The Single Rider

Whatever happened to Harry? is a series written as a follow up to My “cougar” days, part one

Truthfully, my outer 49 year old wasn’t doing so well now, either. This was not the first time I’d discovered that a boy I’d loved and thought loved me was, in fact, gay. During my senior year in high school, I’d dated Mark, who was two years older (sorry, no cougar story there). Mark ran hot and cold about us to extremes. He was crazy in love with me one minute, but then he’d disappear for a couple of weeks. He would return all in love with me again, and kiss my ass to get back into my good graces, or else he’d pretend he’d never been gone and everything was fine. He swore to me that he was not seeing another girl; I guess I should have asked a less gender-specific question.

At one point, Mark had me so convinced that he loved me and that we were meant to be together forever, he became my “first” – a much more significant first than just kissing. But he just kept disappearing periodically, and I didn’t know why, or what I’d done to alienate him, or why he kept coming back. At some point, I was prepared to go to my senior prom with someone else, but then he swooped back into my life and declared that HE was taking me and no one else.

He broke up with me that night. He broke up with me forever and for good at my senior prom. That really sucked. I think the only people with prom memories worse than mine are the ones that inhabit Stephen King’s Carrie.

A couple of weeks later, I ran into a mutual friend who knew the truth and had the compassion to tell me. That’s how I found out Mark was gay, and that all those times he wasn’t with me, he’d been with some guy named Angel… he’d been confused, he couldn’t make up his mind which way to go, so he kept bouncing back and forth between the two of us until he wasn’t confused any more. (Excuse me? You were confused, so you decided to relieve me of my virginity? )

My inner 15 year old stood up at this point, yanked at my sleeve, and demanded to know, “What is it about me that attracts gay men?”

I had no idea what to tell her.

TO BE CONTINUED…

© 2009, The Single Rider. All rights reserved.

Whatever happened to Harry? is a series written as a follow up to My “cougar” days, part one

So, here’s what happened to Harry. Harry apparently grew up to become the owner of a talent agency… an adult entertainment talent agency… an all-male, adult entertainment talent agency.

Shocked, I sat quietly for a moment, allowing what I’d just learned to sink in. And then I laughed. And I laughed and laughed and laughed. Harry always was a little bit on the outrageous side. OK, a LOT on the outrageous side. My friends always said three things about him. Well, four, if you count, “You guys look great together!”. They said he was funny, they said he had beautiful baby blues, and they said, “But my GAWD, he’s totally OBNOXIOUS!”.

My 15 year old self agreed wholeheartedly that we looked good together; we were around the same height, so we just kind of fit together walking down the hallways at school, arms wrapped around each other. I also agreed that he was funny and that his eyes were a wondrous shade of blue (it is worth noting that I love the color blue so much, I coveted a blue suede sofa from Crate and Barrel for years, and finally bought it last spring). However, coming from a household with three brothers, I had a high tolerance for “obnoxious” and barely noticed it. I just took it in stride that when dealing with teenaged boys, a certain quantity of “obnoxious” comes with the territory. When we were one-on-one, Harry was just a funny, sweet boy with a wicked – but never mean – sense of humor. However, when a wider audience was available, that’s when he was “on”. I still wouldn’t call it “obnoxious” – more like “outrageous”. He didn’t just entertain, he “shockertained”; the more off-beat and out-there he could be, the better it delighted him. It was like he was testing us – how far could he go, where was the line, how close to it could he dance?

I broke myself out of the reverie of distant memories. I wanted to know more.

It wasn’t long before I’d amassed a fair amount of information regarding what Harry had been doing with himself for at least the last 5 years or so. He’d left a fairly easy-to-follow breadcrumb trail across the internet under his new name, and I soon came to understand that he was a fairly big shit deal in the gay community in his area, well-respected for his contributions to adult entertainment industry practices, and for his donations to charitable causes as well. As I continued to learn about him, I was startled to realize that my 49 year old self could look back in time, see the signs, and fully accept what everything I was reading about him implied – but my inner 15 year old was having a really rough time with it. She flat out would not accept mere “implications”, and kept pushing me to search for something concrete that spelled it out in no uncertain terms.

OK, here we go; MySpace. Harold A*****, age 40-something. Same logo from the business, instead of a head shot.

Status: In a relationship.

Orientation: Gay

My inner 15 year old deflated and crumbled into a crestfallen heap…

TO BE CONTINUED…

© 2009, The Single Rider. All rights reserved.

