Chapter 7: Bye Bye Love

I can't feel this way much longer, expecting to survive, with all these hidden innuendoes, just waiting to arrive

Donna wrote to me, but she never told me where she was at the time. Three times in three years she left a note at the restaurant for me to meet her at the Sleepy Time Lodge. I went and saw her and she kept me up to date on her life. She'd been writing articles for an underground newspaper and she was still a DJ, but WFPP transferred her way over to Chicago. But I saw what she didn't tell me, she'd been drinking heavily and getting into some harder drugs. Coke I assumed, I wasn't sure. Each time I met her with the intention of making her go to Eric, to tell him the truth. I promised her I'd stand by her side and we'd confess together. But of course it never panned out, we just ended up kissing, then fucking, on the very bed that Chrissie and I had fucked on.

That's all it was, fucking.

It meant nothing anymore except to satisfy her urges and make me feel used and creepy and a bastard for meeting her while Jackie watched Johan at home.

I kept waiting for it to mean something again, thinking that that would justify it. Like if it meant something, if I loved her it wasn't cheating.

The third time I told her it was the last.

"Don't you miss me Steve, don't you love me anymore."

"Of course I love you, (I lied) but I hate this, I can't live like this."

"You're the reason I'm still sane Steve, I wait as long as I can to come back and se you, and be held by you, you are the only person who ever loved me the way I needed it."

"Donna, I can't do this anymore. I don't love you that way anymore. It's fucking killing me."

"Do you think I like it? Do you think I want to break you and Jackie up?"

"No, I know, but it's not like we can just pretend it never happened we have to be honest."

"You can if you want Steve, but I'm not going to deal with your pain and mine, I have enough problems."

She was acting like a totally different person, distant and selfish, like my mother did before she died. And it made me hate her.

"What kind of shit are you on Donna?"

"Fuck you Hyde!"

She kicked me out of the room and I walked away for the last time.

It's such a wavy midnight, when you slip into insane, electric angel rock and roller, I hear what you're playing

Donna's radio show got syndicated in 1985 and then everyone in the Midwest area heard her. "Hot Donna" was the undisputed authority on who was cool in rock and roll. But she wasn't the same person anymore, Chicago never met the Donna that Eric and I fell in love with, they only got the burnout and fade away version. Bob Pinciotti came to our door one night, in '88. I just remember Jackie answering it and then screaming to me from the other room. I ran to her and she was crying. She collapsed onto the floor with Bob holding her and sobbing in his own right.

"Daddy, wha's wrong with Momma?" Johan asked.

"She'll be fine, you take Erica to the playroom." I told him.

After Johan was safely out of sight with his baby sister in tow, Bob told me about how they found her body in her old bedroom.

Donna came back home to die of her heroin overdose.

Her sister Tina found her.

Jackie wept for hours, I couldn't find any of my own tears.

I never told Jackie about how we'd ruined everything.

eyes of porcelain and blue, could shock me into sense, you think you're so illustrious you call yourself intense

At the wake, I sort of floated around to each of the people I used to be as close to as family. Letting each one say their piece, knowing that they really couldn't hear me either. This was too much for anyone to be able to live through. Everybody present died a little too. Everyone showed up of course, including the worshippers, the idolaters, a bunch of teenage girls who just knew the radio rocker Donna.

The drugged-out accident Donna.

I ignored them as much as possible, with their "Hot Donna" T-shirts on. Donna's big blue eyes shining out from their chests screaming 'look what no one will ever know again'.

Fez and Kelso stayed close to the parents, trying their damnedest to make some sense and lend whatever peace to Bob and Midge, as well as Red and Kitty who practically raised her as a daughter through her teenaged life. The women cried and the men gave hugs and I just stood back and make as little of a dent on the whole situation as I could.

Eric was the worst.

I don't want to talk about Eric.

Because Eric had the same exact thoughts I had about the whole thing.

Everything was a matter of weighing how much was your fault.

Bob, Midge, Red and Kitty will always worry that they were bad parents, but everyone knows that's bullshit. They will get their positive re-enforcement and all will be well sooner or later.

Jackie, Fez and Kelso are just friends who fell out of touch because they got their own lives. There is no blame that will stick to them after a few drinks.

But Eric and I, are rare birds. We will always hurt, and always worry. Because we loved her, we touched her too much or not enough, got her stoned and made her laugh and share the secrets that will be the reasons in our minds why Donna will never be here again. And nobody give enough of a shit to tell us that we weren't wrong for going on living after she left us. For ignoring the pain and forgetting just for a little while.

It was an open casket, I didn't look.

Tina is the only one who told me anything relevant, anything I remember. Poor Tina came back from college for a visit and ended up finding a body and scarring her mind. She sat with me and talked for half an hour. She'd grown up so much since I'd seen her that it shocked me how much she looked like Midge. I just sat in the hard plastic chair and stared into her own big blue eyes and remembered while she told me her favorite memories of her sister. Just when I was starting to zone out, Tina handed me a plain wooden picture frame.

"Donna was holding this when she died, I figured you should have it."

It was the picture of us on my front porch, the one I gave her for Christmas '76.

"She loved you, you know." Tina said.

"Yeah. She loved Eric too." was all I could say.

"She did. She was also wearing his promise ring, I'm giving it back to him."

"That'll help him, I think."

When Tina cried, the tears came down her cheeks but she talked through it. Like she didn't have the energy to weep, but couldn't stop the tears anyway. It made me want to hold her.

"Take care of your little girls Steve. Johan too."

"I will. Thank you Tina."

She stood from her chair and went to give Eric his ring. I watched him take it with shaky hands from across the room, he hugged Tina and cried right in front of everyone. Harder then anyone I'd ever seen mourning.

Eric Forman was absolved, and I asked Donna to give me his share of the blame.