This is the anniversary of a wedding that should never have
taken place, with a girl I fell head over heals with when 17, Sledge Hammer
Harry my boss at the print plant, warning me against it, telling me she was no
good after she took up with his married son in law, after Harry discovered me necking
with her in a phone booth during lunch, and heard about my trying to cop a feel
when we both waited for buses to go home after work, she heading to her rich
family in Wayne, while I went back to my blue collar life in Paterson.
I had no Foreign Legion to help me get over her when she
fled to the west and so joined the Army instead, falling all the more in love
with her with each letter she sent, robbing a local business for the cash to
follow her when I got out, learning later how she’d been abducted by a motorcycle
gang near Denver, who all but raped her (can it be rape when she said she
rather liked it?), rescued by a rich guy from Boston, whose mother dragged him
back when he heard about her, and I arriving just in time for her heart break,
she still yearning for him when we fled to the depravity of LA, that census
worker bringing his male friends and drugs to our apartment so we could all
have a good time, me not yet congnizent of the unspoken invitation she had
extended him (and her desire to relive the gang bang she still missed) and
enraged at me when I stood in their way, perhaps explained by her obsession to
become a porn star, her fellow female workers feeling sorry for me as to offer
me sex which I refused because I still wanted to be loyal.
She encouraging me to invite strange me to sleep over in our
spare room into which she would sneak at night while I was asleep, first Dan, then
Billy, then a sniveling worm she took off with when the money ran out, our trip
back to Denver couched as “a new start” when all she wanted was to find that
rich guy again, and the host of pit stops along the way I only learned about
later, going back to LA where she hooked up with a big black biker who paraded
her around under his arm while I worked at a restaurant part time washing
dishes, leaving me to wonder how I managed to catch VD – like the black biker
had, and my then best friend and maybe all those others who came and went from our
spare room, my friend’s girl taking pity on me, offering me her bed, which I refused,
since I wanted to ramin “loyal,” even when we made our way up the coast to San
Francisco, later Portland, our spare room occupied by a host of men from soldier
to drug dealers, and how when I convinced her to come east with me with our new
born baby, my family decide to make an honest man of me by giving us a shotgun
wedding.
We all knew it wouldn’t work, a fabrication for the judge to
show I was on the straight and narrow, married with a child and a back breaking
job, although she still rented out our spare room to men she met on her night
out with the girls, while me and my best friend went to rock clubs, where I
fended off the charms of younger women because I still wanted to remain “loyal,”
and sometimes woke to find my bed empty to moans emanating from the spare room,
and finally, she taking off with one of those men for another trip west
without, and her one time high school girlfriend coming to my side to cheer me
up with an invitation to share my bed, which I refused, seeking to remain
loyal, long after there was any reason to, living with the fantasy for years
that time might change things, when I knew it wouldn’t change, and didn’t,
learning she never stopped renting that spare room, although later for money.
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