The Man Who Never Showed

Over the years, as I have moved across continents,  changed residences and jobs, I have lost track and forgotten many friends, co-workers and acquaintances. Names, faces, stories, all gone.  But there was one friend,  whom I cannot forget and whom I've never really known.  I say "friend", because our mutual friend whom I do know has always considered the two of us, myself and the "friend" I've never known, friends.

Jason and I worked together.  In fact, I hired him, and two years later after I lost my job, he hired me at another place.  Jason lived with a fellow he always referred to as Woodridge, his old college pal. They had a specious apartment which they could barely afford and after some time a fellow named Lance joined them there,  a tall, highly intelligent, neurotic and probably homosexual young man, whom I also had hired and introduced to Jason.

I visited them a number of times in their apartment block which had a swimming pool on the roof where we would relax, drink beer and smoke weed.  It just happened that Woodridge was never there when I was visiting, he was either at work at a phonograph record distributor, or was playing golf with the ambassador of some banana republic, or taking flying lessons, and while he was absent, Jason always talked about his many exploits.   That phonograph record distributor was we all agreed a mob organization, as was the jukebox jobbing business in those days, and thanks to Woodridge we were all able to acquire recent chart hits.  Sometimes, at my request passed on via Jason Woodridge would obtain for me some rare 45RPM records that were unavailable through record stores which carried Top 40 national and Top 40 local, while the records I sought never reached the top 50 in our area. I still have some of them, Doug Sahm, Delbert and Glen, Emitt Rhodes.

I never learned Woodridge's first name (was it Neal?), and never met him in person.   Later, the trio, of if you prefer the quartet, broke up when Lance moved to Boston to work at a public television station there, Jason married a nice Jewish girl who drove a two-seater English convertible that kept breaking down and moved to New York City with her, I moved out West, and Woodridge, according to Jason, went to join the French Foreign Legion.

I lost contact with all of them, until some five years later Jason found my listed telephone number and called me to announce that he was coming on a honeymoon.   This was the honeymoon with Jason's second wife, we met, I showed them around and Jason told me about Woodward's newer adventures. After a stint with the French Foreign Legion he joined the Peace Corps from which he was thrown out because of some hanky panky with the female natives of some African nation. Now he was running a bar in the Bahamas and smuggling diamonds.

Over the following years Jason would visit me occasionally on business or pleasure, sometimes with his newest spouse, whom he once introduced a "you two have already met", which wasn't true, but neither of us myself or the wife said anything.  More news of Woodridge who settled down in Florida, had triplets whom he named after the three of us friends from the old days, naming the girl a feminized version of my name.  And during last year's visit with a wife whom I had in fact met, Jason passed to me greeting from Woodridge, a friend whom I've never to this day met.

See the Elephant Jump the Fence

Scottish 17th century politician Andrew Fletcher’s famous declaration: “Let me write the songs of a nation — I don’t care who writes its laws”, sounds more applicable today than during his time, when "songs of a nation" invade our ears everywhere and all the time.  Let me confess that so would I.

Which leads me to the images that songs have left in my mind over the years.   I think it must have started out with "pardon me boy, is that the Chattanooga Choo Choo",  then went on to "don't step on my blue suede shoes",  the Heartbreak Hotel "at the end of a lonely street",  the landlord who "rang my front door bell", and   "I let it ring for a long long spell", then Things like a walk in the park
(Things) like a kiss in the dark (Things) like a sailboat ride (yeah-yeah)  and on and on.  Even "Forty Miles of Bad Road", title of an instrumental left an indelible image. 

There are many of these images that I couldn't help but memorize, and I'm only recalling the strongest ones.   There was this:

A candy-colored clown they call the sandman
Tiptoes to my room every night
Just to sprinkle stardust and to whisper
"Go to sleep. Everything is all right."

(Roy Orbison, 'In Dreams')


Baby back, dressed in black
Silver buttons all down her back
High hose, tippy toes
She broke the needle and she can sew

I asked her mother for fifteen cents
 See the elephant jump the fence
He jumped so high, touched the skies
Didn't get back until Fourth of July


(Rufus Thomas "Walking the Dog".  In a Rolling Stones cover recorded before they visited the U.S. "Fourth of July" was replace by "a quarter to five".)

