Leave it at Love

1. 

I built a roller rink once in the basement of my childhood home, an impassioned effort to not just impress a girl, but to make her mine. My parents didn’t mind; the basement was a musty unfinished one, cement floor, cement walls. For years, it had served as a clubhouse where ill-formed, short-lived kid clubs invented in our neighborhood teenage minds resided for even shorter periods of time. Once, it became a Halloween haunted house where the only thing missing was anything remotely frightening. I was a junior in High School when a small portion of said cellar had been magically transformed into a true member’s only roller-skating emporium, me being its only member. There really wasn’t much magic in the transformation, but I will take credit for a small bit of ingenuity.

Roller skating had made a major resurgence in the late 1970s, something seemingly unseen since the 1950s. In 1979, seated on an old mildewed couch that had found its way to our dank cellar rather than the curb outside, I laced on a pair of my dad’s fabulous 50s high-top, graphite wheel skates. I don’t know why he saved them, but I always remembered the

rusty metal lunchbox type case that housed the ancient pair was always accessible in our upstairs – also unfinished – attic. Plans had always been in motion to finish both the attic and the basement, but like those best laid plans of mice and men, these projects had gone AWOL. Stacked haphazardly against one wall of the basement, several sheets of 8’x4’ plywood collected must. I pilfered enough pieces to lay flat across the uneven concrete floor and voila, instant roller rink.

High School had been a difficult time for me on the female front. I had longed for a girlfriend, someone to hold hands with, someone to share ice cream with, all of that innocent schmaltz from teenage romance flicks.

Or sitcoms.

This endeavor, I’d feared had sitcom written all over it.

I was a quiet, shy type kid in High School, always on the outer periphery, invisible essentially.

As I laced up those ancient skates for the very first time, I tried to ward off the evil spirits of low self-esteem. In my mind however, country superstar Larry Gatlin provided the soundtrack not just for this scene, but for my entire teenage love life it seemed.

 

Fallin’ in love alone is easy, stayin’ in love alone ain’t easy at all,

This time’s gonna be different, ‘cos I’m taking somebody with me when I fall.

 

Of course, the idea here was not to fall at all, thus the need for a private roller rink and self-taught lessons.

Barbara was a freshman, two years younger than I was. Her leather black hair sheened beneath our high school approved industrial fluorescents; it fell just to her shoulders. Her chestnut eyes held such serene warmth, especially when they gazed upon my own. Somehow, we (make that me) were lucky enough to share the same lunch period. I don’t recall how it was that she ended up seated at the same table that I shared with my peers, but from the day that we had met, I had felt the undercurrent of something between us. And why wouldn’t I? I was a junior. Juniority held some reverence amongst the freshman females. Small talk came easily for the two of us. It was every time that I teetered on the precipice of making small talk something a little larger that I faltered, and retreated backward to my safe place, which was really no place at all.

“What do you do on the weekends?” she had asked me in a simple, casual tone one Monday afternoon.

Inwardly, I had breathed the heaviest sigh of relief. Mission accomplished, and I never had to do a thing.

“Oh, you know, this and that, ride bikes, hang out at so and so’s place. Debbie across the street has one of these combination pool table, ping pong tables in her basement. You flip it one way you’re playing pool,” I rambled. “Turn it over and you’re playing ping pong.”

I swallowed, brushed a lick of hair further from the cowlick that had deposited it there, and asked, “what about you?” pitched about an octave higher.

“I go to Laces every Friday and Saturday night. Everybody goes there, it’s the best,” she beamed. “Do you roller skate?”

I felt my face fall while inside, the deepest sigh of despair whispered.

“I, umm…haven’t been there yet,” I faltered, “but I’d like to check it out.”

Had I just said that?

“You should come sometime then,” Barbara offered, and then gathered up her books. “See ya,” she grinned, and cavorted to class.

No turn of events there, I conceded. My love life remained on the straight and getting narrower. I wasn’t surprised that Barbara and friends hung out at Laces. In the short period of time that Laces had been in business, it had become the hottest Herricks High hangout in town.

I pined for the not so old days when Laces had been Iceland and was primarily ignored by the High School horde, yet as I sat there alone and forlorn for the moment at the long cafeteria table, I dreamed of what could be. I had heard tales of the illicit going’s on inside, music, lights –

The couple’s skate.

