The challenges of turning forty, as demonstrated by a man of wealth ... and no taste.
THE FORTIETH ESTATE
A TRUE STORY BY JOHN ERVIN |
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“Listen to me, young man,” said the older man seated across from me in his $500 black boots, $200 black pants, $150 black turtleneck sweater, his shaven head crowned by a wide brimmed hat much like that worn by Robert Duvall in “Apocalypse Now” and, which, in keeping with the ensemble, was also very expensive and very dark, “I’ve just turned forty - and the last thing I intend to be is responsible!”
The statement: a response to a declaration by me about having just turned all of twenty- three, and my idle curiosity as to whether it was time for me to be “responsible” in terms of pursuing a wife, kids, and a job that paid better than the custodial one at which I was employed. The speaker: quite possibly the strangest, most depraved and damned near evil person I ever encountered in all my life ... Jim Wizard. |
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No, Jim did not front a band, predict the future or even perform sorcery. He was a former English professor from a Minneapolis community college. And “Wizard”, of course, was not his real surname. I eventually learned that it was Weisman, but “Wizard” was the title that could be found on mail, checks and other official and unofficial documents. Why he chose a moniker that announced to the world that he was a drug-crazed, sex-obsessed lunatic, I would never know. |
What I do know is that I first met Jim in November of 1987, the night he declared his age and intentions to me, at a sumptuous apartment he rented in Minneapolis’ high-income Kenwood district. He was hosting a party to celebrate his recent move to the place - a fete comprising myself and a cluster of black-clad twenty-something “scenesters.” Chief among them was Dan Matz, an old friend and former roommate who was my liaison to the mad professor.
Dan, in turn, had met Jim the previous summer at a coffee house near the University of Minnesota called The Gioco. Whenever I bumped into Dan, he would enthusiastically tell me things about this eccentric that were, to say the least, grandiose. On more than one occasion, Jim would walk into The Gioco, approach Matz and whoever was seated with him, discretely unveil a palm filled with LSD blotters and ask, “Drugs, anybody?” When Matz told me of Jim’s appearance at a downtown Minneapolis restaurant wearing a costume shop version of a knight’s shining armor, leaving behind a $1,000 diamond ring as a tip for a waitress he was besotted with, I knew I had to meet this joker. Needless to say, it wasn’t a professor’s salary that funded the crib, drugs and forty-carrot tips. Apparently, Jim had negotiated a generous inheritance from his mother - while she was still very much alive and in good health. This trust fund swelled enough to allow him to walk away from his teaching post shortly before I first met him, and begin what he called “retirement." |
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It doesn’t take a PhD to figure that this retirement did not consist of playing bingo and puttering around gardens. For The Wizard, it was a plunge into hedonism and youthful abandonthat would have exhausted any death metal drummer half his age. Indeed, pretty much everyone he associated with from this point on was a good fifteen to twenty years younger than he, and he took pains to avoid socializing with any other frail, decrepit forty-somethings. |
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The almost weekly parties that Jim gave for the youngsters always included Dan and a mutual friend of ours named Russell, a chess champion and math whiz who felt it was essential to expend at least some of his brilliant brain cells on drugs and drink. I was fortunate enough to attend about a half dozen of these affairs myself, and, early on, the parties would generally involve Jim regaling everyone with anecdotes about being a disc jockey, band roadie or some other type of adventurer in the mythological “Sixties.” Whether or not these stories were true was beside the point, as Jim was not only charming and funny, but put no limit on how much food, grog or narcotics he let us scoop from his stockpile.
