What did you do over your Easter vacation?

 

I taught myself the Russian alphabet and then Mick Jagger came to my house and asked me to marry him but I turned him down because I was shy and I don't really know him ...

All sold out i'd never seen

A mind so tangled, a girl so strangled

All sold out well i felt so green

It was just like that

I was put down flat

I was sold out just like that

Oh baby

(All Sold Out - Jagger/Richards)

Imagine how it would feel waking up on a Monday morning having had time over the weekend to mull over the fact you had turned down a marriage proposal from Mick Jagger and spent the weekend afterwards being electroshocked - 

The psychiatrists and my mother once again agreed the best approach would would be to wipe that memory, leaving me with a clean slate to start my life over, if that was even possible. 

When my classmate Irene Shanefield regaled us that Monday with her account of the Rolling Stones show on Friday night I had no reaction except a slight pang of envy that her older brother Harvey had bought her a cheap ticket - 

When she said they pulled the plug on the band after half an hour and chased the kids out of the arena, I thought "Guess I didn't miss much."

Then the bell rang and I went into class and took my usual seat near the window near the blackboard in front of Mary Mandalaras, the dark eyed girl whose dad worked in a Greek restaurant.

I wrote my name in Russian on my desk: adding Kuryakin as I was still in love with Ilya - the fictional Russian spy who bore a strong resemblance to Mick's politer, quieter side - the side he showed my mother.

Mary leaned forward to see what I'd written, deciphered the Russian letters and clicked her tongue.. she knew Greek and Ilya was a Greek name. "Anna Kuryakin - so you're marrying Ilya?" I was embarrassed to get caught in my graffitti and tried to rub out it out. 

What this clear memory proves is that I still remembered most things including my recent self-taught Russian, and that I was still in love with Ilya even though the Man From UNCLE had gone into reruns.

My conscious mind had forgotten all about Mick who was somewhere in America now as I fantasized about Ilya my ideal man, not the loudmouthed prancing pop star who played the Ed Sullivan show again a few nights later.

That following Sunday I was rivetted to my chair in our living room as on May 2nd, 1965 the Stones opened with their recent release "The Last Time", notably the first performance of a Jagger/Richards original on the show. A blues standard entitled "Little Red Rooster" followed, and then, "Someone To Love".

"The Stones spruced up for the show, even donning sports jackets to help clean up their image." Even Ed Sullivan was pleased and said he'd be happy to have them back again.

I thrilled to Mick's moves and voice and everything about him but I kept it a secret so as not to upset my parents, knowing I was one of millions and had no chance of ever meeting him in person.

The next day at school Irene winked and remarked: "Did you see him sing Little Red Rooster this time? That was OBSCENE."

I disagreed. To me he was divine. 

My Nickname in gym class was Spiderman.

I was moderately pretty but not gorgeous.

Super lanky and therefore non-threatening to other, sexier girls. Considered smart, somewhat bookish but not obnoxious or stuck up. Not really interested in boys unless they could sing and dance. Secretly I lusted for Jagger but having read about his sordid affairs and arrests in Irene's teen magazines, I was hip to the reality. An article appearing everywhere that winter addressed our parents: "Would you let your daughter marry a Rolling Stone?"

I knew what my dad's answer would be.

So I decided to be a Beach Boys fan while borrowing books on communism from the school library and preparing to emigrate to Russia.

In our school photo for the year - Grade 8, Miss Brown's Latin/Science class, 1964-5 -- I accidentally made a spectacle of myself. From the back row where I had been hiding next to Irene, the second tallest girl, they made me come down and jam myself dead centre in front where there was no room for my legs and feet. As I squirmed and struggled to fit, I lowered my head and smiled at the photographer begging him to wait another second.- instead he snapped the photo which makes me look sly and coquettish instead of just awkwardly trying to blend in.

I think my mother sent Mick this photo and he used it in his song Miss Amanda Jones,about a girl so full of herself she doesn't know which way is up. 