Here came that teenage dream of simply holding hands, gliding around the rink bathed in swirling incandescent colors, the music of the Electric Light Orchestra as our soundtrack.

…And I really want tonight to last forever,

I really want to be with you…

I had seen it all in slow motion, the crowd parting, the two of us alone sailing effortlessly as if on wings, me the underdog who had gotten the girl. On the sidelines, our peers hooted, hollered and clapped, a climactic finish in an adolescent cinematic lovefest.

The school bell rang signaling the end of lunch, reverie and a stark return to reality. By the time the final bell had sounded that afternoon, I had reached a hard-worn decision. With only one way to win the girl, I would be forced to take my life in my…feet.

2. 

You don’t have to be a star, baby,

to be in my show.

Marilyn McCoo & Billy Davis Jr were singing right to me in ’77. Two years younger, a ninth grader, top rung on the ladder in a Junior High that hosted grades 7 thru 9, I had no problem setting my sights high – way high – on the girlfriend ground. Granted, I had rather hoped that seniority at the freshman level might hold some reverence, yet someone to simply interlock hands with remained forever elusive.

It was Bob McCallister in his final year as host of Wonderama who introduced me to Julie. Neither party knew of this, but then that was the magic of television. As a twelve-year-old, I was old enough to know that I was too old to be watching Wonderama, but Sunday morning TV offered pretty slim pickings, an acceptable loophole. At the same time, I was old enough to realize that the show was taped in advance, and therefore any hope of meeting my latest crush had summarily expired.

Julie was beautiful, though admittedly not my type. I’d never gone in for blondes. There was something about her disposition, her wide, toothy smile, her hair in pigtails, and her ears, yes, her ears. Perfectly placed atop her head, they sprouted from the upper rear corner quadrants, two symmetrical circles, equidistant black holes that sucked me straight in. Julie was a cast member of 1977’s The New Mickey Mouse Club, an official Mouseketeer, and I was officially smitten.

There was no loophole the following afternoon when I left friends in the lurch that I would normally leave school with, and raced home alone to catch the 3:30 premiere of the show. I was forced to watch it alone in the bedroom that I shared with my brother on a twenty something year old black and white Zenith television, a hand me down that had made it up in the world to our second-floor domicile. The picture tube on it was wending its way towards its final day, the image on the screen so faded and dim that television watching during that hour when the sun beat in through the window was close to impossible. I had tried covering the window with the bedspread from my bed, but it continually fell to the ground often taking the curtain rod with it. Explaining to my mom why the rod had been bent so badly would take a bit of creativity on my part. I excelled at creativity however and found an alternate solution. Draping the coverlet deep behind the rear of the TV, I sat on the floor – probably too close to the unit, which was purportedly bad for the eyes – and covered myself with the remainder of the fabric creating a sort of makeshift pup tent that blotted out enough of the ambient illumination to see the screen clearly. It got hot in there, but seeing Julie so up close in beautiful black and white, well, what could I say? I was in love. She danced, she twirled, she sang, she smiled and she looked right in my eyes when she formally introduced herself and offered the invitation of my lifetime.

‘Oh hi, I’m Julie. We’re starting a new club here, the New Mickey Mouse Club. Hey, would you like to join us?’

“Oh yes, Julie, it would be my honor,” I answered equally formal and quite aloud.

Julie smiled and nodded.

‘Hey gang,’ she informed the others around her. ‘We’ve got a new member.’

I moved in even closer to the screen and could feel the electricity between us that had nothing to do with static charge buildup. Ah, the magic of old televisions.

Keeping the secret proved everything but impossible; there was only so long that I could keep my younger brother out of the room between 3:30 and 4PM before questions were asked.

“You swear?” I pled, when he inevitably found out.

Bill nodded, but behind his blue eyes, I knew that my plight had been plundered. By the third week of my TV tryst, I was sharing the makeshift pup tent in my room with a few friends.

“Kelly is totally hot,” Bob from down the block admitted. “She could be like Miss America or something…when she’s old enough.”

