The year was 1989. I had recently moved to Las Vegas and a
mixture of new and old friends had decided to throw me a birthday party. Just
about everyone I knew was there except for one friend working as a cocktail
waitress at the old Aladdin hotel. My buddy Gary and I decided to make a night
of it and go down to the hotel. While we waited for Allison to finish serving
her drinks, Gary and I had a drink and listened to the lounge band. During one of
the breaks, an attractive redhead sitting to my right engaged me in
conversation. It was a conversation that wouldn’t end for twenty years.
What was truly amazing about our relationship was that it grew
at all. As I soon learned, Lesley had a basic distrust of people, and men in
particular. Although very outgoing and gracious, she rarely let anyone get too
close. Over time, she told me of growing up in a well-to-do neighborhood in El
Paso, Texas. Her stepfather, Frank, was in the fashion business and her mother,
Joyce, was a stay-at-home mom. She lived there with her sister and a horse.
That horse would become her friend and confidant during her almost daily rides.
To the outside world it was the idyllic, upper-class 60s household. But looks
can be deceiving and what happened behind closed doors would change Lesley’s
life forever. Hers was a home-life of adultery and a stepfather who preyed upon
her, in an effort to satisfy his sick perversions.
The 60s were a time when suspicions of child abuse were spoken
of in hushed tones. Child Protective Services did not exist and if you had
money and influence, which her stepfather did, almost anything could be covered
up. When Her mother turned a blind eye to what was happening, she tried telling
a neighbor. It was then that she was accused of being mentally unstable and
institutionalized for a short time. She never spoke of her home-life to a
stranger again. The actual abuse ended when she stabbed Frank in the leg with a
pair of scissors. Although The physical abuse ended, the wreckage left in her
mind did not.
Lesley escaped through alcohol and erratic behavior. She
frequented the wrong places and ran around with the wrong people. She told me
about how she had fallen in with organized drug runners who eventually ended up
in prison for killing a federal judge. She said the murder occurred after
parting ways with them. She talked about this time of her life in such detail,
that I had no doubt she was telling the truth.
She used men for food and shelter. They usually had money and
were inexperienced or insecure when it came to relationships of the opposite
sex. She would be there until she wasn’t, at which point she would move on with
her quest to find a small degree of Stability in her world. Ironically, she was
looking for something she couldn’t give… until she met me.
I became a member of a very small circle of trust. Other
members were dogs and cats, of which we had several over the years and, of
course, horses. I remember picking her up from work one day, only to take a
detour to visit an old horse she found who had been put out to pasture. I
watched as she carressed his head and fed him sugar cubes. I don’t think I ever
saw her As happy as she was in that moment. But the charter members of
her trust Circle were her godparents, Ted and Verlie. They became her real
parents as far as she was concerned. Her love for them ran deep. Ted was the
stereotypical tall Texas car dealer down to his cowboy boots. Upon his death,
all Lesley asked for were those boots.
To this day, I’m hard-pressed to explain why she chose to
include in this exclusive club. Maybe she viewed my handicap as
non-threatening. Or maybe it was the fact that I’ve never tried to be something
I’m not. I’ve never felt the need to have to impress anyone. Maybe that’s what
impressed Lesley the most, and allowed her to unlock the door that she had
worked so hard to keep sealed.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not perfect and Leslie could point that
out in painful detail. We had our ups and downs, over the years. There were
some things we agreed upon and a lot that we did not. There were moments when
our disagreements would sound downright silly to an outsider and on those
occasions, we would invariably hear, “So, how long have you two been married?” Those
silly disagreements could also turn into arguments that would, At times, get
down and dirty. But that was between us. In the end, I always knew she had my
back. If you so much as looked at me the wrong way, you’d better be sure your affairs
were in order because she would take you out. Perhaps, more importantly, was
the fact that she knew the feeling was Mutual. What kept our relationship going
was the fact that we knew each other better than any other people on the planet
knew either one of us.
Leslie’s earlier life had made her street smart, but she was
also very intelligent and could read people like a book. She knew what they
expected from her and she never disappointed. She dressed as if she had just
stepped out of a contemporary fashion magazine, but her last words to me, as
she left home for work, were usually “It’s showtime.” The rest of the world saw
what they wanted to see. I saw her. It was a private performance.
The last time I saw Leslie was the morning I woke up, and she
didn’t. The coroner said she died from a heart attack while sleeping. She was
53 years old. I can only hope she was dreaming of a life that made her happy, a
life with the animals she loved and, hopefully, with me. I will always be
thankful that we were able to build a trusting relationship from a foundation
that was anything but trusting. She was my best friend and I miss her every
day.
