Didi
The ticking of the clock I
found yesterday stopped and I wound it and now it gives out the life
beat of the hours.
For an instant I almost
felt the need to begin in another place in this notebook but –
after a flash reflection – continued with this which is already
started.
The weekend was
incredible with many people falling on the scene I hadn’t been in
touch with. It was a weekend of all kinds of drugs from ordinary pot
through barbiturates, amphetamines, heroin, cocaine and LSD.
The general tenor of last
Friday, Saturday and Sunday was good and several people spoke of it
as the time of Leo’s ascendancy and coming alive. I know several
people born of that sign and one in particular – Didi.
Didi the beautiful one –
sensitive and fleet – who believes her nature with shaded eyelids
and languid cat-green eyes that see everything. She is small and can
assume any role assigned her. Her hair wash blond color when we first
met – through my boy – dear John Wieners – and the three of us
walked in the fresh gentle morning winds bathed in the pale light and
Didi and John, and sometimes I, sang songs of the past.
Roughly six years have
passed since then.
Didi has never permitted
me too deep a glance into her – so very vulnerable a being –
which knows too well loneliness and need of love – but whose
strength sends it ever seeking even though invariably it drops
defences at a moments notice and Didi is again a lover and woman of
fortitude and cunning – sharp and keen – strong and enduring,
full of wit and good spirit yet forever the eternal female – ever
ready to fulfil whatever obligation is required to complete the unit
of two – the male and the female – man and woman.
She feels deeply and
probes deeper still for her answer and although her mind is alive and
healthy – her heart is large and dominates the mind and has made
her one of the beautiful women of her era – and one of the few
honest women – or men for that matter – I’ve known or know of.
She will always be as
long as I live (and I would make of that a very positive thing –
where it within my power) and – if my fates are generous with me –
my heart’s last beat will stop the quicker and with cleaner
severance from the life force for the fine and good love and
friendship of Didi.
Didi
(an
afterword)
by Jerome
Poynton
Herbert Huncke died August
8, 1996; in January 1997 my apartment phone rang.
“This
is Didi,” a woman’s voice said.
I only knew of one Didi,
the title of Herbert Huncke’s story.
Since that I time I
learned Sharon (Didi) Morrill Doyle was married to San
Francisco Renaissance poet Kirby Doyle. She made a short film
with him and Larry Jordan titled Portrait of Sharon in 1963 and was
published in Diane DiPrima’s Floating Bear,
issue #32 and possibly in Semina Culture.
Didi moved to New York and
was paramour with Bobby Driscoll, famous childhood actor for Walt
Disney (Peter Pan) and
Bryon Haskins (Treasure Island). Bobby
Driscoll won an Academy Award at age 12.
As an adult, Driscoll became an obscure drug
user. His films were made before actor residuals and he died broke
in an abandoned tenement March 30, 1968. With no identification his
body was classified as “John Doe” and buried in Potter’s Field
for New York’s unclaimed bodies.
In his final film, Didi
played opposite Bobby Driscoll – both in nun costume – in Piero
Heliczer film, Dirt, produced by Andy Warhol. She is credited
as “Dee Dee Driscoll” but I don’t think they were ever legally
married.
At the time of her call, I
only knew Didi from the Huncke story – not her films with Heliczer
and Jordan or her writing in Floating Bear. With the sound of
her voice, it was “love at first sound”, and I melted.
“I went to the library,”
she told me. “Of all my friends I thought – maybe Huncke –
would have published a book. I asked the librarian if there was
anything by Herbert Huncke. She said yes, they didn’t have it but
could order it via inter-library loan.”
“They called me when the
book came in. I went to the library to pick it up. Walking down the
font steps, I opened the book and it opened to Didi.”
---
Over the next couple of
months Didi and I had telephone conversations and letters.
She spoke about her
breaking out of prison – the women’s prison in Montreal – New
Years Eve – “in 1967 or 68,” she said.
“It
was the year of the Expo, it could have been either.”
She was returning to the
United States, via Montreal – from Morocco with a stop over in
Paris where she purchased a set of matching luggage.
“I
always wanted a matching set of luggage and in Paris, I bought a
set.”
Entering Montreal, extra
vigilance was being paid due to the Expo, and she was “busted” as
her Moroccan luggage contained “two kilos of the most wonderful
cannabis.”