More importantly, nowhere else could I expect to accompany a man as he unlocked the door to his home and walk in to find three or more beautiful club divas lounging about on cream white couches like so many cats. And nowhere else could I step over to a mahogany bookshelf and find it filled with lovingly preserved editions of Playboy and Penthouse from the past four years. This was in addition to the current month’s editions of said publications displayed on gold-plated reading stands on the marble sink of the bathroom. And just to prove what a haute couture fetishist he was, Jim was the proud owner of expensive coffee table photo books with titles like “Rude Food” and “The Ultimate Kiss.” Despite the abundance of material for self-attentiveness, Jim did enjoy the attentions of many women like the page-boy-coiffed ones who decorated his apartment. One of these occupants, Ida, was a sometimes girlfriends of both Jim’s and Dan’s, who, like them, pursued every drug, club or social happening she could possibly attend. She was also as indulgent as Dan, Russell and myself in listening to Jim’s stories ... which, at times, could be as graphic as his reading tastes. One reminiscence he was fond of expounding on was the time he got his own first “ultimate kiss”, a story which concluded with the touching words, “I shot six loads of cum ... it was wonderful.” |
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Ida, of course, went further than just listening to blow-job stories, therefore reaping even more rewards of high living. A stunning twenty-three year old “art babe” of Mexican descent, it was hard to imagine any other reason why she would be involved with a man, who, in addition to being nearly twice her age, looked like a cross between Jack Nicholson and Ming the Merciless. As the winter months dragged on, though, she spent less and less time with the independently wealthy Jim and more time |
with the impoverished Dan. When she left Wizard altogether to shack up with Matz, that inflamed an obsessiveness in the older man that was positively supernatural, and was the touchstone to a rapid descent into madness. The first sign of trouble came in early February, 1988 when Jim met Dan, Russell and me at an all-American hamburgers-and-malts restaurant. Upon sitting down at the booth, Jim snarled at Dan - for all the Moms and Dads and kids and seniors around us to hear - “So, are you still fucking Ida? Is she bouncing around like a little Mexican jumping bean?” As if he hadn’t sufficiently demonstrated how childish he was, when we received our meals, Jim picked up a small bowl filled with a side order, slammed it face down onto the uneaten omelette on his plate, and stomped out of the restaurant in his $500 boots. Dan, Ida and omelettes weren’t all he grew disgusted with. Though I clearly posed no threat to his romantic pursuits, Jim never forgave me for the New Years’ Eve gathering where, in the course of an acid trip at his apartment, I did many impressions of his William-Shatner-meets-Vincent-Price voice. I did eventually apologize for the impersonations (which, at the time, he seemed to enjoy) and behaved myself in future visits. Still, from that point on, Jim would never pass up the opportunity to refer to my “droning” as the cause for whatever spillage of drink, spraying of vomit or sparking of conflict had occurred in his presence. By the end of that very cold February, I found myself part of the unofficial but growing list of people no longer allowed into Castle Weisman, and I only saw Jim at The Gioco or some other establishment he materialized at with his entourage. The second-to-last time I ever saw him, Dan and I were seated at a booth in a college bar, awaiting the arrival of a dealer who would ply us with that week’s supply of “cid.” The dealer, who was supposed to meet us at midnight, had yet to arrive at ten minutes past. Jim, who was seated at the bar so as to avoid my offending presence, strolled over to the booth, a vexed expression on his face. Looking at his watch, he growled to Dan, “What’s going on?” “I guess he’s running a little late,” replied Dan, adding, with a nervous laugh, “You know how drug dealers are.” Saying nothing, Jim stole a withering glance at me before walking back to the bar. As he did so, I felt great relief that I was not going to enjoy my share of the bounty in the |
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company of this creep. My relief was confirmed a few days later when I learned that, after Dan and I received our hits from the late-coming dealer and went our separate ways, Dan, Russell and Jim repaired to his apartment to sample the new supply. In the course of their trip, the host decided to show the boys a Bowie knife he owned and how effectively he could wield it - by hurling it at them so low that it just barely grazed Russell’s head before hitting a wall. Dan and Russell, despite their drugged state, managed to think of important things they had to do, and bolted from the place. |
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Jim’s rapid descent from charmer to chiller was in large part due to the fact that he was doing nothing else during his “retirement” besides consuming fist fulls of dope and pursuing women the age of most cheerleaders. There were still occasions when he demonstrated his old leprechaun nature, such as the time he took Dan and Russell on an impromptu trip in his $20,000 sports car to Alberta, Canada and back - a trip prematurely ended by a drug enforcement officer in Banff, who gave them twenty-four hours to flush the several bags of “American Bud” he found on them and leave the country. But, for the most part, by winter’s end, the dopamine and indolence had turned Wizard into a Midwest Mephistopheles.
