Half A Couple

The day was bright and I was playing with my army men in the sand dunes of Hampton Beach, New Hampshire, in late August, of my eleventh year when we met. She was the teenage daughter of one of my mother's friends and I was instantly smitten. It was my first time being so. Until that moment girls hardly interested me. But she was different. The sun through her hair was burnished a deep yellow and her limbs were lithe and her smile brilliant. Then and there as if in a trance I gave up my plastic soldiers and pretend war games and blundered forward betraying my heart. With winks and nudges the gathered adults made note of my new maturity and my abandonment of toys. Such a big boy they said and my chest ached with the knowledge that I was the object of such scrutiny. Several nights later this golden girl of my first romantic yearnings served as a babysitter for my siblings and I. So struck was I by the prospects of the two of us being together alone upon the bedtime hour of my siblings I pretended sleepiness and went to bed at their bedtime, too. In the safety of my bedroom I stood at my door with my ear pressed against the wood listening as hard as I could to that girl on the other side who I would never in reciprocated passion touch.

When I was fourteen I swooned for a girl named Corrie and I knew an aching that held sway over me with a power that was oppressive and gothic. When she rejected me for another I wept and kept to my bed as a vampire to his coffin. For weeks I grieved and had no taste for life without her. But eventually I had to move on.

Over the next three years I was a dumb animal in regards to relationships. With a grope instead of a caress my attempts at intimacy were more of a wrestling match. Then I met Linda. I was a senior in high school seventeen years old and hanging out at a local bar. We hit it off and she gave me her number. I called her a couple of days later. When she asked me what I felt like doing I told her I felt like going to a motel. She chuckled and said she was game for it. I asked my mother if I could borrow her portable radio and when she asked why I told her because I'm going to a motel with a woman. She was a bit flabbergasted but said Ok. You can borrow it. That night Linda initiated me in the hows of sex and coital satisfaction. We stayed a couple for a few weeks but my age and more to the point my immaturity came between us and pushed us apart.

In my twenties I met Joan. She was a sweet and sensitive girl a couple years younger than me and though by age and definition a woman I thought of her as a girl. I tormented her by driving too fast with only a pinkie on the steering wheel and yelling out lines first uttered by Frank Booth in the movie Blue Velvet. Somehow she was able to put up with me and my limitations. I shared less than equally and remained aloof and dark and brooding. I was in a nutshell a mess and when it came time for me to move to Boston in pursuit of school I parted ways with her.

It was also during this time that I hooked up with Kathy. She was on one of her periodic outs from my band mate, Steve. She and I were carnally one and I experienced in her waterbed exploits and satisfaction worthy of several torrid paragraphs in a Harlequin romance novel.

I did not have another relationship until midway into my thirties. Her name was Laura and she drank more than I was comfortable with. I knew this even before I wooed her. Loneliness is a serpent with an apple. And I bit into that fruit. We shared a rocky year together. Me with only one foot in. I led her on not brave enough to face reality that we weren't really a good match.

My early forties saw me in several Friends With Benefits relationships. None were serious or all that long lasting. Nor did they sate my romantic longings. They were sexual and flat and void of any deep emotional connection.

Now I am in my fifties and have not dated or been in a relationship for over ten years. There is also no one on the horizon of possibility. I am alone. But the hours so no longer drain or cause me to weep. I have grown comfortable with myself and my company. Perhaps at some point a woman will enter my life and I will put down my current toys of escapist thinking. And together we might make a go of it and maybe even take a walk along the beach beneath a burnished yellow sun.

Further Frayed

Somewhere along the way in 7th or 8th grade our gym coach Murph The Surf assembled us in the gym before a movie screen and showed us filmed highlights of his gridiron career as a offensive linesman for the triple A football team the Hartford Knights. It only added to our coach's mystique. He had earlier at one point won us over with awe when we clandestinely watched him, while seated in his office, smoke a Marlboro down to the filter in less than ten drags. Was that cool or what? So when he showed us his 16mm exploits we watched with rapt attention. At one point during the screening Murph The Surf let it be known that this was the play in which his leg was shattered thus ending his career and his hopes for eventual NFL glory.

Our coach had the demeanor of a well regarded uncle. He doled out discipline sparingly and kept us in line with whistle blows and an occasional shout to cut it out. During dodge ball games, easily the highlight of my years in junior high school, he wasn't opposed to taking a throw now and then at someone squirming against the far wall with bunched up thoughts of getting hit.

