(I apologize for the wonky recording - a result of not having brought the right adapter with me while housesitting — but I feel the vocal performance was on point. Please bear with me through the technical glitches.)
It took me a while to realize that Big Betty was literally, clinically insane. I’ve known her since high school — we have many mutual friends, some of whom had already cut her off for her weird and intractable behavior. She had always been difficult and prone to strange fits of paranoia, but she was also an exceptionally gifted singer-songwriter, which is why some of us (like me) kept her around.
She could improvise songs spontaneously in rhyming verse. I would run around after her with a note pad and a pen, trying to jot things down, but they would come out so quickly it was hard to keep up.
Drunk at the golf course again
I’m driving my cart in the sand
This was a very promising start, I thought.
Betty had come back to the Bay Area because her mother, who had been a stewardess in the 60’s and 70’s (and therefore the epitome of human evil) was very frail, and Betty was to be her caretaker to the end.
Since her mother was quite out of it, Betty had been spending her time in her mother’s mansion tearing through strange boxes in the closets. She found some WW2 memorabilia and a couple of strange lapel pins in one of her deceased father’s boxes, and decided he had been in the CIA, and/or a Nazi.
So, she called the local chapter of the CIA, and invited anyone who wanted to come over for a memorial — 20 years after her father’s death. “Old spies,” she told me. “I just want to find out everything I can.” I skipped that party, but there was a second memorial, just for “friends,” that I let her drive me to, which proved to be a mistake.
The party was me, two other people I didn’t know, a cheese and cracker tray, and a professional bagpiper whom she had hired to play on her porch, as she was convinced that her neighbors were trying to “get her,” and she wanted to annoy them as much as possible.
She gave the bagpiper several shots of whiskey, and led him outside, where, the other two guests and I assumed, we would watch the bagpiper play an intimate little concert. As we all took our seats and the bagpiper started bleating out his repertoire, it became clear that Betty had hired him to be her background music, because she started shouting a rambling oration over him, which none of us could actually hear, despite the fact that she was yelling over the music at top volume. I assumed it was a speech to honor her father, until I caught little bits of what she was saying…
“….and it it weren’t for my CUNT NEIGHBORS, I (inaudible)…”
This went on for the better part of an hour, until I finally made like I was heading to the restroom, snuck out and took an Uber back to my house, which cost $80. It was a French exit. She didn’t notice — she was ranting wild-eyed into the trees, while her other two guests looked on, politely confused and utterly taken hostage.
Betty was convinced that there was a Jewish/Armenian mafia at the center of everything, and that the police in her county had it out for her, all as part of some larger conspiracy. She rented a different car every two weeks to keep “them” off her scent.
At one point, she loaded her demented shell of a mother into the back of a camper and drove her to New Mexico, to keep the authorities guessing. She had Native American friends she was going to stay with, she said.
After about ten days, she called me in a panic. “The Indians are trying to kill me,” she said. “There’s a serial killer going around here, and all of the women he’s killed so far look exactly like me. I was going to be next. I’m blowing town!”
She told me she was driving her mother to Texas, to visit a friend (that she had never mentioned before) who had worked in some capacity on “The Walking Dead.”
I thought it the height of bad manners for her to show up to this casual friend’s house with a feral cat she’d found somewhere on the mesas of New Mexico, and her dead mother in the back of the camper. I was delighted she hadn’t shown up at my house that way, and wondered how long she had known her mother was dead before she stopped driving. “I knew I had to reach the border,” was all Betty said, muttering darkly about how the New Mexico police were aiding the serial killer.
When she got back home, she really started to unravel.
It all came to a head when we were in a local sushi restaurant, and I was doing some flamenco hand exercises at the table, which she decided were suspect.
“You’re doing voodoo on me!” She shouted. After I assured her I wasn’t, she started making loud anti-Asian slurs, which really pissed me off.
After that, she accused me of trying to get her committed, so I could steal her mother’s house. This was the accusation she threw at everyone she knew, at one point or another. I knew it was coming for me, it was just a matter of time.
In high school, our mutual friend “M” had a boyfriend who had died somewhat sensationally of autoerotic asphyxiation. He had videotaped the whole thing in a closed library he’d broken into, while wearing his mother’s dress and a wig. Many years later, my boyfriend, an ingenious musician, also died of autoerotic asphyxiation.
Apparently, after having a conversation with a homeless person in a nearby park, Betty texted me to announce that M and I had been responsible for these deaths — and also, because I had worked with Francis Ford Coppola, Bette decided that I had lured his late son Gio (who perished in a boating accident) to his death — all in the service of providing “snuff films to the mafia.”
This is where our friendship finally came to an end. I will not be accused of voodoo or murder, or voodoo murder. That’s the breaking point, for me, friendship-wise. I told Big Betty never to contact me again.
Months later, she tried to send me some MP3s of new songs she had made, in a chatty little email, as if nothing had ever happened. She was always getting these wonderful little albums recorded with various bands she’d assemble, before wearing them out with accusations of treason, theft and subterfuge.
“Send this bullshit to someone who cares,” I told her. “We are no longer friends.”
I refuse to listen to it, but there is no doubt in my mind that the album is sensational.
Yeah, you should, and I should help you by editing it. CintraW@gmail.com
Artwork: “Burner Braids,” oil on linen, Cintra Wilson 2020
BYE BYE BETTY
When she held forth on the lawn accompanied by bagpipes, that woulda been it for me, but hey, you gave a gal a chance. Some storied friendships are only for a season. I’m sure she’s reduced to accusing far more impatient audiences of voodoo machinations. Gophers must taunt her with flamenco Illuminati signals even now. Poor Betty. May she come to accept Thorazine as her personal lord ‘n’ savior.
Speaking as one who lives three blocks from Comet Pizza: Yeah, but whatta you do with the formerly normie people who are now criminally insane, which is to say still Republican?
Arm yourselves, sane folk, they are most definitely out to torment you.