It's Only Rock "N" Roll
30 Years Married To A Rolling Stone
by Jo Wood (wife of Ron Wood) C 2013
!t books - an imprint of HarperCollingsPublishers
Book Review By Sister at NEVER MARRIED NO KIDS - AN INTENTIONAL COMMUNITY
It's not easy to write a memoir and write it so every chapter advances your story. Jo Wood did that, and she had a hell of a lot of life to select scenes from. No doubt I was attracted to this book because Jo Wood is not just an ordinary woman in a hellish, dysfunctional marriage, but because women like her keep men like Rolling Stone guitarist Ron Wood happy for a long long time, that is until a life long alcoholic and drug user who has NEVER GROWN UP, decides he has to womanize before he dies, and dumps his no longer co-dependent wife!
I used to study at a coffee house that was owned by members of AA and frequented by members of AA (and other 12 step groups attempting to resist addiction.) Several times I met men who were flirtatious and generally attractive to me but they never seemed to follow through. Perplexed, I brought this subject up to others there, and I learned well one thing:
A person who lives their life for years on substances, be that drugs or alcohol, who basically AVOIDS life by being high, partying a lot, etc, DOES NOT GROW, DOES NOT MATURE, and so, when they finally join a 12 Step Program and get off their substance, they are the age they were when they started avoiding life... Jo was a hard partier and addict herself, which was attractive to Ron, but it was she who had to be a bit more sensible because she was the one having children, raising them, and keeping some sanity in her own and their lives.
Therefor, when they met he was about her age (20) as a human and 30 years later, she had matured to be maybe 30 something, while he was still 20 something and having affairs with 20 year olds. That's my explanation.
Now, if Ron Wood were NOT a Rolling Stone, if there were not drugs, travel, excitement, fame, money (to be earned and invested unwisely and lost), would Jo have stuck in there and had three children with him? My guess is that there are a lot of more ordinary people who are in these hellish marriages, with and without children, in which people met as partiers or drug addicts and remained so.
Jo portrays Ron as selfish, self-centered, capable of verbal abuse and unable to imagine how he hurts others, and clearly she made a lot of excuses for him and did a lot of compensating. Nearing 50 she dared to move her organic lifestyle into a product line, and she used the book to promote that a bit.
She stays clear of what their financial settlement was, though I'm sure most readers would like to know what she got (earned) after 30 years of loyalty and faithfulness.
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Speaking of drug and alcohol use and abuse, there are people who can use without becoming addicts. There are people who can keep it to 2 drinks or 20, people who can keep it to weekends, people who never drive themselves when they are using. Still, when you choose to be out of control regularly, even if scheduled, or at home, you may be self treating for a emotional or mental issue.
People are often wondering so I will tell you that I'm all for MEDICAL MJ and have been for years, ever since a professor at my college talked about how it would have saved her father's eyesight, and since I've met ovarian cancer survivors who used it and ate and didn't waste away. I think alcohol may be worse than MJ. However, I don't use MJ or any other illegal drug and drink very little and then usually with a meal, like dinner out, or a special occasion like a birthday. So it is really hard for me to relate to drug addicts.
Is that scene OUTDATED?
Watching this old movie, I was reminded of women I once knew who definitely felt that way. (They are all married now though I have no idea how happily.)
Maybe this is now a CONSERVATIVE or BACKWARD attitude, that it is so NORMAL to at least TRY MARRIAGE, that it would be better to commit and then fail...It's like people are getting points (with parents? friends? employers? God?) for trying and LEARNING.
But don't people who commit to relationships that don't become legal marriage and fail also LEARNING ABOUT HAVING A RELATIONSHIP?
And what about LEARNING from other people's relationships, like how NOT to have one?
Recently on a free news stand I saw a publication that is called DIVORCE, i.e. Divorce magazine. It was full of ads for professions such as forensic accountants (who look for where the marital partner hid money) and of course lots of divorce attorneys who promise to "fight" for you.
All of which I will be very happy to SKIP.
The rush to marriage because it's something "everyone" is doing or does, or because it's time (i.e. 26 years old or so), without really knowing the other person well, is just stupid.
So maybe people expect points for stupidity?
Actress CAMERON DIAZ got married the other day, at her home, with a good tent to hide the proceedings and keep them private. The photographers and news people had been watching her house for some time and saw the catering and floral deliveries, figured it out, and were there.
Now Cameron has pretty much been a spokesperson for the NMNK lifestyle, and be it that she changed her mind, fell in love with a soul mate, decided to give marriage a try (especially as that at 42 she has had a long experience of NMNK and might be at that point where having a baby could take forever), whatever, I REALLY DO HOPE THAT THE HAPPY COUPLE WILL BE HAPPY.