In 9th grade we got a new coach and his name was spelled phonetically Man-duh-noo-doe. He had a hockey background and a stare I can only describe as icy. He quickly let it be known to one and all that he would not stand for any bullshit. He was the antipathy of Murf The Surf and I did not care for him. That year even though Man-duh-noo-doe was the new football coach I tired out for the team. I had it in mind to impress my father. There was at that time in our household a rift between the two of us that seemed irreparable. And I thought that maybe, just maybe, that my showing an interest in sports might bring us closer together.

The initial thing we had to do that first day of football practice after school was run the quarter mile track four times around. I was a laggard and Man-duh-noo-doe blew his whistle at me and told me to show a little hustle. The next day when I clocked in with a particularly fast forty yard dash he scoffed at my time with disbelief and had me run it again. I ran a second time with impressive speed and the coach regarded me then in a higher light as someone with a little potential. We spent the rest of the afternoon running sprints until the end of the practice when we once again ran four times around the track.

Also trying out that day for the team was a girl in our school named Sue who had a reputation of being a whore. She said she wanted to be a Center for the football team. Man-duh-noo-doe demonstrated how a quarterback held his football waiting hands high and tight against the crotch of the Center and asked her if she was sure that was the position she wanted to try out for. She said it was. The coach gave it some thought serious or not and told her this was no place for a girl. She seemed quite disappointed, as was I'm sure our quarterback.

At this point I should tell you that through out the the practices I joked and kidded and acted as if football was just a lark. I tell you this in order to give weight to what follows. The coach put me in the center of twelve players standing in a circle. What transpired was called if I am remembering correctly, "The bull in the middle." It was an exercise in which each of the twelve players had a number and the coach called them out in no particular order and each time he did so the player with that number charge at me, the bull in the middle. Man-duh-noo-doe called out the numbers with swift speed and did so I believe to show me a lesson. The players rushed at me from all sides some times two in the course of one breath. And I experienced in those minutes in the middle an animal fear as I stood and fought for what seemed my very survival. Each player that rushed me I slung to the ground, one after another, and I found in spite myself that I had a taste for conquest if not blood. By the time Man-duh-noo-doe called an end to the exercise I was gasping for breath and grunting and ready to take on all comers and the coach had a look on his face that said, now you are mine.

Man-duh-noo-doe had a way of getting his message across. At one point in his tenure he decided to teach a lesson to a student who had fallen out of his favor. The student was blindfolded and ordered to get on his back. One kid then held his feet down and another his shoulders. Next the coach told the student on his back to try as hard as he could to do a sit up. But the kid at his shoulders firmly held him down. As he did so the coach pulled down his pants and underwear and straddled the student with his naked buttocks in the direction of the student's face. A moment later the coach called out, now, and the kid holding down the shoulders of the student let go and the straining student completed his sit up with his face winding up imbedded in the crack of the ass of coach Man-duh-noo-doe.

By the second day of training my taste for vanquishing opponents that had been whetted in me through The bull in the middle exercise waned and I was once again goofing around between wind sprints. Coach Man-duh-noo-doe spied me doing so and blew his whistle. He told me to hit the showers. I was off the team. When I got home my father asked me how was practice and I told him I'd been kicked off the team for smiling. He was not amused and the rift between us that I'd hope to mend was further frayed. It would remain so for many years to come.

A Case Of The Blues

There I was with Ronny O. We were seated on a highway guardrail somewhere along a vast uninhabited stretch of land a hundred miles from home at three in the morning on a muggy Thursday. Nearby was Ronny O's broken down beetle. The two of us were commiserating over our vehicular misfortune and also marveling at the luck of the couple who had earlier occupied the VW's back seat. They had just moments ago thumbed a ride with the very first vehicle to come along, an eighteen wheeler. Ronny O was reluctant to abandon his bug. But we were both weary and ready for bed. We gave ourselves another half hour's wait. If rescue didn't come within that time we too would stick out our thumbs. I was eager to go for I also had hanging over my head a recent ultimatum: if I missed work again or came in late without a reasonable excuse I would be fired. And there I was with less than four hours to make it under the wire at seven AM. It didn't look good. I sighed and wondered how I managed to wind up in such a predicament.

The evening had started out with such pleasant expectations. Two hundred miles from our homes at a club in rural Rhode Island, the Fabulous Thunderbirds were appearing. It was a perfect reason for a road trip. I met up with Ronny O and he introduced me to a young and enthusiastic couple who were like us fans of the blues. The four of us hopped into Ronny O's bug and headed east. Along the way Ronny O regaled us with choice selections from his vast collection of recorded blues. We bopped to the music and talked with merriment about the show ahead at a club in the hinterlands of the tiniest state in the union.