Whatever happened to Harry? is a series written as a follow up to My “cougar” days, part one

I hope you will all excuse me for taking a little breather. I needed some processing time. I’m going to interrupt my intended “cougar” series to tell you all about it. After you read what I’m about to tell you, I think you will forgive me; it was a little difficult to wrap my brain around it.

I ended my last post by recounting whatever became of the “engagement” ring and the tiny, perfect, silver cross. Not long after posting, I started to wonder whatever became of Harry. And so, I took my madd googling skillz to the interwebz and launched a quest to locate Harry, long-lost bestower of first kisses.

I started in the logical place – Facebook. It’s like the village green of the entire planet, or maybe more like Tevye’s dream in Fiddler On The Roof – eventually, everyone you ever knew is going to pass through there. Unfortunately, a search for “Harry M*** “ came up nil; likewise “Harold M***”. I googled around a bit but kept coming back to Facebook, looking for people we’d hung out with back then, to see if they knew how to contact him.

And then one morning over coffee, I remembered Harry’s sister Jennie. She and my older brother were in the same graduating class, and we’d had an elective together – History of the Occult, where the only thing I remember learning is that Dracula’s real name was Vlad the Impaler. I found her profile easily, and cruised through her friends list in search of her brother. The only “Harry” I found on her friend list was a “Harold A*****”. Disappointed, I abandoned the search and started my work day.

But something kept nibbling at my brain about this. It was not improbable that he just wasn’t on Facebook – after all, none of my own brothers had signed up. Still, something nagged at me about it. I could not get it off my mind, and then halfway through the work day, it dawned on me. I remembered teasing Harry about his initials, but being a theater geek, he was quite proud that they spelled H.A.M. …..

Before I knew it, I found myself wading through Jennie’s friend list again, clicking on Harold A*****, whereupon I was faced with the typical “Harold only shares certain information with everyone. To learn more about Harold, add him as a friend.” Well, I wasn’t about to do that until I was sure. His profile picture was no help. It was not actually a picture, but the logo of some dot com. I plugged the address into the URL bar, and…

Oh.

My.

GAWD

I hit the “back” button on the browser, fast.

TO BE CONTINUED…

© 2009, The Single Rider. All rights reserved.

What a ridiculous term by the way – “cougar”. Where the hell did that come from? I’ve been googling around to find out how a woman who pursues relationships with younger men has come to be known as a “cougar”, but no one seems to know. I even looked up some facts about the actual feline known as “cougar”, also known as puma, panther, or mountain lion, depending on if you live in Texas, Florida or Wyoming. I found no evidence that the female cougar prefers younger male cougars for mates, but did find reference to adults being more or less solitary and meeting for one reason and one reason only – mating. Perhaps this is the basis for the terminology – hunting for a mate, then going home alone. I know, it’s a stretch, but aside from that I got nuttin’ !!!

A survey conducted by AARP asserts that 34% of women surveyed responded indicating that they were dating younger men, thereby fitting the definition of “cougar”. The survey is 6 years old at the time of this writing. Spurred on by high-profile romances such as that of Ashton Kutscher and Demi Moore, I imagine that statistic has only grown in the intervening years.

Guess what? There was a time when I fit the “cougar” definition, too. Yes, ladies and gentlemen – I was cougar before cougar was cool I once calculated it and came up with a startling statistic – I am older than 80-something percent of all the guys I’ve ever been involved with. Age differences have ranged from 3 months all the way up to 8 years.

(As an aside, I also calculated that 80-something percent of all the guys I’ve ever dated and/or married were also Jewish. Yes, we detect a pattern here. No, I haven’t really tried to analyze it. I grew up in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood in Queens, so I’m not shocked that I’ve got an affinity for Jewish guys).

I began my auspicious career as a cougar circa 1975-76. Harry was in 9th grade and I was in 10th. He was exactly my height, sandy brown hair, blue eyes, with freckles. A class-clown type, Harry really knew how to make me laugh, and he was just adorable. Soon after we met, he got his braces removed, a fact which relieved him no end. I’d privately thought that they only added to his adorableness factor.

We were both in the high school chorus, and both had 5th period free, during which time we ran errands for the people working in the guidance office. One day, the student body decided to stage a “walk out” during 5th period over some (no doubt) burning, socially relevant issue, and Harry and I decided to walk up to McDonald’s instead of hanging out in the guidance office. I guess that was our first “date”.