Kelly Parsons, another blonde, indeed attractive and not as innocently goofy looking as my beloved jewel deserved Bob’s accolades, and with good reason. From Coral Gables Florida, she had won the Our Little Miss Pageant in that region two years prior. Who knew? I know now, but I needed to know more about Julie, my pigtailed penchant then. A hastily written letter to Long Island’s Newsday newspaper followed in my earliest days of infatuation. I knew nothing about Julie, her last name, her current place of residence, her preference in men.

(Boys).

(No, men).

(Boys)!

(Okay, boys).

Weeks elapsed with me checking the mailbox hourly. I silently cursed our local mailman who until that moment I had never trusted. I would venture to say that I used to trust him, but as I rarely received mail, what was not to trust anyway? By the time I had received correspondence, it had been more than I could possibly have asked for. Someone at Newsday must have recognized true teen adoration and had passed along my information to the good folks at Disney. What arrived at my home was a bona fide press kit.

With too much information?

Julie Piekarski lived in Florissant, Missouri with her family.

Enter stalker mode at an advanced level.

At the top of the street where I lived resided a telephone booth on the outermost periphery of the Texaco gas station that paid rent there. My friends and I frequented the booth often, dropping dimes to call assorted unknowns and ask inane questions like, ‘is your refrigerator running?’

Ah, the magic of phone booths.

We spent a fairly inordinate amount of time there. When I was a kid the year before with a typical cliché crush on each of Charlie’s Angels – in order: Jaclyn Smith, Kate Jackson, Farrah Fawcett (told you I never had a thing for blondes) – one of my friends had come up with the plan of procuring phone numbers via 4-1-1.  It seemed like a decent plan at the time. I won the dubious distinction as spokesperson of our small knit group. The conversation played out something like this:

“Directory Assistance, Can I help you?”

I cleared my throat. “Um, yes, last name Fawcett, not like the sink (snort, snort). F-a-w-c-e-t-t, first name Farrah. F-a-r – “

“I got it,” the operator finished for me. “Address?”

I pulled the phone away from my ear and asked the gathered around me. “She wants to know her address,” I whispered.

Shrugs all around.

“Hollywood?” Someone offered.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” the rest acquiesced.

“Hollywood,” I told the woman.

We collectively held breaths in the seconds that elapsed as she searched. I think she searched.

“I’m sorry,” her voice came back moments later. “That number is unlisted.”

Groans all around.

A tap on my shoulder.

I nodded.

“Okay, can we try this one? Smith, Jacklyn, but not the regular way, it’s J-a-c-k –”

“I got it,” she finished for me again. “Hollywood?”

“What else is around there?” I asked.

Congratulatory taps on the same shoulder.

Less seconds elapsed this time.

“I’m sorry, that number is unlisted.”

“Hmmm, okay, one more. Jackson –”

“Kate?” she intuited.

I sighed. “How did you know?”

“Sir, most television stars do not list their personal information, and that includes phone numbers.”

Collective groan when I hung up the phone.

That was then, however. This was a later then:

“Directory Assistance. Last name?”

My heart was pounding on that chilly, late February afternoon. My friend, Tom Parker from two doors down had my back, or at least stood there behind me in the enclosed glass booth. While the rest of my pals had abandoned my foolhardy adoration, Tom remained okay with it. Someday, I may ask him why.

“Piekarski,” I told her, spelling out the last name. “I don’t have a first name, but the town is in Missouri, Florissant. Do you need me to spell that?”

I could hear the tapping of keys on the other end. The seconds that elapsed this time around were interminable, but quick.

“Yes,” she came back, “I have a –”

“That’s it,” I snapped.

“If you’d like me to connect you, the cost will be –”

“No, not now,” I panicked. I’ll ummm…just write the number down for now.”

“3-1-4,” she began.

I don’t know how much that call would have cost, nor did I have an interest in making first contact while I had a friend right there in too close contact. We folded open the accordion doors and stepped outside into the frigid wind, smiling and fiving, maybe before hi-fiving was in style even.

“So, now what?” Tom asked me.

I shrugged. I had no idea. Confidence had never been my strongest asset. Did I have it in me to actually call her? Would she laugh in my face over the many miles of line?

Dinner was a non-event that night. Oh, I ate it, but mom’s meatloaf and mashed potatoes had never crested the top of my culinary preferences. I retreated to the privacy of my upstairs bedroom; my brother thankfully ensconced in something playing on the living room color TV. We had an extension phone in our room. I never questioned why at that juncture as it really wasn’t used much, at least not enough to warrant such an extravagance, but considering the condition of the old Zenith with zero color and comparable clarity at best, it was a fair trade-off.