We made it to the club with a minor hitch. We'd been given faulty directions and our two hour trip had turned into three. But we made it and we paid our way in. A short time later I got some pot from Ronny O who had no papers or pipe to go along with it. I spent a frustrating twenty minutes asking every long hair patron of the club for papers. Finally I got one and I headed outside to roll up a joint. In the parking lot I leaned against a car with my head bent down and went at it. I crimped the ends of the paper and dropped in the pot. When I had it perfectly rolled I lifted my head and stuck out my tongue to lick the glue. That's when I saw the police cruiser stopped directly in front of me some four feet away. I immediately pictured myself calling my father to tell him I was in jail. The cop who was driving frowned at me and shook his head as if to say, "You dolt." I shrugged my shoulders and crumpled the joint and let the contents fall to the ground. The cop shook his head once again, "Loser," before driving off. I went back in the club.

The Fabulous Thunderbirds were hot that night. They had the club rocking until two in the morning. Afterwards we headed out into the night completely sated.

In no time at all we were lost. We wound up driving down a bumpy dirt road that paralleled the highway we wanted to be on. But we couldn't find a way to get to it. The dirt road took us deeper into the woods. We must have been on that rutted road for close to an hour before we finally found a our way to the highway. We all sighed with relief. Finally, we were headed home.

A short while later the back seat couple were whispering urgently. "What's that smell?" "It smells like something burning." A minute or two later they spoke up. "Something's not right." Ronny O turned on the interior light and we saw that the bug was full of smoke. We were on fire. The couple screamed for their lives and before Ronny O could make it to the side of the road and stop the guy of the couple tried to climb over me and get to the door. It was pandemonium inside the bug. Ronny O hopped out while the bug was still running. The rest of us scrambled out with the sheer conviction we were escaping a death trap.

We stared at the bug. It did not meet our expectations by bursting into flames. The fire was an electrical one that merely smoked as it fried the wires and made the bug inoperable. There we were stuck in an unpopulated nowhere with no help in sight. We practically had the highway to ourselves. At the approach of the first headlights in twenty minutes the couple stuck out their thumbs. And just like that they were gone.

Ronny O suggested we try jump starting the bug. We spent the next twenty minutes pushing the car and popping the clutch to no avail. Worn out and flustered we sat on the guardrail. Morning light was dawning. A police cruiser came upon us and pulled over. The cop stepped out of his car to question the two of us. As we were explaining the situation to him a car sped by and before it got twenty feet away there was an explosion. The three of us turned that way in time to see the car strike the guardrail and come to a screeching halt. The passenger door flew open and a girl scrambled out and hopped over the guardrail and lit out for parts unknown. The cop excused himself. He drove down to the car and spoke to the occupants. Minutes later the car drove off. Then so did the cop. He did not return to offer us any assistance. As for the girl her whereabouts remained a mystery. We never saw her again.

Somewhat reluctantly we stuck out our thumbs. We didn't have to wait too long. A dark low riding sedan with a metallic gurgle pulled over for us. I sat in the back. The floorboards were littered with empty beer cans and assorted trash. The driver was disheveled and in need of a shave. He spoke ominously of the dangers of the night on the open road. He gave me the willies. At one point we hit a bump in the road and he laughed and said that it was the last hitchhiker he had picked up and killed. I searched around me for an improvised weapon. Just outside of Hartford, he dropped us off with the words, "Be careful of who you ride with."

At that point Ronny and I abandoned the highway and went looking for a pay-phone to call my brother and plead that he rescue us. After a weary interlude of searching side streets in vain we stumbled upon a phone booth. I placed the call. By then I was suppose to be at work in a half hour. But I was in no condition for an eight hour shift. By the time my brother arrived and drove us home I decided I was staying put. I called into work and spoke with the manager who had given me that final warning. She listened to my tale of woe without interjecting. She then surprised me by not telling me that I was fired. Instead she told me to make sure I was not late the following morning. And my job, though far from my liking, was safe for another day. After having something to eat I retired to my bedroom where I put a Fabulous Thunderbirds album on my turntable and got into bed. With the blues playing at soft volume I drifted off to sleep.

My Flubbing Sales Pitches

Tired of manual labor I got it into my head that I was going to be a traveling salesman. Me. The guy who was most comfortable sitting alone at home in a comfortable corner with a good book. But I reasoned. Had I not a history of gracing the stage with the band Cargo Of Despair? Couldn't I call upon that nocturnal spirit of rock and roll that allowed me to entertain audiences to also dispel my day time reluctance of speaking to strangers? Sure I could. I mean how hard could it be? I was soon to find out.

