Fans of the iPhone and the iPad have long seen the late Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple, as a messianic figure, whose drive and vision turned computers from clunky business machines into the epitome of cool.
Danny Boyle’s new biopic, starring Michael Fassbender and Kate Winslet, will further burnish his remarkable reputation when it premiers next month.
But one woman has a different and more traumatic view: Jobs’s high school sweetheart Chrisann Brennan.
She lived with Jobs and was an early Apple employee, only for the relationship to fall apart amid wild recriminations when she became pregnant with his first child.
According to Brennan, played in the film by Katherine Waterstone, Jobs – who died in 2011 – became a threatening monster in real life.
He denied he was the father, despite a positive paternity test. He paid a pittance in child support, while living the life of a millionaire. And one of the towering figures of the age even stooped to spreading lies that she had been unfaithful…
The high school grounds must have felt like a home away from home to Steve and me; that’s the only reason I can think of to explain our decision to take LSD on the campus. We must have been naive to believe it was a good idea, but to our credit, the grounds were large and blessedly deserted on a Saturday.
I have a slight memory of pulling two wrapped hits out of my pocket, thinking that we might split one. But we each swallowed one whole. And then we waited – this was Steve’s first time and he seemed frightened.
Out of the blue, he started to tell me that I would need to tell him ‘not to put on airs’ should he ‘act out’. He wanted me to practice so I would be prepared to handle ‘it’.
Prepared for what? I had no idea. Then the LSD took effect.
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