Just because I'm not much interested in marriage myself doesn't mean that I'm UNHAPPY when other people get married.
It's just that most of my friends who got married were ultimately not happy or they would not have gotten divorced. I have a couple friends who have been married twice and are divorced twice and now have partners that they refuse to marry, which is another story. In one case the children were the ones horribly effected. In another case there are no children to be effected. I also have lost contact with friends who married, would never divorced for religious reasons, have a lot of children, and who gave up on ME, not the other way around.
I'm not going to make any PREDICTIONS about this marriage of Cameron's. I'd like to think that because she is more mature and has had many relationships that she has the experience and wisdom to know what she is doing. I know nothing about her husband at all,
My New Year began with the professional cleaning of a carpet, the removal of a small sofa that had in the last few months popped a spring and broken a leg, and the purchase of another sofa from a single mother across the way who was moving about thirty miles away to more affordable housing, she said with the help of her friends.
I never asked her how it was that she got stranded by the child's father, but perhaps I didn't need to know and she didn't need to tell the all too typical story. Her daughter is, I feel lucky, as I think the fatherless family unit is possibly even worse for sons. Her daughter is also very beautiful and intelligent beyond her years but perhaps does not yet have a sense that she is living in poverty. She's not in school yet. She is generally a happy child but one who knows how to throw a tantrum and disobey to get her way. I expect that in a couple years some child psychologist will chime in an opinion but maybe this single mother is simply out of control of her child.
In a previous post I pretty much ranted my opinion that unless you have lots of family support and money in the bank, no woman should have one or more children on her own. I said that there were lots of frantic women in my neighborhood who had the single mom lifestyle and from what I witnessed it was a an often desperate lifestyle.
So this situation was an example.
First I and my dog went to look at the sofa. I asked her to measure it but she never had the time.
I decided it was worth it to buy it for the price, even if it turns out to be a temporary solution. She said that her friends who were helping her move would be glad to bring it over. I told her I was having the carpets cleaned and the old sofa removed before then.
The day before the move she texted me that she needed to fax important papers. It was New Years Day and I have no home fax and most places were closed. She added that she had no money to fax so it had to be someone's personal fax. I was not about to get on the phone to ask around for her. What had she left to the last minute like this? The new lease to the landlord and paperwork for her child's school. Ah well, the texting went on and on, and I got it SHE HAD NO MONEY TO FAX EVEN IF SHE FOUND A PLACE THAT WAS OPEN. I found a place that was open on New Years Day and she said she had no bus fare to get there. I knew that on Christmas, in order to get to a friend's place where she was going to hang out for the holiday she had asked the bus driver for a free ride for herself and her daughter. He said yes. She had been begging free bus rides a lot.
I was finding all this anxiety producing. I decided to give her $10 towards the sofa and took it and a plate of food over to her apartment. There I found a lot of Christmas gifts torn open that her friends had bought from Santa for her daughter. She said she was just thinking she was hungry. Well, I suspect there was no food in the place. She also remarked that it was cold. It was. No heat. I wondered if she really needed to fax or had just managed to coax money out of me. I decided I was not going to offer to babysit for free while she took buses to the fax place.
The place was reasonably clean maybe because it was so bare.
I asked her if she maybe needed a twin bed, as I had a twin bed frame I was giving away. She said her daughter had her own room (i.e THE bedroom) and that she herself sometimes slept on the sofa she was selling me. It was clear she had been unable to sell it, would have no room for it in the next place, and that she was happy to have some money in hand. Maybe the money to pay her friends.
The next day her friends showed up in a vehicle that looked like it was held together with spackle and proceeded to tie a box springs and two mattresses onto the roof. It turned out they were not friends but for hire. She was so broke she hit me up for boxes and plastic bags. I gave her the money for the sofa and an extra $5 to tip them for bringing her sofa across the street to my place. (Apparently she didn't and kept the money, as they posed around my door awaiting tip money.) I realized that she had not wanted the bed frame because her daughter slept on a mattress on the floor and these mattresses and box springs were so mismatched and filthy, I had to wonder if she hadn't pulled them into her place when someone else on the street threw them out.
So, no money for bus fare, no money to buy gifts for her daughter herself, no gift for the daughter from the "father", no money to heat the place, and food insecurity.
To her credit she has been doing an Internship and hoping for a new job and I certainly hope that in her new town this is possible and exactly what happens for her in the New Year.