My phone call to the number listed in the newspaper ad that caught my eye led to a cup of coffee and a sales pitch in a booth at the Majestic restaurant. He was a smooth talker this business suited salesman who would, he let it be known, take me under his wing and teach me how to fly from sale to sale to sale. And what I was selling he assuredly laid out was individualized adverts that bordered a give away map of my sales territory, southeastern GA. Each business that advertised on the map would get one map to display prominently in their place of business and a couple hundred others to also hand out. And just think the clincher of the sales pitch went every other business that bought an advert on the map would also be advertising your business, too. It was win win, baby.

Truth be told I wasn't all that blown away by the pitch. The map struck me as cheesy and for the price of each advert it seemed a couple hundred copies of the map in return was far away from a bargain. In hindsight I should have begged off and opted for a product I at least believed in. But I didn't. Instead I ventured onward with what would later prove to be a succession of passionless sales pitches. But first there was my tutelage.

A couple of days later I was invited to lunch with several other would be salesmen and the CEO of the company. He was this leader of men a squat little guy with a receding hairline and a gruff and raspy voice. He had the looks of a retired drill sergeant who through his bearing instilled in his charges the willingness to die for the good of the cause. He talked up the maps with utter conviction. The product he assured us would all but sell itself. Now get out there he said and close some sales. After our lunch I noticed he left a lousy tip.

The next morning I met up once again at the Majestic with the salesman who had promised to be my mentor. We hopped into his car. As we drove along rather than telling me how to sell he instead told me about how he'd once been into music and drugs. But he had found Jesus. Our CEO he assured me was also governed by the word of God. As he was telling me this and more all centered on the greatness of our lord he slowly began slouching against his door and his foot eased off the gas until he was slumped over and we were puttering along on a thoroughfare at ten miles per hour. A bleating horn snapped him out of his trance like state. He sat upright, jammed on the gas, and asked, Now where was I? A few minutes later we pulled up to a gas station and he told me to watch how it was done. He asked for the owner and when the man appeared he turned on his smile and made his pitch. His patter was friendly and inviting but he did not make a sale. From there we went to a succession of different businesses. At each stop my mentor turned up the wattage of his smile and slipped after pleasantries into his pitch. Not once did he make a sale. The following morning he had me meet him in the lobby of a hotel in down town Decatur, for one last day of training. As I was waiting for him a bloated middle-aged man had a heart attack and keeled over in the hallway leading to a restaurant on the other side of the lobby. I watched several kneeling waiters do their best to render first-aid. The following morning I was off to fend for myself, an able body salesman with my very own territory.

Donning polished shoes, crisp pressed pants, a buttoned up shirt and tie I consulted a map and set off for the outer reaches of my sales territory. I was truth be told putting off my first attempt at making a pitch. But eventually after much driving I pulled into a motel driveway, parked, and made my way inside to give it a shot. I was far from smooth, ingratiating and articulate. In short I muffed it. I got back in my car and turned up the AC. For I was for my efforts drenched in sweat. The rest of my calls that day and the several that followed were likewise unsettling affairs. None of my pitches garnered a sale.

One morning in East Atlanta, I stepped up to a building that had no sign indicating what type of business it was. After several knocks the door opened just wide enough to reveal the face of a glaring and evil looking man. I slipped into my pitch the whole time thinking there was something wrong with this picture. "I can't help you," said the man with a sinister look that seemed borrowed from the crazed antagonist in a slasher movie. I asked if him if his boss was around. By then I was thinking that behind that door was a woman dangling from a meat hook. "I told you," he said, his eyes seeming to look right through me. "I can't help you." He closed the door. The following few days I read the newspaper religiously on the look out for a story about a gruesome discovery in the bowels of a building in East Atlanta.

Some how ten days into it I managed to close a sale at a hotel owned by an Indian man named Patel. It turned out the business was outside my sales territory. So the salesman whose territory it was chalked up the sale. Not me.

After an exceedingly bad pitch the following day I stepped out of the business and raising my arms heavenward and spinning slowly around I yelled out, "I'm the worst salesman ever." Shortly thereafter my mentor had me meet him at a nearby Shake and Steak. "I want you to turn in your clipboard," he said. "And don't take it so hard. This kind of work isn't right for everyone."

One Fall Night

It was dinner time on a Friday evening in late Fall when I was fifteen. My siblings and I were gathered around the kitchen table. The mood was buoyant and the light through the kitchen window was golden with promise. The chatter between us kids was giddy with the prospects of the weekend before us. My father stood close by manning a blender. He was whipping up a second quart of mocha flavored milkshakes. I was drinking my fill because teenage logic had me convinced that a milk coated stomach enabled me to later on drink copious amounts of beer without throwing up. My mother was flipping burgers at the stove. She cooked them medium-rare and then piled them up on a serving dish. With milkshakes and burgers my parents joined us kids at the kitchen table. For some reason the usual familial stress engendered by my under age drinking and use of illegal drugs was missing that evening. There was an unspoken truce between one and all and we were in that moment in spite of our alienating differences a happy family. I ate two cheese burgers before hitting the road.