AJ are also my initials: for Anne Julia which he might have shortened later to "Anne J." 

Or Angie. 

Down and down she goes

Our, Amanda Jones

I said down and down and down and down

She'd look really lovely at home

Til somebody gonna come up and ask her

To live happily ever after, Miss Amanda Jones

On and on she goes

Little Miss Amanda Jones

I said on and on and on and on

Just watch her as she grows

Don't wanna say it very obviously

But she's losing her nobility, Miss Amanda Jones

Hey girl don't you realize

The money invested in you

Hey girl you just got to find

Someone who'll really pull your family through

Up and up she goes

Our Amanda Jones

I said up and up and up and up

She looks quite delightfully stoned

She's the darling of the discotheque crowd

Of her lineage she's rightfully proud, miss amanda jones

Hey girl with your nonsense nose

All pointing right down at the floor

Hey girl your suspender shows

And the girl behind you looks a bit unsure

Round and round she goes

The world of Amanda Jones

I said round and round and round and round

The balls and the dinners and shows

The little girl she just wanders about

Til it's time for her coming out, Miss Amanda Kones

Round and round and round

Round and round and round

I have stumbled on many other little references in songs I never once connected to myself or my family until very recently. I don't know what to make of them except that they seem to describe the secret plan for me that I sabotaged at age 14.

Songs from 1965-6 like 19th Nervous Breakdown or Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby (Standing in the shadows) now seem studded with personal jabs at an emotionally immature young woman who sows disaster for herself and the people who love her. 

How much money was invested in me? Probably thousands, by the military who controlled my family. 

 In self defense, I totally dissociated from everything including my recent massive "mistake" in the family basement that led to our downfall in the eyes of the Mind Doctors of McGill.

Whatever I said to Mick that day, seemed to come from a source outside my own brain and its normal functioning. 

If only I had said "yes", my life would have gone in a completely different direction. Mick and I would have climbed back upstairs to the kitchen and my mother, probably eavesdropping the whole time, would have known joy. 

Of course in real life it would have meant losing all my friends ... Or keeping silent because had I talked I would have been diagnosed as insufferably crazy, conceited, deluded, deranged. No one would have believed me, not even little Mary Mandalaras.

I believe this is known as a Double Bind. You, the human guinea pig, are confronted with an impossible choice and the brain reacts by shutting down and entering a state of dissociated trance where you can be programmed. Amnesia is a common reaction to this kind of programming.

I remember a session with the guidance counselor, a tweedy man with a moustache Mr Christie maybe was his name .

He asked me if I was had any problems I would like to talk over. Instant mistrust. I shook my head. He pressed on: "Are you sure? No trouble at home?"

I couldn't think of anything. My father was home all day since they had brainwashed him and took away his job. He was writing a novel in code. My mother had the worst case of galloping arthritis the doctors had ever seen. On her good days she stayed in bed and prayed to her rosary.

" No, no problems."

He seemed unconvinced.

Well... In fact something did kind of bother me. The fact that we were engaged in a Cold War with Russia. Why couldn't there be a lasting East-West accord and world peace? What was so wrong with Marxism-Leninism? Maybe it contained answers for our time. I for one was learning Russian and thinking of moving to Siberia...

No wonder they thought I was brainwashed and could end up working for the United Nations.

Years later in 2020 when Mick was still texting me under various aliases, I told him "I can't lie - I don't remember you."

That seemed never to have occurred to him. All along he'd been thinking I was just rude.

"Well then get the fuck out of here!" 

End of chat.

Now it was my turn to be hurt. 

Amnesia means not knowing what the holes in your memory are covering over. Not remembering the unforgettable because those moments are totally gone as if they never happened, while other events are crystal clear. People may think you're being cruel and may equate forgetting with indifference or rejection. But amnesia is more like a brain injury which leaves no trace of itself, just a blank.