I pulled the crumpled piece of paper bearing what I had hoped was really Julie’s phone number and stared at the ten digits. My eyes darted from paper to phone, paper to phone. Could I really do this? My psyche screamed, don’t be ridiculous, touting every doubtful teenage reason that would result in nothing less than lifelong humiliation. The other side of my brain – I could never tell which side was which – offered more practical reasons to abandon the project.

Long Distance.

Long Distance phone calls? That was serious business once upon my time. Long distance was something saved for emergencies when the sun was up. After 7PM, the rates dropped. Everybody knew that. I waited until nearly 8:30 before I lifted the phone from its cradle, palms slippery with seat. I wasn’t sure what time zone Florissant inhabited, but I did not want to interrupt her dinner. My brother remained downstairs at that time, but time was ticking. How much trouble would I get in when this 3-1-4 area code showed up on our phone bill? I cursed the gods of reason that I didn’t believe in, stuck my index finger in the rotary hole marked 3, and rolled it over.

3.

I looked like an idiot. Sans physical witnesses, I felt like one, even in the privacy of my unfinished basement. The high-top skates looked ludicrous over my non-designer jeans. People really showed up in public this way? I wondered. Maybe the jeans should cover the skates. That would make more fashion sense, if I’d had any that is, especially if the skates were from this decade.

I tromped back and forth across the plywood; grace had nothing on me. Tromping was no way to triumph. Clomp-clomp-clomp-clomp-clomp-clomp –

Thud!

“Ouch.”

I had to learn how to stop before I reached the lip of plywood that signified the cement floor at the end of my improvised rink.

“Stopping,” I said, aloud. “Just something else I’ll have to figure out.” I sighed, heavy with the knowledge that before there was stopping, there had to be rolling. This was never going to work, I told myself so many times that doom seemed less and less like a four-letter word.

Yet, my determination remained relatively unwaned.

I ignored the forming blisters and untold damage that I might be doing to my feet. I didn’t even know what size the skates were. That information, if it ever existed had long since faded away like the roller-skating fad of the 50’s prior to its disco era resurgence. I laced up on Tuesday for a second evening on the boards, this time with the musical accompaniment of a mixed cassette tape on my Sanyo boombox. Music played a big part in roller lore and I had become convinced that every little bit helped.

“No trouncing, no tromping, no clomping,” I told myself. “Time to get rolling. Literally.”

My confidence level had grown exponentially with the unexpected sudden sense of new found balance. The wheels on my feet had gone from clumsy, unexplained appendages to something more organic overnight. By the time side A of the 90-minute tape had ended, I was actually rolling. By the time side B had reached its conclusion, the realization blindsided me that I had not fallen once. By Wednesday, I had mastered stopping, by Thursday, turning, and with an afterschool refresher course come Friday afternoon, I flashed some flair, able to kneel into turns as if catching a wave. Totally rad!

Friday night.

Stage fright.

No time for a dress rehearsal. I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror and hated the image that looked back. Self-doubt, reported missing over the last several days had found its way home. It wasn’t my skating abilities that worried me, it was simply me that worried me, me convinced that I would never measure up enough for Barbara, Juniority status or not. I shrugged, refused to be cowed, and answered the call of the beeping horn out on the street, one of the local parents charged with driving that evening.

Walking through the Laces front door with a few friends that I cannot recall at this late juncture, I was neither comforted nor cosseted at the sound of The Bee Gees crying “Tragedy” over the kick-ass sound system warbling its warning loud enough to be heard in the parking lot. I turned in my shoes at the skate counter and rented (or some facsimile thereof) a real pair of roller skates that truly fit my feet. Granted, they were comfortable, but I had grown used to the comfy old shoes skates at home. With Barbara not yet in evidence anywhere, I trounced (no trouncing, no tromping, no clomping) my way across the rubber mat towards no man’s land, that narrow boundary between caution and commitment.

