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Sunday, December 16, 2007

Sonja

Flash Forward from last week's entry... the year is now 1984. I am still overseas at an American base in Europe.

I met a young woman (well, we were all young in those days, weren't we?) named Sonja.

Sonja was a cook in the base dining facility... she was a sergeant and I was a corporal... She was a beautiful girl, and I was... well I was this studly young thing of nearly 21 years of age.

I would see her when I took my meals, and we would chat, and smile at each other. Either my friends were around or hers were, so we didn't get much opportunity to talk. Until that great summer afternoon when I was with my buddy, Dave, who said "I'm going to wait for you outside, man, you need to go talk to her alone!" She smiled and said that it was nice of my friend to give us a minute to talk... I agreed and wasted no time in asking her out.

We went to see some odd movie that I don't remember at all. After the movie, we went to her apartment and talked about music and then...

and then...

And then I went back to my own apartment around eleven o'clock! (Hey, if you were looking for the salacious, you'll have to wait, there was none of that with this girl)

We saw each other two days later, and went out for a drink, and laughed like there was no tomorrow. We had sparks. We had physical attraction (oh Lord was she built!), but there was something missing. She knew it too. We never dated again, but we remained friends for several year and assignments afterwards.

It was the weirdest thing ever. She was hot!

I was pretty hot back then, too!

I mean... there should have been something, right? I don't mean just sex... but something romantic, right?

Jeez.

Well, 23 years later, I don't know what happened that night, but it makes me smile anyway.

Saturday, December 8, 2007

Fire and Desire

So... there I was: All of 17 years old, out of boot camp and at a training base. No more New Jersey. No more mom telling me what to do, and no Drill instructors making my life difficult. My days still belonged to Uncle Sam, but I was on my own after working hours.

I was 17. I didn't have a car. What I DID have, was a large military installation with a large Enlisted Club. Now this was back in the days when it didn't matter what the drinking age was in the state you were in... if you were on base, and old enough to get blown away in the name of Uncle Sam, you were old enough to knock back a few drinks at the club.

Guess what I did on most Friday nights?

One Friday night, my friends and I were about ready to head back to the barracks for the night when some song or another came on, and one of the guys HAD to go and have one more dance... we told him we'd wait in the lobby. While we waited, I met... HER, She was a beautiful girl... woman (as it turned out she was an older woman, all of twenty years old, my lifelong love of older women had begun).

Maria was pretty, friendly, chatty, and really really nice. After about twenty minutes of conversation (I told my friends they could bail without me), Rick James & Tina Marie's song; "Fire and Desire" came on. I asked Maria to dance and that sealed the deal. We were inseparable from that night on. (no, not that way, she was very serious about not doing the horizontal bop until she was married, which was cool with me)

Maria and I saw each other once a week, usually on Wednesday, and we would go to the movies or things like that, and then hang out together on Friday nights, and on Saturdays... I was in love. Flat -out. I had that stars in the eyes flip-flopping stomach, the whole shootin' match. After a couple of months, I met her parents, who seemed to like me well enough... I was the same age as Maria's younger brother, Henry.

Things were moving quite well, but since they were, Uncle Same decided that my service was needed in another country. ****!

When I was reassigned, I told Maria, and we shared some tears, but resolved to do something about it. I had turned 18 a few weeks after we met, and I was a man of the world! (or so I thought). I asked Maria to marry me, and she said that she would. I got on an airplane two days later, and as soon as I got where I was going, I wrote to Maria to reconnect. She was glad to hear from me... so she said.

For the first two months, our letters were frequent... and long. We wrote of love and devotion and all of that stuff. We were realistic enough to know that we should wait a while before the actual marriage, but alas, it was not to be.

Absence may make the heart grow fonder, but it also make people lonely. I started getting fewer and fewer letters... and the next thing you know, I got THE letter. Oh, yeah... you know what that letter was, don't you. It was the dreaded "Dear John" letter. Apparently, she had met someone else, and she wanted to tell me right away ... blah, blah, "...sorry to hurt you" blah blah "I really think you are a great guy" blah blah

I was pretty angry, but I decided not to take it to my grave. I put all of the things that Maria had ever sent to me, in a box, and mailed them back to her without including a nasty letter.

I don't wonder where she is, and I don't ever wonder what we could have had together. I was 18... I had lot's of living to do.... but, even now, more than 20 years later, whenever I hear that Rick James - Tina Marie song, I smile. I smile. I smile because it is a memory of a very sweet and loving time, when I had certain feeling for the first time in my life.

Love should make you feel good. Shouldn't it?

Saturday, December 1, 2007

Julie--The Final Chapter

Our story thus far,

Julie meets your correspondent in 1979, they date. She is his first "real girlfriend"

Julie and I have a significant moment (well, it was for me) on my sixteenth birthday.

I break up with Julie in the fall of 1980.

I leave town for military service in 1981.

I return home for the first time in 1985.

Julie hears that I am home. Attempts reunification. Is rebuffed like nobody's business.

I return to the Fleet.



All caught up? Good


Fast forward... no really forward. Beyond Star Trek, The Next Generation. Beyond the entire run of Seinfeld. Beyond Ronald Reagan's second term, George Bush's (1st) term, beyond both of Bill Clinton's termas, and the first term of Bush (2nd)....



The year: 2006

The Place: Well. where I live (thought I was going to cough that up, didn't you, SMID!)

I was checking my email one day, when I got an email. An email from one of those class reunion websites. I had registered at a couple of them a few years ago, just in case any old friends needed or wanted to find me. Well, this particular email was from someone that fit into that category.

Yes, it was Julie. She had found me, once again.

She told me that she lived in my area now... (nearly 300 miles from the town we grew up in), and had heard I was in this area (good Lord). She asked about my life etc... and asked if she could call me. Well, I should have known better, but I was sort of anxious to find out how she was doing and all of the, so we set a time to talk on the phone.

We had a fine conversation full of the usual "what have you been doing?" etc...

After about 20 minutes of catching up about my first marriage, my divorce, my career, her career and family... we move right into "so, are we going to see each other?" To which I replied and emphatic no! She asked me why and I told her plainly, that it would lead somewhere that it shouldn't. I told her that was inappropriate to meet with any woman that I had previously seen naked and fondly remembered it (TMI?).

She was irritated and proceeded to tell me how I shouldn't make those sorts of logical leaps... "I'm not after you!" etc..... I assumed the guilt of having said no and blamed it on the fact that I might still have the hots for this woman 21 years after the last time I laid eyes on her... but the truth is, I didn't. I didn't and don't have the hots for this woman. I didn't want to see her because I think she has potential for being a "crazed-stalker-who-boils-rabbits" kind of person, and God knows I don't need that.

Julies was only half-sane when we were in high school.

I wonder if she has been committed yet.