Denise Gail Vilay

This is the story of Denise, as well as I know it, and it is a rather strange story. Denise was born into a once prosperous but declining black family. Despite reportedly having only one white ancestor, in her young adulthood, she was light complexioned and blond, with greenish eyes, and definitely attractive. She said only anthropologists recognized her as being black, due to the length of her arms compared to her body.

Denise had a background with Christian Science and often quoted Mary Baker Eddy, but also had involvement with Buddhism and Hinduism, particularly Buddhism. Due to her sophisticated family background, she exhibited no trace of "black culture" and loved classical music of all periods.

During the Vietnam war, Denise was in her mid 20s and in Southeast Asia, where she married the guy who gave her the name Vilay. He was Cambodian, and it had something to do with the CIA, but I never got the full story. I seem to recall she had a miscarriage on the plane coming back to the US.

She went to a technical school and graduated in Program Analysis. As so often happens to people attending technical schools, what she had learned was obsolete by time she graduated, and she never had a job in that field. She didn't complete paying off her student loans until about 2010.

I met Denise at Liz Hargrove's Seminars for Singles in Pasadena, some time in the mid 1980s. At this time she drove a Fiat sports car and worked at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. She was cheerful and active. She soon became my live-in girlfriend. People thought we were a lovely couple, but problems soon began to appear.

In those days, by her own admission, she considered men to be entirely disposable, and her tolerance was low. At one point I declined to have sex with her outdoors where we could have been observed by neighbors. She was angered, and told me my attitude toward sex did not match hers. Later, I didn't do the right thing for some Hallmark event. It wasn't Valentines day, but might have been her birthday. Anyway, she said I wasn't romantic enough and moved out.

Her next relationship was a total disaster from which she never recovered. She suckered for the kind of guy women are most vulnerable to, a guy with a phony British accent, claiming to be related to nobility, and spouting a strongly romantic line. He told her they were going to do wonderful romantic things and to quit her job at the DMV without notice. She did, and that crippled her for future employment. He pretty soon found he couldn't get anything more out of her, and dumped her on the street - off to find another woman anxious for romance.

I know nothing of what she did right after that, but when her mother died, in 1991, she got enough money to buy a new car, a Honda Civic, which ended up being her home off and on over the years.

Much of her life is lost to me, but every once in a while she would show up, live with me very briefly, and work for me part time for a year or so.

In 1995 Denise was working for me, but her mind was apparently crumbling a bit. She accused myself and Trudy Holt, who was also working for me, of smoking crack, and that we should do so outside, as she had to smoke her cigarettes outside. Neither of us had ever used crack, and I never used any recreational drugs of any kind, except beer and wine. She was extremely insistent on this matter, claiming she could smell the stuff all day. She said we were denying it because we were afraid she might ask for some. She had also made inappropriate comments to clients. Trudy and I consulted with a Human Resources expert, who advised we had no choice but to discharge her immediately.

Denise went back on the road. I know that in 1996 she had an address in Flagstaff, Arizona, then in San José, California, then in 1997 she was in Seattle, Washington.

In 2002 she was living in Pasadena, and had a job with a normal company. Unfortunately, it was in decline during hard economic times and she was eventually laid off, and was back on the road.

Somewhere along the line she was living on the Navaho reservation, but she had always had a talent for outstaying her welcome, and was asked to leave.

Somewhere along the line she married an Arab or Iranian, probably for an immigration thing (on his part, at least). That didn't work out, but around 2010 she was still dealing with him on the phone. I think she got a legal divorce.

Some night around 2007 I heard a knock on my bedroom door. It was Denise. She told me later she had been sleeping on my porch for a few nights. So, she lived with me again, very briefly, but it just wouldn't work out, so she got a room up the street with Beverly.

Trudy was long gone, and so was Julie, with whom she had a fist fight back in the '90s, so I was able to keep her on as a part time employee. We occasionally played at sex, but only play, as her lady parts had already become unusable, painful if touched. She was, by now, under the care of the State, and being maintained on medication. She seemed happy and was talking about taking classes for a teaching job.

Then in 2008, disaster struck again. Denise decided the meds were making her fat and asked they be changed. In actuality, she was not fat, still quite away from even "pleasingly plump". Whatever she was prescribed, the person who prescribed it should be in prison. It totally destroyed her.

I kept her on part time for about 1-1/2 years, but all she did was stand at the kitchen window counting the cars entering and coming out of the Vons parking lot. When she had to go to the bathroom she would write down her counts so she could take them up when she got back. I would not touch her for fear of being accused of molesting an incompetent person.

Finally, that prescriber was transferred and she got a new prescription. She started to recover, and occasional sex play returned. Now, though, she was holding conversations with Jesus and the Dalai Lama, often and out loud. She had long had an image of the Dalai Lama in the wall of her workstation, and some other Buddhist and Hindu things.

Then she fell under the spell of a TV Evangelist. Down came the Dalai Lama and all the other stuff. She installed a Baby Jesus gazebo at her workstation, purchased from the preachers organization. She declared there would be no sex play at all, and asked me to get her a Bible.

I ordered a nice study Bible and gave it to her. I know she read it intensively between then and the next time she came to work - because her next work day the gazebo was gone and the Dalai Lama was back on the wall. She later told me she left the gazebo on Beverly's coffee table, but nobody remembers what happened to it.

Then, in December 2010, her car failed beyond her ability to have it fixed. Now she really went off the deep end, and was soon towed away by a representative from the State. Her last act before being taken away was to donate $500, about all she had, to the Heifer Foundation, to buy someone a cow in a 3rd world country. She told me later it really made her feel good.

Her cousin, Tracy, got her set up in a room at Garfield Care Center in Pasadena, paid for by Medicare, Medical, etc. I visited her there, and we eventually established a routine where I'd pick her up once a week and bring her to my place for dinner. She'd sleep here overnight, and I'd get her back to Garfield in the morning.

During this time her mind was still fairly sharp, thought her short term memory was a bit shaky. She enjoyed reading books on astrophysics, and other complex things. This situation continued from mid 2011 until August 2019, but in August she was clearly in declining health and eating very little at supper. Then she stopped eating even her beloved steel cut oats at breakfast.

In late August she was sent to the hospital, then transferred to Glenoaks Convalescent Care. It took me a while to find out where she was because of medical security. Having located her, I got the news she was dying of lung cancer. The social worker registered me as next of kin, along with her cousin Tracy, but Tracy was much involved with matters of a recently deceased husband and told them I could make any decisions regarding Denise.

I made an arrangement with the Hospice that had assigned her to Glenoaks to continue bringing her here overnight once a week, but she soon became too weak, especially since she had stopped eating entirely. I continued to visit her every week. I visited on November 22, 2019, and she did not respond to her name. She died within minutes of my visit, age 70. As arranged by a social worker, her lungs were removed for study. She was cremated, and her ashes were scattered at sea.

I was not informed of her death, and learned of it a week later when I visited. I was too late to recover her three favorite stuffed animals, so they died with her. She called them "her babies". There was a sheep, an elephant and an orange critter she thought was a bear. She had a bunch of smaller critters which I have here, and I have her violin from her school days, which she abandoned here in the 1980s.

Rest peacefully, Denise, wherever you might be now.

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