the magician part three….Happy Birthday Wizard

My romance with the magician, Jay Scott Berry, started out innocently.

I was a young and naive 18-year-old girl.  It was an innocent summer of hanging out together –learning about magic and “real” magic.  He was always taking about real magic and being a real wizard.  He talked about karma and reincarnation and other words that were foreign to me and were not in my vernacular.  My background was the dogma and rituals of the Catholic Church.  He was talking metaphysics and spirituality.  He was opening the gateway for what would become a lifetime of learning.  He showed me an alternate universe and world that went beyond the parameters of traditional religiosity.  He gave me the book, Illusions, by Richard Bach, ( www.richardbach.com ) which would forever change my perspective.

The other thing that changed was that I went from being a girl to being a woman.  We would spend afternoons just napping and I would spend the weekends with him in total innocence.  We would kiss, we would hug, we would cuddle and we would sleep together.  Sex happened towards what would be the end of our relationship.

His birthday was coming up and I wanted to be his birthday present. Being the intelligent and prepared young woman that I was I went to my doctor and got fitted for a diaphragm.

A week or so before his birthday on one of those weekends I spent with him when he said to me, “I want to be inside of you”…I said, “yes, go ahead–it’s okay…happy birthday.”

I was a virgin, it was painful and yes there was blood. It was an emotionally satisfying experience  but there were no physical fireworks for me. I ate up Harlequin Romance novels in high school and my experience did not even come to close to the stories I had consumed.  It really didn’t matter.  I was in love and he would forever be imprinted in my heart and soul for the next thirty years to come.

I had a material gift for him as well.  I had seen this beautiful ceramic wizard statue in this magical shop that had dragons, unicorns, mystical and fantasy creatures.  The wizard was old and wizened with long flowing white hair and beard.  He held a crystal ball in one hand and carried a wizards staff in the other hand. Mind you this was way before Harry Potter and magic was cool.  But it was cool for us.

I saved my money and brought the statue.  I couldn’t wait to give it to him.  I wanted his dream of becoming a real wizard to come true for him even if I didn’t really understand what that meant.

I gave him the statue and he broke up with me two weeks after his birthday. He left me for another woman.

When he came back into my life last December he told me he still had the wizard statue, whether this is true or not I really do not know.  What is true is that he is currently married to another woman. He came back into my life only to break my heart all over again.  Living life as someone’s mistress, in the shadow of a wife is not the life for me.  And so our affair came to an end.

I would like to say that I hate him but I don’t. My heart doesn’t hurt like before…only if I think about the good times and the possibilities of dreams unfulfilled.  I understand him and his motivations a lot better, or at least I think I do.

 

I think he suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disorder

Learning about this disorder has brought me some sense of peace and understanding.  The other thing that has helped me quite a bit was seeking out his first wife and hearing her story and sharing her pain.

But you see today is his birthday………and thirty years ago my innocence, my heart and my soul were the gifts I gave to him…….

Today we don’t even speak…….. so on this blog I will say, Happy Birthday Wizard………

 

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• Birthday Party Magic! (thepartyconnection.wordpress.com)
• Magician’s Guilt (innermagicclub.wordpress.com)

Back to the beginning: Summer of 1980…..

 

The summer of 1980 was spent rehearsing for my first legitimate (meaning paid) acting job. I was cast in the play, “Contijo, Pan y Cebolla” by Cuban playwright Hector Quintero at the Bi-lingual Foundation of the Arts. It was also the summer I was learning how to juggle and I was also introduced to the world of magic and metaphysics.

I was an actor and I was learning and honing my craft.  I was also only 18, a virgin and still very naive about life and the world.   I didn’t even know how to drive a car. All that would change before the year was out.

I would take the bus to rehearsals, to juggling lessons, to the Hollywood Magic Store and to Westwood where I would hang out with the street performers.  If I was paying attention I wouldn’t miss the last bus..but if I was having fun I would often miss the last number 12 bus which would take me right around the corner from where I lived and then would have to catch the number 7 bus which would leave me like 8 blocks from where I lived.  Sometimes, I could call one of my uncles that lived next door to us and they might come and pick me up but I do remember having to walk the eight blocks home alone in the middle of the night.  Something that at my age now I would never do but when you are 18 years old it’s as if you are invincible.  That combined with the fact that the part of the brain which can calculate consequences has not fully formed yet in the teenager often makes for some pretty poor choices.

But anything was better that being at home cooped up with a mother who was taking Valium because she wasn’t handling life after divorce well.

The theatre and my performer friends were my escape from the emotionally abusive childhood that I had.

I would rehearse the play weeknights and often Andy Garcia, the Andy Garcia would drop me off in Hollywood at JSB’s apartment…….days were spent with JSB in Hollywood…Saturday nights I spent in Westwood Village…..

It was the beginning of my dreams of life as an artist………to be continued….

Related articles

• back to the beginning…part 4, the magician….. (ivonnemontijo.wordpress.com)
• …..back to the beginning ……part 2 (ivonnemontijo.wordpress.com)
• Buskers Festivals (gorentals.co.nz)
• My current path at this point; Unity; The Dreamer; The Magician (kevinhunter.wordpress.com)