normal and healthy sexual bond with a normal and sexually healthy woman,
I was going back and recalling why this was so hard for me. I loved Susie,
Marilyn, and Melinda so much. But, Donald gave me a very clear message; “Make
love to my daughter – and you are dead!” This 0ut of body experience would
contribute to my death on McClure’s beach

Melinda was hiding in the bushes because she was suffering from PTSD. I loved
her do deeply, and cared about her so much. I suggested I try to get along with
her father, who wanted to hire me to run a movie theatres he owned. After I was
working for him for awhile, I would ask for his daughters hand in marriage.

“I don’t want that! You don’t understand how much I hate him!”
“What do you want me to do, kill him?”

I got no reply, and knew our relationship was over. Melinda wanted a Knight in
Shining Armor to come take her away from her father.- any way he could!
As I talked abount Rena, I kept coming back to the fact she was just seventeen
years of age, and thus, underage. Rena had told me she was eghteen. I think I
was in Donald’s house to celebrate Melinda’s Sweet Seventeen Birthday.
Growing up on a ranch in New Mexico, the only school around was a small Catholic
School. The head Nun, would make Melinda huddle down in the space below her
desk, and take sharp kicks at her, telling the students;
“This is how you treat a Jew!”
Today is Ash Wendsday. Melinda was written up in Time Magazine for speaking
sentences when she was six months old. She could never utter these two word;
“Help me!”

“It may be many months after the ordeal when you feel like your life is just
getting back to normal when a heavy rain (after surviving a hurricane), hearing
a car door (after leaving an abusive spouse), or even the telephone ringing
(after a family tragedy) triggers you and your heart races, your body starts
shaking and you are literally terrified, all over again. “
Jon Presco
Copright 2005

No sooner did the Prescos (minus Captain Vic) move down to West Los Angeles, then my aunt June has crept up on me while I was alone and whispered this warning in my ear.

“Don’t go to Sawtelle. Don’t go west of the Santa Monica Freeway.”

“Why I asked?”

“Because some bad man will put an ice pick in your ear and molest you.”

“Oh!” I said in complete innocence, it later sinking in that my prudish aunt was speaking of homo rape. Of course you could not keep me away from the Sawtelle, not that I was a latent homosexual at sixteen, but because there had to be some kind of real life going on in Los Angeles desert. I mean, they had movie of the week, where we Prescos watched ‘The High and the Mighty’ seven times, because that was all that was on. Being Oaklanders, we were hunkered down in our cube, our apartment on Midvale two blocks from Santa Monica Blvd.

When alas I made some friends (who my mother Rosemary met when she came home from work) no sooner were they out the door, then she is hissing this at me;

“I don’t want you hanging around boys like that?”

“What are you talking about?” I asked my not so innocent mother.

“Affeminent young men! (girly-boys)” she spat, adding to my growing fear of homos carrying icepicks.

“You got to be kidding me! Bryan’s not a fag!” I declared, as I defended my new friend Bryan McLean, and his friend, Greg.

“Listen to me. I know what I’m talking about.”

So, here it is, the Genesis of the Hippie Movement. My mother, the degenerate, knows one when she sees one, and, her four children best turn on the Movie of Week and not venture outside lest we become one of…..THEM!

* * *

Above is a photo of the West End Hotel where I think I’m going to spend Christmas Eve and Day. Around the corner is where the New Balladeer was located. Looking north, it was on the far right of a little shopping area. There used to be a tea house that I discovered in 1962 in my search for anything that was old and reminded me of Oakland where I was born. I brought my fifteen year old girlfriend, Marilyn Godfrey, here and did a drawing of her.

Marilyn had modeled when she was thirteen. She modeled for her good friend, the Jazz artist, Les McCann. Marilyn’s sister was married to Les’s drummer, and they walked through Watts to see him play at Jazz clubs in LA’s ghetto. Did I mention that Marilyn lived in the Sawtelle, west of the freeway?

The great Jazz trombonist, J.J. Johnson, invited Marilyn up to his pad, and made her dinner. He then made a move on my the love of my life, but, she stopped him cold when she told him she was only fifteen.

Are starting to get the big picture? Marilyn took me to see the movie ‘Black Orpheus’ at the Nuart theatre. This was a preview of things to come when my second girlfriends father sent tow guys in trench coats to tell ‘Sky’ the Beatnik, to get out of town. Sky was Bryan’s good friend, and he refused to be intimidated. A week later they found him with his face blow-torched off. Sky was tortured to death months after he met sixteen year old, Melinda Frank, my late sister’s good friend.

Byran asked me not to date Melinda.

“Why?” I asked.

“She’s a Black Widow. She got Sky killed.

So, Bryan and I went West of the Santa Monica Freeway, into the Sawtelle, where we listened to this excellent musician play this ballad almost every night.

Sardinian Kingdom Founds SF Colony