In keeping with this persona, he was exhibiting weirder and weirder behavior in public. One spring afternoon, the many patrons of The Gioco were treated to the sight of Jim walking in carrying a six-foot long staff in the shape of a penis. On another occasion, he was spotted at one of the cafe’s tables, spreading out an array of exotic contraceptives intended for all the ladies to see. And, at a party on the U of M campus, he sauntered over to a woman who had once spurned his advances, took a huge mouthful of beer and sprayed it all over her face. Two acts of even more extreme cruelty finally drove Dan, Russell and everyone else away. One night, Russell was playing chess with a fellow champion at The Gioco. He was concentrating so thoroughly on one move that he did not see Jim slipping something into the full cup of coffee by his side. It wasn’t until Russell finished the cup, noticed the two small blotters of acid at the bottom, and saw Jim laughing like a SMERSH operative about to liquidate Her Majesty’s favorite agent, that he realized he was in for a very long night. Seeing that Wizard had no scruples about breaking the “acid-head’s code”, it was only a matter of time before he partook in diabolical deeds of a more physical variety. In the spring of 1988, “The Wiz” announced to Dan and Russell that he was going to embark on a world tour of the mind that would involve taking a hit of acid every day till the huge supply he currently possessed ran out. Joining him in this daily blotter breakfast was his current girlfriend, Lynn, another gorgeous twenty-ish “art babe” who, like Ida, was ready to satisfy this freak’s needs in exchange for a steady supply of narcotics and club passes - as well as, in Lynn’s case, devices to indulge in her fondness for S and M. |
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Midway through the second week of the mercurial mystery tour, Jim declared that he and Lynn should go on one of his extemporaneous road trips. In this case, he decided they should head for Florida. A few days later, Jim and Lynn were driving through the state of Missouri, when a song on the radio - some earnest eighties’ club dirge like Animotion’s “Obsession” - flipped a switch in the driver’s acid-drenched brain. Placing his foot on the accelerator, he snarled, “Those bastards!” |
Lynn, broken out of a lysergic train of thought of her own, sputtered, “What? Who?”
“Those fuckers! Dan and Russell! They requested this song so they could remind me of Ida - and ruin our god damn, fucking fun!” “Jim, you’re crazy!” Lynn retorted, “How could Dan and Russell know what station we were going to listen to five hundred miles away?” At this, Jim gave Lynn a look of pure malevolence and growled, “Don’t call me crazy.” Following a long, scary silence, Jim calmed down and all seemed to be well. When night fell, the man in the “Charlie Don’t Surf!” hat and his young “bride” checked into a roadside motel. After settling into their room, Lynn was lying face down on the bed watching television. Suddenly, Jim lunged upon her from behind and proceeded to ravish her for several minutes, laughing at her tearful protests. Upon completing his crime, Jim decided to reward himself for raping someone by going out for beer and snacks, leaving his distraught victim behind. Lynn, who was too scared of being busted for possession and being under the influence to report what happened to the police, instead called Dan back in Minneapolis. For some reason, she still refrained from telling him about the rape, and simply told him about the “Fear and Loathing” events in the car. This information alone was enough to cause Dan to tell Lynn to take her chances on hitchhiking before the demon flew back in the room. Unfortunately, she took the only option she could think of and waited for Jim to reappear. Upon his return, enthusiastically hoisting a case of beer and bags of goodies, Lynn begged him to drive her home immediately. |
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Luckily, he did as she requested, and as soon as they arrived back in the Twin Cities, Lynn headed for the hills. Even more luckily, Jim - who considered Ida the only woman worthstalking - left Lynn alone, and went about the business of driving himself crazy with strong acid, hard porn, bad TV and the slow torture of having nothing to do. |
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Though he came to forget Lynn, and eventually Ida, Jim was becoming increasingly furious with Dan and Russell for not returning his phone messages and fleeing from the coffee hangout as soon as he walked in. Consequently, he decided to leave all the thoughtless men and ungrateful women of Minneapolis behind, and moved to San Francisco in the summer of 1989.
