Jonathan Shaw’s a talented storyteller, a true old-school schemer with a criminal mind and heart who’s really lived what he writes. We’ve shared whorehouse adventures and many laughs all over the world together. Welcome to Hell.
-Steve Bonge, Hells Angels New York City/ Author of Marked for Life and Tattooed with Attitude
The following email exchange started when my old friend Nadine Purdy read my recently-posted, now-notorious “Crack Monster” blog.
From the tone of her email to me, I got the impression that it must have totally horrified her.
I get that a lot. Especially from well-meaning, albeit sometimes slightly misguided friends and well-wishers who seem to fear I’ve gone completely off my rocker now, given my chosen attitudes toward the crooked litle path I find myself on today.
That and the nature of my seemingly bullet-proof Eternal Muse and the object of my love, a long suffering angelic young crack-whore named Narcisa.
I’m getting used to all the friendly concern by now.
What some of these beloved well-wishers may fail to recognize though, is that, in order for me to have “gone insane,” I must have already once been “sane”, so as to have “gone” nuts to begin with.I was never “sane”.At best, I am simply smart and, at times lucid enough to have fooled a lot of good people for a very long time- including myself.
I’m not fooling anymore.
I have finally come to grips with my own “insanity”.And I’ve somehow become honest enough to be willing to accept my, heretofore, total inability to form a true partnership bond with another human being.
In return for my good intent, it seems that The Source of Infinite Love, in its infinite wisdom and mercy and endlessly ironic sense of humor, has sent me an earthly partner: Narcisa- the one person who constantly reflects my own insanity right back at me. And always in ways that motivate me to want to unearth, hand in hand with my unlikely, crack-addled little “partner” the illusive path to that wonderful place called “sanity”.But my friend Nadine Purdy, not unlike the lovely Narcisa herself, has also taken some pretty interesting twists and turns and hair-raising detours along her own rocky road to Nirvana.
If anybody deserves an overdose of peace and happiness and “sanity” in this life, it is Nadine’s absolute birthright, given all the fucked up crazy shit she’s been through to find it.
I first met Nadine some years ago through mutual friends, who, like myself, were forced, under the lash of their addictions onto a newfound spiritual path that none of us had ever imagined.
Nadine and I hit it off like kindred spirits right from the start.
I’ve always had a soft place in my heart for crack-whores, retired or active, don’t make no difference to me. And Nadine, being another recovering addict could relate pretty well to my shit too, I guess.
Over time, we became good friends, as she told me some of her story.
Here’s my somewhat fanciful version of it.
Nadine had once upon a time been a highly successful New York City fashion designer, scrambling right up the food chain to compete with the likes of Betsy Johnson, Patricia field, Ana Sui, Carolina Herrera, Christian Joy and Diane Von Furstenburg. (The same Von Furstenburg I eventually sold my building in NYC to before moving back here to Rio - small world).
Anyway, as Nadine was quickly swept up into the glittering whirlwind of money, property and prestige on the New York fashion scene, there were, of course, lots of fancy parties to attend.
And of course there was plenty of cocaine at those parties, the prerequisite fancy hipster party drug, an indispensably fashionable 80’s accessory for life in the good old fast lane.
Meanwhile, Nadine, right at the height of her fame, good fortune and worldly $uccess, had gone flying off to Tokyo on fashion business. There, somehow she met and married the son of the Emperor of Japan or some crazy shit like that, producing two beautiful children and a spectacular dreams-come-true happily-ever-after Hollywood ending.
One problem. It didn’t quite all end up like that.
Fairy tale endings can be terribly boring. Especially when you’ve had a few rounds in the fast lane with the white lady.
Here comes trouble.
Without going into all the apocolyptic details of Nadine’s pop-culture rise and fall from grace, which have since become the stuff of a Hollywood movie in-the-making, not to mention the subject of the ubiquitous talk show circuit, from Oprah on down, I’ll just cut to the chase for simplicity’s sake, and give all you dirty little Peeping Toms the proverbial bottom line.
Nadine moved quickly southbound, downwardly mobile from fancy party cocaine lines, to freebase, to street level crack, to eventually circling the drain right down down down into a dirty old life of petty crime, prostitution and eventual homeless, hopeless, helpless destitution, systematically dismantling and smoking up her whole hard-earned fashion empire along the way, converting it all to ashes strewn along the ratty road to ruin.
She eventually ended up living among the notorious “mole people”- a shocking tribe of sub-human derelicts, the stuff of shadowy urban legends, slithering through the subterranean sewers and abandoned subway corridors running deep beneath the busy streets of Manhattan.