The crowd on the rink whooshed past, gliding round and round, light on effort and heavy on smiles. I held tight to the railing at the rink entrance, smiling and nodding at my no longer support system friends while they hit the wood and left me behind. They smiled and waved as they skated past on each revolution like goofy parents waving at a child galloping around on the Merry-Go-Round. What was I waiting for? Another of many cursory glances revealed no sight of Barbara anywhere. By this time, Michael McDonald was hitting the high note on the first chorus of the Doobie Brothers, “What A Fool Believes.” I looked up at the DJ booth poised above the rink and mentally raised my fist in his direction. This would not be the thematic soundtrack of my night. With my left hand gripped tightly to the rail, I tentatively set right foot woodward, testing the friction, or substance or whatever properties set this professional rink apart from the warped one on my basement floor.

“Something else I’ll need to get used to,” I sighed, heavily said, or said heavily sigh.

“C’mon already,” one of my unremembered yelled, sailing past on the umpteenth passing.

The poly-urethane wheels made contact with whatever the rink was made of and I let go the tether and…rolled, still a bit unpracticed forward. By the time the first successful circumference had been reached, my confidence climbed, one rickety aged ladder rung at a time. I would be remiss in not owning up to the undocumented fact that I had fallen a few times, but then so did a lot of people – not that anyone else (myself notwithstanding) paid heed.

Barbara smiled at me, soaring past with her girlfriends at some point. In hindsight, at this writing, I can’t remember when she arrived, but that first Friday evening on skates, in public, I am convinced that I knew full well when she was in attendance.

“Hey,” she smiled. “You skate pretty well.”

I built a roller rink in my basement to impress you, my mind screamed.

“Thanks,” my mouth said instead.

Before I could broach the idea of a couple’s skate, she was gone with her crew, the ultimate teen roadblock.

Friends.

I knew then that I wasn’t good enough for her, but I wonder now why thoughts like that reigned so prevalent. I had seen the PG version of Saturday Night Fever, had fallen in love with the scene where Travolta and the girl connect, dancing in so romantic slow-mo. It wasn’t too much to ask for. Barb and I didn’t need to dance, only glide and smile.

And fall in love.

Ah, the magic of movies.

If I could only grasp a piece of that wizardry.

We did share a couple’s skate that night to the musical accompaniment of Neil Diamond and Barbara Streisand bitching about a lack of flowers or something. Again, I cursed the music man above.

In the end, our couple’s skate proved little more than a meeting of friends – the dreaded F word, the two of us forever cemented as nothing more, yet in that brief moment of total teen triumph, Barbara and I had indeed been a couple.

For three minutes and twenty-four seconds.

Ah, the magic of music.

4.

My index finger hovered over the last digit, the point of no return. I looked back over my shoulder, a pointless gesture to make sure that I wouldn’t be caught. Couldn’t be caught, well that would be a different story come the end of the current billing cycle. I rolled the last number to the finish line. As the dial cycled back to home base, the unidentifiable clicks in my ear signaled to me in Mourse Code. Hang up, hang up, hang up, hang up, hang up. Never a boy scout, it meant nothing to me. I was also no lineman for the county, but had tuned well in to the circuity traveling over the many miles of wires that separated us with its urgent desire to connect us. It didn’t take long, less time in fact than Scotty could beam Kirk up, down or in any direction. Before I could say Julie Piekarski is my favorite mouseketeer even if she is a blonde and I don’t usually –

“Hello,” an unidentified yet clearly maternal voice answered at the other end.

Did my eyes pop? Did they completely extend past socket range with comical clarity like on TV? That would make sense as I was about to talk to someone from that television land beyond. I expelled the breath that I knew damn well I had been holding and popped into politician mode. Cool, calm, collected, and not entirely telling the truth.

“Hi,” I said as if I belonged there ready to hug a baby…this woman’s baby if circumstances allowed. “Is Julie there?”

“Who’s calling?”

“Oh, it’s Tom.”

I remained relaxed while in the far-off background harried, hushed voices slurred and whooshed, contemplating my sudden existence in their Midwest lives. I could sort of hear the back and forth banter between mother and daughter – the classic palm over the mouthpiece trick – before the physical wrestling for the handpiece happened.

“Hello?” a much younger voice that I had grown so, so accustomed to finally answered albeit a bit winded.

“Hi Julie, this is Tom.”

“Tom who?”

“Tom from New York,” I countered quickly.

“City?” she screeched. “I was there once.”