I stuck out my thumb and hitched a ride. Hitchhiking then was common place and rarely did I have to wait long before someone stopped and gave me a lift. And never once did I have a bad experience. Although a couple times I had an irksome moment or two. For instance late one night as I hitched along a lonesome stretch of road a car stopped for me and as I stepped into it the driver asked me if I was clean. Indignantly I told him I'd had a shower the previous night. "No," he said as if I were a dunce. "I mean are you armed?" He reached over and frisked me saying, "Have you got a knife or a gun?" The subsequent ride was an unnerving one. Another time also late at night as I was walking along the road and thumbing every passing car I saw a motorcycle exit a barroom parking lot. It seemed to be wobbly and just after it passed me on the opposite side of the road I heard the bike spill. I turned to see the bike bouncing down the street and the driver sprawled on the side of the road. The accident seemed like it happened in slow motion and I was laughing and I expected the driver to rise and stagger about drunkenly. But the rider did not move. It turned out that when he fell although he wore a helmet his head hit a metal post sticking out of the ground several inches. It killed him. Not right away. He died several days later. It turned out I knew the motorcyclist's cousin. And he would later tell me in an accusatory manner that his mother had had a dream in which I killed the the motorcyclist. The withering look on his face when he told me this was that of a righteous prosecutor saying to the clearly guilty party, Confess. But getting back to that Friday evening in the fall of my fifteenth year the ride was uneventful.

The driver dropped me off where I indicated at the mouth of a dirt road leading into the woods. Several hundred yards up that tree lined road friends of mine were gathered around a bonfire. I joined them there. Soon someone announced he was making a liquor run and those of us under age handed over our money and requests for six packs of tall beer cans otherwise known as kingers.

After a few beers I had a warm glow on and when Pat W. challenged me to a game in which we sat facing one another, almost touching, and punched each other in the kneecaps until one of us called it quits I obliged him. Several punches later Pat had a crazed look in his eyes and I knew that I would be the first to capitulate. But not wanting to be called a wimp however I soldiered on for several more punches until my hand was smarting along with my right kneecap. When I gave up and said you win Pat let go with a laugh that I can only describe as maniacal.

Our bonfire that night had flames six or seven feet high and after swilling a six pack I joined several guys in taking running jumps through the blaze. Somehow, perhaps beer addled, I did not jump far enough. Instead of clearing the bonfire I landed in its center. Flames and sparks shot up around me. (The next morning I woke stinking of campfire and something else burnt. I discovered upon looking in the bathroom mirror that my hair, eyebrows, eyelashes and the peach fuzz about my chin and cheeks were all singed.)

When it neared my curfew hour that night I headed off for home. Jay C. who had less than a year to live before he was murdered was likewise going in my direction. Together we tottered and stumbled the length of the dirt road. When we cleared the woods we stuck out our thumbs. But there were hardly any cars on the road. We wound up staggering along for several challenging miles. At one point we ventured off the road and into nearby tobacco fields. Soon a car was nearing our way. As the car was about to pass by we hurled solid clumps of soil and crabgrass at it. We hit the car and the driver jammed on the brakes. We took off into the safety of the fields. The driver shouted something our way that I couldn't make out. No doubt a curse or two. Several minutes later Jay and I climbed up and got atop the tobacco netting some eight feet off the ground. We were whooping and hollering and feeling invincible. But when we attempted to run across the netting we tore right through it and plummeted to the ground. The fall knocked the wind out of me.

A short time later Jay and I were back on our way home. At a fork in the road where our paths diverged we went our separate ways. Minutes later I was at my house and swaying. I tried to rouse myself into being sober before entering. It didn't work worth a damn and I fumbled getting the key in the lock. When I finally got the door open and I stepped into the glare of the kitchen light I realized just how drunk I was. But the gods were with me. My father was not waiting up for me with a lecture and a look of disdain. He was instead in the bathroom he shared with my mother getting ready for work as a third shift corrections officer. I made my way to the other bathroom to take an urgent piss. When I stepped out of the bathroom I heard my father in the kitchen readying to step out the door. I called out good night and my father replied the same. His voice I thought was flat with disapproval. He stepped out the kitchen door locking it behind him. And I staggered into my bedroom where, if my luck held out, my bed would not spin me into nausea the moment I laid my head down.