Taboo: A Memoir Ch. 01-03

When I made the scene, Jacquot decided fatherhood was a bring down. Rug rats weren't his style. He packed his rucksack and went back on the road. Mom got a postcard from him once from Tangier but nothing else.

Diana pulled herself together and, at eighteen, accepted her new role as single mother. It was difficult. She was a free spirit, and now she had a huge responsibility: yours truly. She decided she needed a college degree, so she pushed aside her Beat disrespect for academics and enrolled in the University of Colorado at Boulder, majoring in cultural anthropology. Maintaining her nonconformist ways, she became active in the Young People's Socialist League and the Congress of Racial Equality. She toted me along to classes, to civil rights demonstrations, and to the Ten O'clock Scholar and the Sink, the hang-outs for the few fifties' fringies at the university.

Her parents footed the bill. They'd been mortified by her pregnancy and were relieved when she "left that disgusting milieu and got back in line by going to college."

Diana discovered she liked mental work and poured herself into her studies. She went on to law school, an outgrowth of her political activism, and became a criminal defense attorney. The Denver Public Defender's office offered her a position, which she accepted.

Most attorneys use a stint as a Public Defender to gain experience before moving on to big-time criminals who view large legal fees as CDB: Cost of Doing Business. But Diana stayed with it, defending poor, uneducated people who made mistakes out of desperation.

Early on, while she was still naive, she fell in love with one of her clients, a charming, good-looking crook who stole her cash and jewelry. This happening after Jacquot's desertion must have soured her on men. In the years that followed she dated and had an occasional affair, but it didn't go beyond that, and she became pretty much of a career woman. But when I got rheumatic fever and had to miss a year of school, she cut her hours back to half time so she could take care of me.

Mom and I had a good relationship until I hit puberty, and even then it wasn't terrible, just typical. Since we knew each other so well, we could still communicate, but it was too often a communication of anger and frustration. I was sullen and rude, she nagging and high-strung. The tension between us was palpable, blocking us from each other, pushing us away. In retrospect I can see that we were fighting our urges, trying to alienate the other person to avoid embracing them.

Once we discovered the joys of the embrace, there was no going back. Our passion was unstoppable.