All the leaves are brown (all the leaves are brown)
And the sky is grey (and the sky is grey)
I've been for a walk (I've been for a walk)
On a winter's day (on a winter's day)
I'd be safe and warm (I'd be safe and warm)
If I was in L.A. (if I was in L.A.)

California dreamin' (California dreamin')
On such a winter's day

Stopped into a church
I passed along the way
Well, I got down on my knees (got down on my knees)
And I pretend to pray (I pretend to pray)
You know the preacher like the cold (preacher like the cold)
He knows I'm gonna stay (knows I'm gonna stay)

(Author John Phillips, Performer the Mamas and the Papas)

It won't be long before my ship comes in
Gonna sail right out of Colorado
Catch a ride on a warm trade wind
Where no one knows

(Clint Black, "When My Ship Comes In"

And finally:

Who's that woman on your arm
All dressed up to do you harm
And I'm hip to what she'll do,
Give her just about a month or two.

Bit off more than I can chew
And I knew what it was leading to,
Some things, well, I can't refuse,
One of them, one of them the bedroom blues.

(The Rolling Stones, "Let It Loose")

Crushes

The last screen actress I had a crush on must have been Monica Vitti, star and spouse of film director Michelangelo Antonioni, and that was a long time ago.  No wait, there was also Stephane Aubran, star and spouse of director Claude Chabrol, and that was almost as long ago.   After those two I didn't have a crush on any of the bikini clad beauties of Elvis Presley's 33 flicks (and there were very many of them!), or  any Bond Girls or Charlie's Angels for that matter. None.

Nothing since Vitti and Aubran, none.  Until recently. I've been watching on Netflix various foreign and domestic mystery series, some better, some worse, and in two of them regularly appearing actresses cought my eye, one Danish and one American.  Cool, tall women in their thirties, in supporting roles, their characters, I'm guessing, very similar to their actual off screen personalities - supporting characters are often underdeveloped by the scriptwriters and used merely as bouncing boards for the main characters to push forward the plots and explain things to viewers.

And then, before I started having fantasies,  I remembered the stalkers.  Just recently,  a major Hollywood actress was involved in a lawsuit against a stalker who sent her dozens of fan letters. He, a 66 year old man sent fan letters to other celebrities, who considered him harmless, as did the jury who tried him.  The actress herself claimed to have been terrified of him, and it is important to note that she has led a sheltered life, daughter of a Hollywood family.

Anyway, I started putting myself in the mind of a stalker, figuring out how he would proceed stalking these two actresses, who by the way are both married with children.  It is perhaps an interesting story to develop, without of course actually practicing the stalking (as if I had to mention it!)  I suspect that novels and movies have been made about stalking and crushes of this type, I haven't read or seen any of them, still it is an interesting topic to explore.

Stephanie

I was standing at the counter, waiting for Mario the barista to refill my cafe latte and listening to him telling me how he communicated by telepathy with his sister in Mexico, when I noticed in the large mirror on the wall behind him a woman approach my table by the widow, say something to my companion, who pointed his hand toward me, but she didn't turn around, and by the time I got my latte and returned to the table she had disappeared.   She was medium height, wore a colorful sweater, and skirt, a shawl, might have been a gypsy.

-  What was that?  I asked my pal,  Collecting funds for starving orphans in Botswana?

-  No, she said, "Tell your friend that Stephanie says 'hello'" I asked, "Are you Stephanie?" and she said, "No, I just carry a message".   You know, she sat over there in the corner the whole time we've been here, looking at you, and apparently waiting for you to step away.  Who's Stephanie?

- Which way did she go? I asked.

- Southward  Downtown!

- I ran out of the cafe and proceeded in the south direction toward the center.  No signs of the woman. I looked inside the stores and restaurants.  I reached the subway station and asked the regular panhandler I knew sitting in front of the entrance there if he had seen her, describing her the best I could.