Soon after that, he proposed to me amidst the melee that occurs periodically each day at every high school across America – otherwise known as the break between classes. We were passing on the staircase. I was trapped in the throngs heading up, while he was heading down. There’s no stopping when you’re in the crush of humanity on the staircase in an over-crowded New York City public school. He was looking for me; he saw me and thrust something rather sharp and pointy into my hand. As the crowd swept him away, he hollered over his shoulder, “Marry me!”. I opened my hand to find a copper-colored paper clip, bent pretzel-style into the likeness of a ring. Despite the fact that the ring eventually left a greenish tattoo on my finger, I was da shit for the duration of the school year. A boy, a CUTE, nice Jewish boy (all my friends were Jewish – I was the token shiksa) had proposed. With witnesses! It seems like half the school was on that staircase during the first (but not last) proposal of my life. This is how I came to be the sensation of the 10th grade that year.

I received my first-ever kiss – with tongue! – from Harry. I suspect it was his first as well. We were riding in the back of a car driven by the senior boyfriend of one of my pals, on our way to a party. The sun was shining on a fine spring day, and the Beatles crooned All My Lovin’ as we practiced our exploratory maneuvers, entirely neck-up, on each other. Thereafter, just walking down the halls or ambling hand-in-hand down the street, one or the other of us would spontaneously burst into All My Lovin’, while the other harmonized. To this day, when I hear that song all I can think of is Harry and soft, first kisses in the warm sunshine.

When my friends threw me a girls-only Sweet 16 party, Harry and some of the guys from our crowd crashed. The hostess was my friend Denise, God rest her soul. She was rather put out, but I was delighted. They came bearing gifts. One of the boys gave me Wings At The Speed Of Sound and another Endless Summer. Only, they were LPs! You actually needed a record player to play them! These remain staples of my music collection. Harry, however, chose to come bearing jewelry. He’d petitioned his grandmother for funding and presented me with a tiny, perfect sterling silver cross. This was a grand gesture coming from a nice Jewish boy and his bubbie! I treasured it and wore it always, even after we moved away, which ended our relationship.

Fast-forward one year, which can seem like a thousand at that age. I was a junior at my new high school and a senior asked me to accompany him to his prom. The day after the prom, we went to see a show on Broadway in NYC, and who should we bump into outside the theater but Harry. It seems a senior had asked him to the prom too, at our old high school. We were ecstatic to see one another, but that made our dates antsy, so we had to be brief. A year had made a huge difference – I could tell he was now officially WAY taller than I was, and he was even cuter, if that was possible. His parents had relocated him, too – to California. We wrote to one another a few times, but as often happens with young love, one or the other of us stopped writing and that was the end of that.

I don’t know what became of the “engagement ring”. It probably disintegrated and went to paper clip heaven. But I do know what happened to the silver cross. Fast forward another year, to the magically golden summer of 1978. Our town sponsored an outdoor summer theater workshop, and during rehearsals for a dance number, the chain I wore the cross on somehow got caught on someone else. The chain snapped and it all went flying into the night. Several people helped me look for it. We found the chain, but the cross was lost forever. I probably would have been inconsolable, had it not been the magically golden summer of 1978 and That Boy.

Oh, and the show we were doing? Fiddler On The Roof – OY!

NEXT TIME: His name was Jeremy…

Further reading: Here’s the article that inspired me to explore my inner cougar

Click to read The Cougar: Progressive or Exploitative? on BlogHer

© 2009, The Single Rider. All rights reserved.

Niece No. 2, aka my God-Niece, updated her status on Facebook this morning and has not been back to elaborate. Her status currently declares that she “never wants to be a parent”.

Never is a pretty long time. I’m intrigued, and looking forward to asking her what brought this on when I see her next. She’s coming to spend a week with me “doing nothing” on the beach next month. I’m sure it will be an illuminating conversation!

It started me thinking, though, about all the reasons I’ve had over the years for not wanting to have children. All these years, I’ve given the impression that it does boil down to that simple, declarative statement – I never wanted to be a parent. But in reality, nothing is ever that simple.

Growing up, my dolls were never really my babies – they were my friends. I never clamored to be the mother whenever the kids in my neighborhood played “house”. I just never had the drive toward motherhood when I was little.

I was babysitter of choice in my neighborhood when I became a teenager.  The kids adored me, and I them.  I wrote fabulous tales of adventure and heroism, and put them in starring roles in these epics.  I played the best games, and kept their secrets while still keeping them out of harm’s way.  I was their friend and guide – but NEVER their mother-figure.