“I know, I saw you on Wonderama.”

“You did?”

Around this time as the two of us were growing comfortable, clipped voices in background whooshy mode were probably discussing the immediate need for an unlisted phone number.

“I love your show,” I told her. “I hurry home from school every day so I don’t miss it.”

(Oh no, was I broaching a total geeky place)?

“You do? Well, it’s not really my show, you know. We all work together, but thank you!”

“I meant, I love you on the show…well, not you, but…but –”

(so not a crazed fan)

“– I hope I didn’t interrupt your dinner or something.”

“No, not at all,” she gushed.

“I didn’t mean to call you so out of the blue like this, but – “

(What was it with but)?

“No, it’s okay,” she assured me. “So, what do you look like?”

That startled me. Never my favorite question to answer, it was a bold question posed while her parents remained presumably in the room.

“Oh, you know.” (No, she didn’t). “Brown hair, brown eyes, I shrugged.”

The rest of the conversation is lost in time somewhere. Hey, I’m lucky I garnered that much. I gave her my phone number. I think she wrote it down. I told her that she could call me any time after 4PM my time when I was done watching the show.

(Snort, snort, snort).

Two days passed. No calls. She must be busy. She is a star after all. I felt like the female in this burgeoning relationship. Logic dictated that it was usually the female that waited for the phone to ring, hand gripping the handset tight enough to pulverize it to pieces pleading with the powers that be to make it ring! I needed to move this more in the direction that I had hoped for, but with the damned deterrent of long-distance…well, desperate times and all that.

“You could reverse the charges,” my last compadre, Tom P offered one afternoon when I had voiced my misgivings about the phone bill issue at home.

“What? Make her pay for them?”

“No, her parents.”

I may not have been well versed in the ways of romance, but as an official new inductee at the teenage level, I knew enough to understand that that plan would never fly. We were standing outside the phone booth, the very same one that had denied us access to the stars of stage and screen once upon a rather recent time.

“There has to be a way,” I whined.

Tom thought about it. Behind his eyes, I detected some sort of secret, some conflict that he battled with, wondering if I was worthy. Worthy of what, I’d had no idea.

“Okay,” he admitted finally. “You are never allowed to tell this to anyone.”

Tell it to who? I inwardly panted.

“I swear,” I swore, without the seal of interlocking pinkies or anything like that. We were above that.

We stepped inside the phone booth and closed the accordion door, locking the outside world out of earshot even though there was no one around to begin with. It was still March; it was still cold.

“You call from here,” he began in a hushed, ominous undertone. “and charge it to your home phone.”

My eyes creased in confusion. I had rather hoped that they might pop as they had once before. “Why wouldn’t I just call from home then instead of coming up here to charge it down there?” I pointed over my shoulder towards home.

“Your home phone,” he said slower, winking as he did so.

“Okay, you lost me.”

Tom sighed, and grabbed the battered white pages that hung below the phone, flipped the book up on to the small shelf, opened it to a random page, and dropped his index finger atop an equally random name. “Cowell, Andrew, Tyson, Ave.” he said.

“O-o-o-k-a-y,” I answered, still unsure.

“That’s your home phone,” Tom shrugged.

“No, it isn’t. It’s what’s his name? Cowell on Tyson.”

“Do I need to explain everything?”

“You better,” I nodded.

He did.

“So, let me get this straight. I dial the operator, tell her that I would like to charge this call to my home phone that’s not really my home phone, but someone else’s, and she puts the call through?”

Tom nodded. “She may ask you if there is someone at home to accept the charge. You could tell her no, but I would say, ‘I’m not sure, there might be.’ She’ll ring the home phone, and when no one answers, she’ll put your call through.”

“And what if someone is home?”

He rolled his eyes. “Duh! You pick someone who isn’t at home.”

“How am I supposed to know that?”

We argued the logistics back and forth long enough for the floor to ceiling glass windows around us to steam up. It was a fairly viable plan, one that I deemed worth further exploration. I wanted to ask my good friend how he knew so much about the inner workings of Bell, but Tom did have two older brothers. One was a real goody-two-shoes. The other? Not so much.