"Went down in the station a minute ago," he said. "Looked like an Indian gypsy".

I ran down the escalator to the ticket level. Still no sign of the woman.   Looking over the railing and into the platform. Not there.  I returned to the cafe. My cafe latte was cold.

-  Who's Stephanie? asked my friend.

- I've only known one Stephanie, 20 years ago, when I worked in the City. She was in the marketing department.  I don't remember how we got to work together and on what projects, but we did, and we went out several times, but then it all ended,  I left the company which went out of business a short time later, and we lost contact.    I don't know why she would try to contact me now, and here, I thought she had settled in Silicon Valley.  It must have been a case of mistaken identity.

-  Wait to see what happens, said my buddy, whom I've also known to be a practical joker.

Lucy

-  This young woman I work with, named Lucy, who's 25 or so, maybe younger, had a strange encounter  in a grocery store last week.  An older man there looked at her intensely like he knew her. She approached him to ask: "Do I know you?"  He says: "Now you do!"  They started a conversation, ended up in a Starbucks nearby, more conversation, and then, an hour or so later, he proposed to her.  Just like that.  But listen up.

She's engaged to a Special Forces man who disappeared in Iraq or Syria a year ago.  Or was engaged - I noticed she recently stopped wearing her engagement ring. He just disappeared, dead, joined the enemy,  or on a secret mission, she doesn't know, and the Pentagon is not saying. Officially missing.

He, this man she met, is around 65, a cello player, retired from the City Symphony due to arthritis in his hands, widower, a couple of adult children, both living abroad somewhere,  and he proposes to Lucy telling her that after an agreed upon time, let's say 5 years, she can kill him, yes kill him, they'll conspire to make it look like an accident, and she collects his life insurance and inherits most of his wealth which he estimates now at somewhere near $5 million.

-  Sounds like a setup of a mystery novel.

-  Well, it's really happening, and she came to me for advice.  I've become like a father figure for her, apparently she grew up without one.

-  What did you tell her?

-  Nothing yet, what do you think I should tell her?  I can set up a meeting of the three of us to discuss.

- Oh, so now I'm a father figure to you?  Let's talk it over.

Runaround Sue

-  Who was that beauty I saw you with the other day downtown?

- Oh, that must have been Susan, my ex.  Money matters, all's fine, she's just divorced number three,  had to settle some accounts, feeling lonely and depressed and going to a clinic in Colorado to recover for a couple of months.

- Alimony fund paying?

- No, she sells real estate down in Silicon Valley, and every time she makes a sale, a five or ten million dollar home, she can afford to trade in her two year old Lexus and take a few months off.  And she'd rather drive a Maserati, she told me, but that could be bad for business.  Too ostentatious, her clients drive Beemers and Benzes. Next she'll be looking for number four.  A regular Zsa Zsa Gabor, this Susan of mine. It's in her genes, her father was just like her, flying from a flower to flower, although somehow she was his only legitimate child.    I could introduce you, but you'd better stay away!

-  Keep away from Runaround Sue, huh?

Happy in Hell

Last night I dreamt I was touring North Korea.  Why North Korea?  I didn't read yesterday about some American fool getting himself arrested in Pyongyang trying to steal a revolutionary banner, no that was this morning, but then, North Korea is in the news just about every day, isn't it.

Well, it was a pleasant tour. We were of course accompanied by government minders, yet no one was arrested, hassled  or deported.  The city was modern, safe and clean, unlike the cities around these parts, and the people appeared well dressed and happy.

Later last night, presumably after a bathroom break, I dreamt that I had to take a written exam, the subject of which I don't recall now, but it had to be natural sciences, my perennial weakness, because I was sweating, nervous and frightened. I ran home to retrieve a cheat sheet, did not make it there in time, and was returning to the classroom in a city bus, terrified of what would happen in the examination hall.  I'd be late and would not be able to choose a seat near someone who'd be willing to surreptitiously help me with the exam questions. A disaster awaiting. North Korea was definitely nicer.