In my late teens, I indulged in a little pipe-dreaming with a particular boy (yes, THAT boy) about “some day” and how it would be when we established our home and our family together – right down to “two cats in the yard”.  The scenario included a vague quantity of children, at least two judging from a sketch he drew for me one time.  At this point, though, I feel it fair to point out that for me, it really WAS dreaming; I felt very little real identification with the possibility that it could actually come true.  At 17-18 years of age, I’d already had a number of experiences that taught me the rug would be ripped out from under me as soon as I became comfortable and happy, so I don’t think I ever actually believed that “some day” would manifest into reality.

Later in life, I had what turned out to be an ill-fated marriage, to someone else.  But in the beginning, when I still had every intention of going through life with him, I picked out names; Julie for a girl (Julianna, actually, like the queen of the Netherlands) and Jordan for a boy. This was a nod to the name of the female lead in the musical Carousel. It was my first role after starting to study with Gloria, a radical departure from the roles I’d been playing – I’d learned how to sing like an ingenue.  I thought it was neat that “Julie Jordan” had two first names instead of a first and a last.  Anyway – eventually, I accepted that I was married to the wrong person, and actively sought to prevent the manifestation of children. I believed he would not pull his weight as a parent; he wasn’t pulling his weight as a partner, and I saw no reason to believe a baby would change any of that.  I already felt overwhelmed by the responsibilities of being an adult, having a household to tend to along with a full time job and a budding stage career.  I felt responsible for everything, and I didn’t see the sense in adding to those responsibilities.

I recognized, fortunately, that many men want children for the same reason they’d like a Porsche in the garage.  They love being able to brag about having one, but they want nothing to do with the maintenance.  I further recognized that a woman who is married to this sort of man is in for 18 years (minimum) of indentured servitude, self-sacrifice and subjugation of all her wants, needs and desires, always putting the needs of the children first, never getting an assist.

I grew up in a very restrictive environment.  I didn’t get to make the simplest of decisions for myself; everything was controlled to the nth degree.  I had no say in the clothes I wore, the way I styled my hair, the friends I was allowed to have…. no freedom of choice at all.  I was tired of external sources dictating every little detail of everything for me.  I wanted freedom.  The idea of living under restrictions again was not at all appealing.

I feared that, under virtual single-parent conditions, I would become resentful and miserable. This would leak over onto the children. I’d been on the receiving end of something similar. I knew what it was to really hate being treated that way.

Bottom line: I knew it would break my heart to have any child of mine hurt so badly that they would come to hate me.  I could not bear the thought of it. I’d been trying to prepare myself for a long time to not make the same mistakes my parents did. I started a diary at age 13 or so, for the express purpose of never forgetting what it is like to be a kid. I thought that would help me to be a better parent. Probably, it would have.  Definitely, under the “some day” scenario, with the right partner, it would have worked.  But once I piled the wrong partner on top of my fears that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree… there was no way I was going to introduce children into the scenario.  They would only suffer for it.

So, all these years, many of you reading this have had the understanding that I didn’t WANT children.  That is not necessarily the whole truth.  As is typical for me, I knew far better what I didn’t want.  What I didn’t want was to feel used and trapped.  What I didn’t want was to make children who were destined to suffer and to resent me for it.  What I didn’t want was to gift someone with a Porsche that I would then be forced to maintain solo. 

God is good.  Some women who go through chemo lose their ability to reproduce.  I was 33 when they finally decided that those episodes whereby my head felt like it was spinning into orbit were actually hot flashes, and that meant I was entering menopause.  I was not a candidate for estrogen replacement, because that’s what my tumor ate for a living – estrogen.  Therefore, I believe that God picked the right person to visit with this condition.  It would have been a real tragedy if God had picked a woman who would have been devastated by infertility.  From that perspective, I’m glad God chose me.  And it really kind of settled the question once and for all.  Want or not want, it was moot – “can’t” was now the operative word, and aside from a mild twinge now and then, I’ve really been ok with it, with the finality of it.

All of this led to my ability to focus some individualized attention (not to mention disposable income) in the direction of my nieces.  And now I’m wondering if it also led to an example being set for them of an alternative option.  Even growing up in the 60s and being exposed to media coverage of “women’s liberation”, Gloria Steinem, fish having no need of bicycles, etc., I still had some notion that one grew up and got married and had children because that’s what one did.  I’m sure the extremely conservative way in which I was raised contributed to that; my parents often said that a young woman did not leave her parents house unless it was to move into her husband’s house. 