I chose a neighbor who lived down the block from me, an older man who lived alone, drove a tan Dodge Dart Swinger. It was always parked in the driveway when he was at home, so it was easy enough to figure out when he was not. Four days had now elapsed since my last call to Julie – who by the way had still not bothered to call me, but I was not one to judge – and I could feel our romance already fading. Tom joined me again on an equally March grey Friday afternoon, not for moral support, but more for tech support should I begin to unravel or something.

“Operator.”

“Uh, yes,” I began pitched about an octave lower. “I need to place a long-distance call and have the charges placed on my home phone.”

Tom nodded, two thumbs way up.”

“What number are you dialing?” the kind, robotic like woman asked.

I fed her Julie’s number in Missouri.

“And the number you’d like to charge it to?”

I swallowed and gave her Mr. Riverman’s number from down the block. Pops, clicks, beeps on the line, and then I heard the circuitry connecting once more over the many, many miles and before I could say, ‘Julie, you are still my favorite mouseketeer and I actually feel guilty about calling you because I am charging this call to someone I don’t know, which is probably –”

“Hello.”

My eyes popped.

“Julie?”

“Hi. Who’s this?” she asked.

“It’s Tom.”

A pause.

“From New York,” I reminded her, still sounding chipper.

“Oh, h-i-i-i-i,” she sang

The conversation ran longer, more relaxed this time. She apparently had some parent-free privacy, and I harbored zero concerns about the length of this long-distance call nor the charge (or lack thereof).

(Snort, snort, snort).

I even put Tom on for a second. He told her that he watched the show too, which was not entirely true, but before the conversation could degenerate any further, my jealousy kicked in and I wrenched the phone from him.

In the days that followed, gifts arrived. I thought of them as gifts though in hindsight, it was nothing more than a typical fan club package including a Julie bio (with less information than I had already acquired via two telephone trysts), a generic autographed black and white glossy promo pic in total mouseketeer mode, and a full color bookmark sporting a more casual candid of Julie in a cowgirl type hat, s-o-o-o cute! It was all very safe and corporate approved as I think about it now sans the personal memo, she included on a small piece of white stationery that said something to the effect of, ‘This is for my new friend in New York…’ Okay, it wasn’t the most creative of greetings, but the note was hand written complete with Julie drawn little flowers and smiles. She must have slipped that in when mom or dad weren’t looking, but of course this is just conjecture on my part all these years later. Alas, the memory fades and no further conversations can I recall. Our long-distance romance – that admittedly, I could never call it that, even back then – lasted into the warmer weather months. I called Julie from a payphone in school in between classes, winking and smirking at students who walked past me, none of them knowing I was on the phone with a bona fide television superstar. On the occasional overnight trips to my grandparents’ home, I skateboarded to the nearest phone booth, something that required research on my part to locate. On a summer trip to a hallowed ground for me, a campground in Connecticut where I had met my first girlfriend nearly two years prior, yet subsequently felt that I was cheating on her after that relationship had expired, I called Julie from the public payphone, also winking and smirking, this time  at campers, rather than students who walked past me, none of them knowing that (guess what?) I was on the phone with a bona fide…well, you get the idea. And still, all of this had been paid for by a neighbor I’d never met.

I was lying on my couch one October afternoon watching daytime TV having totally faked a sick day from school when Karma called. Lazily, feeling just fine, just lazy, I lifted myself from the couch and ambled to the kitchen to pick up the wall phone.

“Hello?”

“Hello, is this Mrs. Mortensen?” the robotic like woman asked.

“No,” I answered, disgusted, wondering how it could be possible that I might be mistaken as such. “This is Tom.”

“Oh hello, Tom. Did you have a nice time at camp this summer?”

“Camp?” I asked, confused. “I don’t go to camp.”

“Not in East Hampton, Connecticut?” she pursued.

I laughed, actually laughed for a moment before the synapses connected enough to know that the jig was up

“No,” I corrected her. Nelson’s is a campground that I go to with my family. Who is this?”

“This is Mrs. Limpet from Bell Telephone.”

My world exploded like a Limpet mine that I had spent so many months knowingly in denial mode circumnavigating. It had been a Wednesday, Surprise Day on The New Mickey Mouse Club.

Surprise day, Surprise day, mouseketeer surprise day

Anything can happen and it probably will. 

It did.