Ironically, at that time, I was living in San Francisco, myself. Though, almost certainly, he would have wanted nothing to do with me and my sanctimonious mouth, it’s conceivable he would have been desperate enough for company to look me up - especially when he was in the mood for raping, drugging or spraying beer on someone. Fate, however, removed even that remote possibility. A few months after landing an apartment in the city, Jim was reportedly enjoying the West Coast vintage of psychedelics when a knock was heard at his door. Opening it, he found himself greeting two very large men presenting a warrant for his arrest and a one way ticket back to Minneapolis. Evidently, Lynn at long last worked up the courage to report what had happened eighteen months before. No amount of Magick could save the Beast now, and the result of his reign of terror was a two-year stretch in a maximum security guest house - where one can only hope his many cellmates gave him a nightly dose of what he put his travel companion through. Not even the completion of his sentence would provide relief for the exhausted convict. In addition to facing several years’ probation, Jim found himself disinherited by his mother and outcast by the rest of his family. Consequently, once he hobbled out of the can, he was forced to sell what possessions he still held title to, apply for food stamps and - horror of horrors - get a job. If you guessed that job had anything to deal with academia, guess again, for it turned out that the only “community college” the good doctor ever taught at was the one in his mind. He, in fact, never even graduated from whatever higher educational institution he did attend, and had spent the years leading up to his “retirement” as a well-to-do drifter and nut case. Jim's resorting to what was most likely bottom-feeder employment, of |
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course, meant that he was no longer able to attract new gaggles of gamines, initiate road trips with his monthly bus pass or host parties in places better than the single room occupancy dump he moved into. His prospects for social resurrection were terminated once and for all by Lynn’s appearance on Geraldo Rivera’s daytime talk show, as part of a panel of date rape victims, in which she described her ordeal with a “forty-year-old loser” named “Jim.” |
The last time I ever saw the source of froth on Geraldo’s moustache was in the spring of 1993, on a street near The Gioco, a place I would have expected him to avoid for fear of being tied to a stake and burned. Of course, most of the people he exploited and victimized had long since moved to other corners of the earth. In fact, I almost didn’t recognize him, as he had grown a beard and a ring of hair that circled around his head. A threadbare fishing hat now complimented the soiled T-shirt, rumpled jeans and “found” tennis shoes he shuffled in. Though I could have easily walked by this man whom I knew to be a sex offender, social impulsiveness and morbid curiosity caused me to blurt out, “Hey, Jim! Remember me? John Ervin?” Stopping and looking at me with a squint that suggested he wanted to keep walking, he calmly muttered, “Oh, yes. Ervin. Hm.” “So!” I asked for some reason, “You still doing acid?” Shaking his head, his face betraying the irritation that I realized was the reason for my question, he growled, “I don’t do drugs anymore. I have to go in every week for urinalysis for the federal government.” “Oh, my God!” I gasped, as if I had been in a coma for the past few years, “What happened?” Rolling his eyes and shaking his head, he replied, with a sigh that sounded almost regretful, “It’s a long story.” Any notion that sobriety, poverty and urinalysis had caused Jim to see the error of his ways - or even get rid of his absurd adopted cognomen - were rendered moot several years later. In 2001, I spotted a story in the newspaper about the recent arrest of a man in his fifties named Jim Wizard. Apparently, this Wizard fellow held a grudge against the police chief of a small Minnesota town. It turned out the chief was one of the two men who knocked on the door of his San Francisco apartment all those years ago. Never having forgiven this man and his partner for ending his two-year party, Jim made a total of eighty threatening phone calls to the chief’s office and home. The fact that the lawman did not take action against his former prey until that obscene number was struck suggested that he must have received a daily diet of hate messages. It was also Having since passed the age Jim “Wizard” Weisman was when I first met him, I can say that, like him, I have no intention of being “responsible’ - at least not in terms of | |
getting the job, house, wife and kids I felt I needed lo those many years ago. But, unlike The Wizard, I don’t plan on spending any year in the “fortieth estate” trying in vain to forget that I am forty-something, and treating people like Barbie and Ken dolls to be coddled or mangled at my whim. And, if ever I do receive a generous inheritance from someone, living or dead, I hope I have sense enough to know that the worst kind of retirement is the one you never earned. |
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