This hasn’t been true for my nieces, thankfully.  They actually get to leave the house and go away to college – without first having to get married!  Although I would never want to discourage them from having a family if that’s what they wanted, I do hope that my life has somehow served to let them know that a person can be legitimately productive and happy leading an alternative lifestyle, that there is another choice besides wife and mother.  There’s the choice to be childless.  When I ask about the mysterious Facebook status update, I might find that this is the case, or I might find that she was just in a very bad mood.  Either way – it’s satisfying to know that there are children in this world whom I love, that I’ve not made them suffer and they don’t hate me   So maybe it was the right choice after all.

© 2009, The Single Rider. All rights reserved.

J. D. Salinger used to be my favorite author. I first read Catcher in the Rye circa 1973-ish, when I was in 7th or 8th grade; my science teacher was actually loaning it around to people in my class, and I got on the list and read it and loved it. I loved it so much, that by time I got to 10th grade and we were actually reading it in English class, I swiped a copy. I still have it. Ancient, tattered, it bears the stamp on the inside cover, “MARTIN VAN BUREN HIGH SCHOOL ENGLISH DEPARTMENT” (watch me get fined now or something – arrested, even!). It’s well-worn because it has been read a bazillion times.

A few years later, someone loaned me a copy of Nine Stories and I fell in love. With Salinger, too! I liked “For Esme, With Love and Squalor” best, but his favorite was “Teddy”. If I recall correctly, he had to beg me repeatedly to return the book to him. I think eventually I must have, because the copy I have on my bookshelf now is a mass-market paperback from 1991, and my introduction to Nine Stories was circa 1978. I also have a paperback copy of Franny and Zooey on my shelves.

Still more years later, there came unto us the internet, and Salinger was one of the first of those seemingly day-long searches I used to conduct back then with my CompuSpend oops I meant to say CompuServe account. I found out lots about him that day. He was reclusive. He refused interviews. He’d published short stories prolifically, in such prestigious publications as Colliers, Good Housekeeping, The Saturday Evening Post and The New Yorker, to name a few. There are many pages on the internet devoted to lists of Salinger’s “uncollected works”, nearly all of them mentioning that he doesn’t want them “collected”.

And then came that fateful year I picked up a copy of Dreamcatcher, Margaret Salinger’s memoir of growing up in the orbit of her famous father. Ah, FINALLY, some good and detailed information about my favorite author! I took the book with me on vacation to Sanibel Island and devoured it. After finishing it, this is what I had to say about it in my trip journal:

“I have to say that up until finishing this memoir, J.D. Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye” was my all-time favorite novel. However, now that I know that he was such a pitiful excuse for a husband and father, my enjoyment of his writings has become tarnished. This man and his wife were classic examples of those who should not breed, for they steadfastly failed to comprehend their responsibilities as parents. If even half of what Peggy Salinger has written is true, both parents needed institutionalization followed by a swift kick in the pants to straighten their sorry asses out.”

Yes, the bloom was off the rose. I’d spent happy decades revering the man whose mind invented Holden Caulfield, only to discover that he was a whacko. No wonder he was hiding. He might be sick, but he’s not stupid. If a life-long fan can become turned off by the truth about him, think what would happen with casual readers. Think of all those unpurchased paperbacks. Think of all those 10th graders whose parents are having a hard enough time with the fact that they’re reading a book spattered with the F word and various other expletives. You wanna see books burning? Just wait until they find out what a horrible father he was!

And so, for the last 6 years, I’ve sulked, refusing to do the annual pilgrimage into the mind of the teenager that is Holden Caulfield. A few of those 6 years, my books were in storage, anyhow, so I didn’t really need to sulk those years, but probably did anyway. I did lay hands upon my Salinger paperbacks, though – twice. I’ve moved twice in that time period, and so I actually touched them without reading them, once to pack them up into storage, and then again when I got to the new house and unpacked them.

I had to do a book purge when I got here. I don’t know what possessed me to own so many books, never mind pack them and pay to move them from Long Island to Florida. I knew it had to be done, but it still felt like an amputation. I posted the titles online to various forums and lists, and mailed out the ones that people wanted. The rest went to Goodwill in Lehigh Acres, where the manager of the place was grateful to receive them.

Interestingly, I gave away Margaret’s hardcover, but kept J. D.’s paperbacks. Oh, I was still mad at him, but somewhere inside, I was still deeply attached to ol’ J.D. and his stories. There are other items I’ve dragged with me from pillar to post over the years, items that I keep in a certain Box, items that I have not wanted to read but not wanted to part with, either. But that’s another post for another day.