At trial, the evidence,
“her two wonderful two kilos of cannabis,” had been switched-out
for scrub Canadian weed. The final insult:
“To
get busted and robbed simultaneously.”
“Oh well,” they gave
her nine years in the Établissement de détention Maison Tanguay,
the women’s prison in Montreal.
The Canadian prison was
peaceful; but it was still prison. A formidable metal screen
stretched over her second floor window, overlooking the prison yard
with barbed wire fencing.
On Canadian holidays,
extra care was given to the holiday meal – meat, turkey – and
inmates were given the option of eating in commissary or in their
cell alone.
Her Thanksgiving her meal
arrived in her cell with a steak knife.
“I
took that knife and it cut through the screen like butter. They said
it was impenetrable.”
Christmas Day and New
Year’s Eve inmates would be given the same option.
She planned her escape.
From Didi’s window she
could see the flight path of planes coming and going from Montreal’s
airport. She learned flight times for the planes to New York and of
a special morning flight on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.
She didn’t want to leave
without her luggage. She petitioned the court that her Paris luggage
was not used in the service of her crime, and should be returned. It
was. She learned her lawyer misappropriated $2,000 and she demanded
he return it, in cash, or she would report his actions to the
Canadian Bar Association. He did.
She had her luggage, cash
and knew on New Year’s Eve she would have a steak knife.
She made a form of herself
asleep in bed.
“I
left a copy of the Koran under my pillow,” she said.
“I
thought it might give them something to think about.”
Near midnight she lowered
herself (with bed sheets) and luggage down from her second floor
cell.
She brought along a
blanket for the barbed-wire fence. She didn’t have to. The front
prison gate was wide open and she heard the guards partying. She
snuck out into the employee parking lot – hiding behind parked cars
– finding a street – walking with her luggage. In the distance
she saw an idling cab with its light on.
She took the cab to the
airport and hid in the women’s rest room until prior to the 7 AM
flight and stormed the gate – in hysterics – saying she had to
get back to New York.
“I
told them I was a New York Jew.”
She explained she was in
Montreal because her daughter had run-off with a “draft dodger”
and while looking for her, she was robbed of of her identification.
She bought a ticket with
cash, no identification, and was on the plane. Once seated she
called the stewardess over.
“Today’s
a special day, you wouldn’t happen to have a bottle of champagne?”
“Of
course,” was the reply.
When the plane took off –
looking out the window – she could see her former house of
residence and toasted the prison with a glass of champagne.
“What did you do when
you got to New York,” I asked?
“I
called Huncke,” she replied. “He gave me a place to stay.”
The prison didn’t know
she was gone till 10am New Year’s Day.
In the early 1990s Didi
was a reformed citizen working a straight job (possibly under alias
Zola Terri Morrill) in a city office in Southern California. One
day two FBI men came into the office and she knew her gig was up.
They sent her back to prison in Montreal. There was a board in the
prison with the names of women who had escaped – there were two
names of women who had not been recaptured – and her name was
scratched off, leaving only one name.
“I had to serve a year,”
she said.
–
Didi’s death:
Didi and I became quite close over the winter months. I was in the
midst of working on The Escape Artist, a play by Michael
Laurence at the Phil Bosakowski Theater.
Didi decided
she would come to New York for an open-ended visit. Her plan was to
arrive on a Thursday night, spend the first night with her friend Pat
Chapman near Tompkins Square Park and in the morning we would meet
for a famous New York deli breakfast – egg on a roll with coffee –
and she would come back and stay with me in my 5th Avenue
apartment.
On Thursday
night she didn’t call and on Friday morning I phoned Pat Chapman,
asking for Didi.
Pat was not
happy. Didi had not shown up.
I phoned her
California phone and a man answered.
“Is Didi
there,” I asked?
“Who is
this,” the man asked suspiciously?
I told him.
He exhaled
deeply. “I know who you are,” he said. “Didi spoke of you.
I’m her
brother.”
“Didi died,”
he continued. “They Police found her parked in her car, on the side
of the road, on the way to the airport. The car was running. She had
her plane ticket. Her luggage was in the trunk.”
He did not know
the cause of death.
“The police
got to her house before us. I don’t know if they found anything or
not.”