Somehow Nadine Purdy survived the Homerian trials and purifications of a true warrior spirit.And she finds herself today, after many hard years of spiritual seeking and ego-smashing, courageous recovery work, back with flying colors among the human race, reunited with her beautiful kids that the crack monster had cruelly abducted, and being slowly but surely restored to sanity and a life of love, service and spiritual awakening…
And she’s got her fashion line up and running again too, flying high and proud under the fabulous banner, Purdy Girl.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you… Nadine Purdy.
How’s that shit for a happy ending?
Here’s our latest bit of correspondence, right after she read my recent “Crack Monster” blog:
Nadine wrote:
OH JONATHAN -MY HEART BLEEDS FOR YOU SOMETIMES.YOU ARE SUCH A SPECIAL PERSON AND FRIEND.WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO STOP TORTURING YOURSELF AND FIND A REAL WOMAN WHO WILL MAKE YOU HAPPY? SOMEONE WHO IS A FRIEND AND A PARTNER.DO YOU ENJOY THIS IMMENSE PAIN?
FIND SOMEONE WHO IS ON YOUR LEVEL AND BE AT PEACE.I WAS JUST IN THE JUNGLE IN PERU FOR 2 WEEKS WITH A SHAMAN, DOING A DIETA.IT WAS A MAJOR TIME FOR REFLECTION. VERY PAINFUL AT TIMES, BUT SO WORTH IT. I LEARNED TO LISTEN TO THE SILENCE WITHIN.I HAVE COME TO A POINT OF PEACE AND FORGIVENESS.NEVER IN MY LIFE HAVE I. EXPERIENCED SUCH TRANQUILITY.I HOPE THAT YOU CAN FIND THIS PEACE.IT’S FUCKING AWESOME TO FEEL GOD’S LOVE SO DEEP THAT YOU HAVE NO FEAR. COMPLETE BLISS.
HOPE TO SEE YOU SOON.
BIG KISSES,NADINE
I wrote back:
I’m glad that’s all working out so well for you, Nadine.
But please please please, don’t let your heart bleed for me, or anybody else…. Ouch!! That shit sounds painful. Stop that shit!! Right now!!!
But seriously… there are many paths to enlightenment, baby. Just as many as there are people on paths. And that’s a whole shitload of paths… In fact, if I may be so bold, I’d like to believe they all go there, eventually.
Some may be faster and easier than others. But you don’t always get to choose your path. Not when that fucking love bug strikes like an arrow to the heart.
And not when you learn to trust your own intuition and try to live with open eyes and mind and heart- really open to seeing beyond all those old ideas of “peace” and “happiness” and all the fairy-tale illusions of facile outward appearances and shit…
I believe we don’t always get choose our paths, not consciously anyway… But we DO get to choose how we walk them.
My art and my daily life and my relationships with others, no matter how complex, challenging, troublesome and painful, ARE MY spiritual path.
Different strokes, got it?
Sometimes the very ‘worst’ relationship is exactly the one that’s best for one’s soul. The one that brings out our very best and challenges us to grow stronger, spiritually, emotionally, mentally.The fire that cleanses and heals…My own creative process is the best way I know to attempt to express and manifest the magnificence of my Creator. That’s why my art IS my Higher Power and my spiritual practice.Any Muse one finds along the path therefore, however bizarre, surreal or insane they may seem to my admittedly crooked way of thinking, is always a total blessing to an artist.It can be a big mistake to judge what you’re not living through, Nadine.
Cuz that’s somebody else’s path. Maybe you just got no business on it, with all due respect, cuz it’s not yours to walk- or judge…
Don’t be so quick to take my black humor and demented poetic rants as some sign of “the real me” sitting around in some maudlin pity party bitching, complaining or feeling sorry for myself. I am not. And I don’t want my friends’ hearts bleeding all over the place for my “plight” either. Too messy! That shit is wack! There IS no plight! Only light!
Thanks, but nooooo thanks, baby.
Got yer tourniquet right here…
Just for today, I ain’t seeking any needless pain for pain’s sake. I’ve already done enough of that shit.
But there’s pain and then there’s pain.
Some pain can be quite useful to an artist or any real seeker of truth. I’ve been told its even the touchstone to spiritual growth… Can you relate?
Like you, I’m seeking truth.
And growing.
And having a pretty good time along the bumpy old path, taking the ups with the downs… Like Mark Twain said, “it’s all grist for the mill.”
Amen to that.
Keep seeking, baby
“Hasta la vitoria, siempre!!”
Love ya, JS.
Then Nadine replied:
I agree with you. I am just glad my path is going in a different direction… All spirtual paths do lead to the same place, see you there.
Much love and light. N
I wrote:
Vive la difference!!!
“From each according to their ability - to each according to their need..”
Love, JS