The rest, as I have reiterated a few times here is lost in time. I don’t remember the punishment nearly as well as I recall the crime. I cannot evoke the memory of when or how Julie and I had lost touch, gone our separate ways on a path that we had really never traveled together anyway. It’s strange when I think about it. I have always been lauded by friends and family for my uncanny ability to remember practically everything right down the minutiae of the tiniest details. I remember the day, the time of day, the place, the song that was playing in the background on so many occasions when I met so many that I called friends. The drifting apart as our lives moved on is something that I can rarely recollect. Maybe that’s just human nature.

Maybe it’s better that way.

5.

I learned how to laugh and I learned how to cry…

So, you think I could learn how to tell you goodbye

You don’t bring me flowers anymore.

Not one of my finest lifetime achievements, I was working part-time for a florist in 1983 – one of many pointless jobs while I floundered in college – on the day that Karma called back. Beyond cutting classes at school to spend all of my time at the college radio station, there really had been no call for Karma as far as I could see it. I’d had the van already loaded for last afternoon run when Hank, the phone cradled in one ear threw his index finger up, signaling me to hold on for a second. I tried not to show my disappointment, knowing that he was about to add one last delivery before I left. This run would have been really light. Less deliveries meant more traffic, meant more me time, meant more time to waste time before returning and wrapping up for the day. This last-minute add-on most likely meant something far away, Rockaway far maybe.

“Huh,” Hank humphed. “She could have walked over here to pick this one up.”

Well, at least it wasn’t as bad as I had thought, I considered as I ambled over to the counter to read the ticket while Hank went to the walk-in cooler and started selecting flowers.

It was worse. My eyes popped, something that hadn’t happened since ’77.

Barbara Mansouri, Falcon Drive, New Hyde Park, the ticket read. This isn’t happening, I screamed inside. Most people would probably think that ‘things like this don’t happen to me,’ and of course they were right because things like this seemed always to happen to me! Luck and I were not as closely knit as Karma and I. Another Barbra, (Streisand) and Neil Diamond were suddenly inside my head, serenading me to the tune of You Don’t Bring Me Flowers, yet now I was about to bring flowers to the real Barbara, the one from our (so not) famed couple’s skate so long ago. What would she think? What could she think other than that I was a complete failure and that she had been correct in her assertion in not choosing me for a mate once upon a time? What was I to do? I could never face her. I had two choices really. One was to quit, the other was to do a simple drive-by and toss the flowers out on her lawn. The drive-by option would have been preferable had Barbara’s home not been the last one on a dead-end street.

Really.

I saved the delivery for last, which made logistical sense as I would be heading in the right direction on Hillside Avenue before returning to the shop, no need for a U-turn or wasting additional gas driving around the block.

And no, I wasn’t stalling.

Sure, I was.

I made the right turn on her street, executing a perfect textbook three-point turn in front of her home on the off chance that she might notice. So enamored with my driving expertise, she would forget the fact that I was a delivery driver at all. I left the van idling, slid open the side door and reached for the flowers that should have been from me and not Jimmy, whoever that was, I sneered. I ascended the two steps to the screen door and peered inside. Maybe she wouldn’t be home.

I knocked.

She was.

She wore frosted blonde hair now, and a cigarette dangled from the corner of her mouth. She’d lost weight that she had not needed to lose. The years had not been kind in my humbled, non-skewed opinion.

“Yeah,” she said short on patience, an almost wild, distracted look in her eyes.

“Uh, delivery,” I said, holding the flowers up enough in front of my face rendering me hopefully incognito. With my free hand, I thrust the pen and clipboard out. She scribbled with little fanflair, shoved it back at me and grasped the bouquet without even a thank-you. Me? I descended the steps, unrecognized and returned to the van feeling a tad disappointed. Maybe somewhere inside, I had hoped for a rekindling of an old flame that had never been there in the first place.

On the short ride back, on 1050 WHN-AM, country superstar Larry Gatlin provided the closing credit soundtrack. 

Love is just a game that everybody plays

When the game is over, not everybody pays

Some play the game and lose

Some play the game and win

The winners walk out laughin’

The losers cry, ‘deal again.’

I wondered then as I wonder again right now, is there something more than just that, some larger lesson learned?

Maybe words of wisdom that I might impart, something borne of age and experience?

Nah! Let’s just leave it at love.

Tom M.

August 2020