My recent run-in with personal history, compliments of Facebook led to a raid on that certain Box… (when I can face The Box again, I’ll let y’all know). The raid on The Box led to remembering Nine Stories in ways in which I had not indulged in many, many years. And so I left The Box and proceeded to comb the bookshelves in my home office, whereupon I found the book, turned immediately to the last chapter where I knew I’d find “Teddy”, and read it through.

J.D. is a talented, sensitive, brilliant writer. These attributes coexist with ineptitude as a husband and a father. Margaret Salinger commented something to the effect that she’d expected the man who thought up the role of the catcher, the guy who keeps kids from running off a cliff, to be that for her. Given that she is his child, I’d say she had a right to expect that, and has a right to be disappointed about it. I hope writing the book has helped her to cope with that disappointment, at least somewhat. I know that such profound disappointment in a parent is not something you ever really get over, but you can’t let it cripple you for the rest of your life, either.

So I read “Teddy” and I enjoyed it. And remembered. And shed a few tears. I’m not sure I’m ready to forgive ol’ J.D. yet, just as I’m not quite sure that I’m ready to forgive myself. All this time, I thought I’d abandoned Salinger in solidarity with his daughter, because he was such a poor parent. But now… now, I think I realize that it may have less to do with his sins than it has to do with my own. Like a lot of things associated with that time in my life, J.D. now makes me feel like that 17-18 year old fuck-up I used to be, flailing around on the bottom rung of Maslow’s hierarchy, so desperate to survive, so heedless of the wounds I was inflicting upon others. And, let’s face it – upon myself.

Clearly, I am in need of redemption. Got any ideas, anyone? Perhaps the answer lies somewhere between the covers of Nine Stories. Perhaps I should read the whole thing. Just to find out.

© 2009, The Single Rider. All rights reserved.

There is someone who friended me on Facebook who is unfortunately associated with a period in my life that was characterized by emotional upheaval and bad decisions that amounted to bad behavior on my part. I have huge regrets about the choices I made back then, which resulted in pain for someone I loved, who loved me. Casual reconnection with this person on Facebook has also served to reconnect me with those emotions. I would have much preferred to keep them in the past.

I’m aware that this would have happened as the result of a high school reunion too, but there’s a major difference. This stuff was MEANT to fade, and if it surges to the forefront again briefly as a result of a class reunion, well that’s a finite event that has a beginning and an end. The end facilitates the fading of these feelings into obscurity once more.

Facebook, however, has become a 24/7/365 reminder that I’m not his forever best girl, that there will be no “some day” for me – he’s been having “some day” with someone else for lo these many years. And regardless of whose doing that was – or perhaps because it was my own damned fault – it still hurts. It hurts as much as it did one night in the summer of 1979 when I realized, too late, what I’d done and what it had cost us both.

Since I’m otherwise enjoying Facebook as a fun and efficient way to keep up with my posse, I am loathe to abandon it simply because this one thing about it sucks. An unfriending might cause drama, which I’d rather not do. Barring those two options, I don’t think there’s anything I can do, any action I can take, to alleviate the situation, to push back the flood of emotions and stuff them back into the dark recesses of memory from whence they came.

Maybe this is one of those things that I just have to let suck until it doesn’t suck any more.

—————-
Listening to: Little Texas – What Might Have Been
via FoxyTunes

© 2009, The Single Rider. All rights reserved.

“thirtysomething” to be released on DVD on August 25, 2009.

In the 80s, we had TV nights.  Early on, it was Wednesday Night Dynasty parties at the house in Saint James.  I’d come home from work, and there’d be people in the house already, making dinner and stuff.  I think like a bazillion people had a key to our house.  Later on, after the separation, it was Tuesday night Thirtysomething parties.  Even after Pooh and Rowdy moved so far away, the tradition continued with just me and Mikel.  At some point, we expanded the repertoire to include China Beach as well, but I don’t remember if that was on the same night or a different night. Now, that was some good TV! Nothing like those shows on the wasteland that is network television nowadays.

—————-
Listening to: Buffalo Tom – Late at Night

© 2009, The Single Rider. All rights reserved.

“Daisy Jane” by America
I believe it used to remind someone of me.

Flying me back to Memphis
Gotta find my Daisy Jane
Well, the summer’s gone
and I hope she’s feeling the same.

Does she really love me?
I think she does
Like the stars above me
I know because
when the sky is bright
everything’s alright.

© 2009, The Single Rider. All rights reserved.