Carry That Weight

trigger warning

Carry That Weight

(Trigger warning)

Another year has passed and now it’s ten since I made the decision, and the call to one of the owners at Pappy and Harriet’s to let her know, that I was leaving my weekly job hosting the open mic, which I had named Ted Quinn’s Reality Show in 2007 when I started.

With multiple surgeries needed, and a successful nine year run behind me, after the deaths of David Bowie and Prince, I knew I wanted to make a record and put it out on vinyl. My surgeries were timed to take place between the 2016 election and the inauguration in January, as the future was uncertain and at least one candidate - the one I mistakenly thought least likely to win - was promising to end Affordable Care, aka Obamacare. I couldn’t afford to take any chances if I wanted to be able to continue to walk without a cane or a walker.

In the weeks, months and years to follow, as we began the descent down the shit-encrusted golden escalator into idiotic fascism, I watched as my name and reputation were wrecked in a little community I loved and helped foster, based on TRUMPED up (sorry for the caps, I couldn’t resist, I was just momentarily impersonating our Dear Leader) accusations made about me, made by the family of a person who had already threatened to kill me (right there on Facebook) for my left wing views.

I wasn’t fully aware of the extent of the lies being spread, and word travels fast in a small town, until nearly a year later, as I was recovering from bilateral (yes, double) hip replacement and hernia surgeries. (I was also, along with everybody else, adjusting to the disappointing and distressing new reality, in which an accused rapist had been elected President over a highly qualified woman candidate.

At first, I didn’t take the threats seriously, although in the climate of #MeToo , I did recall - through a fog - having Quaalude-fueled sex with a high school crush when we were both 16 years old, and I reached out to her to make sure she didn’t feel that she had been drugged and taken advantage of, forty years earlier.

We were teenagers and it was the 1970s, she reminded me with an appreciative laugh. As the mother of a grown daughter, she wasn’t making light of the situation, as assured me that it was as much her idea as it was mine.

When it became clear that these rumors were not going away, I took my then 11-year-old son for a walk, to let him know him know what was being said, rather than have him hear about it secondhand. It was the hardest walk and talk I’d ever had to take but it was made easier by his immediate response that he knew I wouldn’t hurt anybody like that.

He was already familiar with the idea that sometimes people are falsely accused for reasons having nothing to do with the crime they’re accused of committing. He knew, as Mark Twain did, that “a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.” Make that a small town where I was widely known, controversial, at very least, the rise of Facebook and social media, and the tenet to “Believe Women,” along with the ludicrous sounding, “Not All Men.”

In the past several years, I have become the uninvited, a disappointment to some, at best, and my work in the now-thriving arts, music and activist community, all but erased.

My personal claim of being a former child actor who survived and was able to have a new life, unscathed by legal problems or public humiliation was now a thing of the past. That was something I was proud of. I was proud of the job I had introducing hundreds, if not thousands, of performers and watching the place where I did so become one of the most popular venues anywhere in the world. I was proud to be alcohol-free, while working in bars, never doing anything that would threaten my ability to be there for my little boy when his mom took off early the next morning.

I had thought I would wait until my father is gone to join my mother to address this publicly and you may wonder why I am choosing to do so now. Some will say, as one parroting the accusations said to me, that I’m just “covering my tracks.” Some may think that my activism and lifelong feminism and concern for the rights of children is performative. I do not expect to win anyone over by writing down my truth, but I will do so out of respect for the gravity of what has been circulating. People who have their minds made up about me will not be persuaded any more than a MAGA can be convinced that Biden won the 2020 election. I don’t care.

As one local writer noted recently, I “lost the meth crowd,” but I am realistic enough to know that I’ve lost more than that.

The thought of waiting for my 99-year-old father to no longer be with us to speak, is gruesome. My sweet dad only knows of a Joshua Tree arts community that, in his words, “loves me.” He and my mother have seen me honored by this community. I have feared that telling him about everything I have experienced in the past decade would be heartbreaking, at best.

As his 100th birthday approaches at the end of May, knowing he is far off of the internet and that it’s highly unlikely he will ever see what I am writing, I have decided to tell my story. This is only one part of my story and not the fun part that I would prefer to write about, but that’s just the way it goes sometimes.

I will do so without naming all of the parties involved, as I can’t afford a lawyer now any more than I could ten years ago.

Also, it is my unconfirmed belief that the person who made the accusations, including a false police report, really is the victim of terrible abuse. This is based on hearsay so I will not repeat those things that I have heard. That is how I got into the situation I find myself in today.

My heart goes out to this young woman in the hope that someday her real abusers receive the justice they deserve and she is able to go on with her life in a productive way, based on self-knowledge and truth.

On May 29th my dad turns 100 and the following day will mark ten years since the final Ted Quinn’s Reality Show and Open Mic, which was well-attended. A tearful and joyous occasion where I had no idea of what was about to go down.

In the coming weeks and months, I will continue this thread, , as it has been gnawing at me to get out, with photos and videos, screenshots and text messages, that I hope will enthrall as much as inform. It is not done for entertainment, mine or yours.

I have to tell the truth because I know that any time an innocent person is falsely accused, tried and convicted by the public without knowing the facts, the truth suffers and those in harm’s way are less likely to be heard. Also, the guilty go unpunished. Think Central Park Five or Emmett Till. Not foolish or self-aggrandizing enough to compare my predicament to either or theirs but I give them as examples of justice gone very wrong.

Again, I don’t expect to sway anyone’s opinion of me. Some will be disgusted by any man attempting to clear his name and in the time of Swalwell and Russell Brand, I completely get it.

I also know where I stand in the community and, as unfortunate as it may be, I intend to carry on, making music, protesting, saying what I think and doing my best to be there for my family, my friends and my loving partner who has encouraged me to take this first step today.

Love only.

post script:

I just had a mild panic when I went to read a response to this article, which I had posted in a restack of the piece about the day Prince died and it was nowhere to be found. Thankfully, I had copied it in google drive or I was afraid it was lost forever, this piece which took me ten years to prepare and one morning to write. Back up your work. I am still figuring out Substack.