NOW IT CAN BE TOLD!
The Truth About Peter’s Marriage
By Ann Moses
It all began with a letter from a Monkee fan, and in particular a Peter fan. I received her letter in the Tiger Talk mail and decided to print it since I thought her ideas were unusual and needed to be shared. I couldn’t understand what “kind of person” Peter had been branded by the girl, but here at Tiger Beat we feel every opinion is important. Her letter read:
Ex-Peter fan Permalink
Peter Tork has always been my fave Monkee until I found out he had been married and divorced! I was furious! I never thought Peter was that kind of person! So now Davy’s my fave Monkee.
Brenda Rednour
Pascagoula, Miss.
It was only a matter of weeks before letters began to flood my office from fans in defense of Peter. Every single letter was outraged at Brenda’s thoughts and put her down for her narrow-mindedness. I thought it was fantastic that Peter’s fans were so loyal, but more than that they had obviously picked up on his belief that you should judge every person on his own merit, not by his color, his creed or his past! I wonder if Brenda ever thought that Peter is what he is today because of all the experiences he’s had throughout his life.
When I brought all the letters to Peter, he felt it was necessary to make an explanation to his fans. Here, in his own words, is what he told me:
The first time I laid eyes on Jody she was standing at the head of the stairs at the Four Winds Cafe on West Third Street in Greenwich Village. She had her feet about three feet apart, her arms folded, and she was glaring definantly [sic] on the street filled with long-haired weirdos and the even weirder tourists. She looked at me and said, “Ya got a cigarette?”
I had been working at the Four Winds regularly, but I’d taken a couple of days off and during that time she had come to work as a waitress. We hit it off right away. She really was brassy, full of her own spunk and fire. I really flipped out. I really liked that in her. I love that brassy, “get out of my way, Charlie, if you don’t have anything to do with what I’m doing” way. She was totally self-contained.
Love at first sight Permalink
It was really love at first sight. I found out that she was the child of a couple divorced very early in life, raised only by her mother, and she had been alone a lot. She was very interested in horses. I find that people that are terribly hung up in horses, the way Jody was anyway, are using it because their experiences in the people world have left them very disillusioned. Jody thought so too, that’s why she came to the Village, specifically to try and get back into people.
We started going together and we were really, really hitting it off. We were a team socking it to everybody; and doing good works. She was 16 and I was 22. I can remember I was walking around with this constant grin on my face. I just couldn’t stop smiling!
Had to be together Permalink
We finally felt pressured into marriage. She was under age, legally speaking, although not to me, but we felt we had to get married to try and maintain any kind of unity together. We were young and we felt we had to be together. We were certainly enough in love. We said, “no doubt in our minds.” We were just heavy into each other and ready. The problem was we had no idea what kind of emotional readjustment marriage takes.
It’s like marrying is getting back your parent of the opposite sex. A woman marries a man because of her father and a man marries a woman because of his mother. You’re both searching for your parent in the form of someone your own age.
Jody was young Permalink
Now Jody, at 16, was hardly my contemporary much less a mother. She was all willing to cuddle and hold, but I think she was cuddling her father and not her husband. A wife has to be both a mother and a wife to a man and the man has to be both a father and a husband. It all has to mix in and tie up.
So why couldn’t we make it work? Life is what you make it. When we first got married we said we were going to stick together for two years whether we were together or not, as a married thing. But after a month and half we separated and moved into our own places and after 18 months we got a divorce.
The big adjustment Permalink
There were so many things that contributed to our breaking up I couldn’t recount them all. I think most of the problems centered around not being emotionally ready for the great readjustment marriage requires.
For example, Jody didn’t feel capable of giving time to being both my social partner—like going out everywhere—and still doing the dishes at home. Like they’re [sic] be dishes when company came and I’d pick on her for it, I mean, really make an issue because I didn’t know any better. I was a blind, fool kid.
When she left Permalink
After a while she said, “I’m not going to take this abuse,” and went to leave. I said, “You’re not going to leave!” She said, “I am too!” And it was beat, bash, belt—I mean I actually hit her once. And that was it. She split.
After we were separated she took a separate place and I would drop by every so often. Once in a while it would be pretty comfortable. There was always enough tension to keep us from flinging into each other’s arms, but it was comfortable enough to where we could discuss it a little bit and skirt the edges of the issue. After the divorce she went to Paris and got into horses again.
Seeing Jody now Permalink
I’ve since seen Jody a number of times. She came back to New York for a while after Paris and she now lives in San Francisco. On her way to San Francisco she stopped here in Los Angeles to see what it was all about. When we’re comfortable together now, the spark is back. And it’s stunning again, it dazzles me! But when it’s not there it just puts me up so tight I don’t want to see her. If Jody was to come back suddenly and everything clicked and everything was cool, it would be new. It would be like it was some other girl, because we’ve both changed so much.
Jody’s reaction to the whole Monkee thing is she regards it only as public recognition of what she’s already known, as I do. She’s really capable of great business ability. If she took over an office, she’d make it a success. She already has. There’s a thing called Personality Posters for which she opened international offices.
Reaction to fans Permalink
About the girl who wrote in to Tiger Talk and said she was no longer a fan of mine, all I can say is she’s welcome to her opinion. Right and wrong are her business only. If I’m doing, or did, something that for her is wrong, if it’s impossible for her to like me any further, I say carry on. God bless you, say I.
I don’t think I’ll ever get married again. I used to say way back before that I didn’t think I’d ever get married, but then I did. I still say I’ll never get married again, but I probably will. I’ll get married when it’s demanded by society, if I choose to run for office. Then I’d probably marry whoever I was going with at the time to have a wife.
Worthwhile experience Permalink
The entire experience had a great effect on me. I remember three weeks after my marriage broke up I was sitting there shattered, wondering what had happened to me. How could I have lost myself?
I was pacifist at the time and here I was hitting a poor little girl, much younger and much smaller than me—really hitting her! Where was that at? It really brought me face to face with a lot of convictions that I’d held sort of on the surface and I hadn’t had a real confrontation with. Friends of mine remarked as little as three weeks after Jody had left that the whole experience had cleared my head out and it made a man out of me, right there and then.
The experience took me to the very bottom of my life. I needed it. Experiences like this, if they don’t break you, they strengthen you. I don’t believe much in people saying “it was a miserable time in my life, I wish I’d never gone through it.” If such an experience leaves you shakey and neurotic for the rest of your life, then maybe it’s an experience you could have done without. But most everyone who recovers from a really heavy experience is the stronger for it. I am, and I know.
