The Object Of My Affection (1934)
The object of my affection
Can change my complexion
From white to rosy red
Any time she holds my hand
And tells me that she’s mine.
25th Anniversary Edition
In addition to being Spring Garden Festival day at Kanapaha Botanical Gardens in Gainesville and thus Siobhan’s favorite day of the year, Saturday is also the 25th anniversary of Bill and Siobhan’s first date. Everybody gets a little agitated now and then, but there have been no big blowups, temporary splits, jealous rages or boxing matches.
Once, when I was married to Harolyn, I was teaching Danny some boxing moves in the front hall and Harolyn, mad about some unknown past outrage, took the gloves from Danny and began slugging away. She was no flyweight walkover, either. One night, after a shoplifting incident at the Subterranean Circus, she beat up a couple of black girls simultaneously and threw them out the door. I know I was impressed.
Anyway, I tried to avoid returning fire as long as I could, just warding off her punches. When somebody isn’t afraid of her opponent fighting back, however, she can cream the poor sucker. So, after a bit too much of this foolishness, I popped her a small news bulletin in the stomach. She was horrified.
“You HIT me!” she wailed, throwing the gloves off her hands and retreating upstairs in fury and confusion. Another day in the life of an unwieldy marriage.
We don’t have any of that stuff in BillandSiobhanland. On a mean day, we might criticize one another’s driving. I will tell her she always finds the slowest way of getting somewhere and invariably chooses the most unlikely lanes. She will tell me I’m going too fast and not paying enough attention to the horrendous threats offered by every single other car on the highway. If you’re going to, as Tom Robbins says, “make love stay” over the years, it’s a good idea to avoid the big calamitous battles that knock the innards out of a relationship. It also takes time and lessons learned, as discussed below. But first, a word from our sponsor.
Republicans Eat Possum Guts
A Tea Party numbskull wrote a letter to the Gainesville Sun the other day bemoaning the fact that Barack Obama had taken the time to fill out a bracket for the NCAA Basketball Tournament, which takes, oh, ten minutes.
“He should be working on the problems of this country!” said the fruitcake.
Well let me ask you, Mr. Dipwad, is it okay if the President occasionally—in emergency situations, mind you—steals the time to take a piss? Is that okay with you? Besides, you should be grateful for the administrative downtime since whatever else he does will be horribly wrong, wrong, WRONG! Hey, see that stump-grinder over there? Why don’t you just….
Go Gators!
Tonight, the University of Florida’s basketball team plays Brigham Young in the NCAA Sweet Sixteen, trying to reach another Final Four. This weekend, the Gator baseball team, ranked first in the country plays defending national champion South Carolina while the second ranked softball team plays #4 Georgia. Men’s track has already won indoor and outdoor national championships, gymnastics vacillates between first and second, women’s tennis is #1 and the women’s lacrosse team, formed only last year, is ranked ninth in the country. So we’re having a lot of fun around here now.
Bill’s Rant Of The Week—Movie Texters
We go to the movies almost every weekend. Oh, occasionally the choices are mind-numbingly awful and we’re forced to stay home, but generally we’re there in our little back row seats enjoying the action.
In the past few years, however an unwelcome intruder has crept into our consciousness—the horriferous teen-aged movie texter. These kids are unbelievable, checking and rechecking their little cells, awaiting messages of grave import from similar dull-witted associates. And these cell phones are BRIGHT, mind you. It’s impossible to ignore them. The whole mess makes me feel old and crotchety.
Last week, a particularly long-limbed and hyper kid sat a couple of seats down from me with his cell phone glued to his hand. He constantly shifted in his seat, trying to get comfortable, which never happened. He turned his phone on and off every five minutes, doubtless expecting an incredibly important message from the president or, at least, his girlfriend. He looked like a praying mantis with a lantern. Finally, I just stared at him, didn’t say anything, just stared. He got uncomfortable and went and sat on the other side of his three friends. Every so often he would look over to see if I was still watching and I was. He probably had nightmares about the weird old guy in the movies with, no doubt, the Uzi under his shirt. Good. As my grandmother used to say, let that be a lesson to him. And speaking of lessons….
Lessons Learned
My two sisters, God bless them, have each been married only once. Alice (age 68) has been married almost fifty years and Kathy (age 60) is getting close to forty. Their marriages have not been perfect, but they stuck it out, which goes to show that miscreant behavior does not run in my family. It just runs in me. I like to think I’m just more adventuresome than most.
Still, when a relationship breaks up there’s always a little sadness. And when a marriage disintegrates, there’s an inevitable feeling of failure, a long consideration of what could have been done to better the chances for a different outcome. As the years pass, you learn from your mistakes and put the education to use in the next relationship. If you live long enough, you finally get things figured out and come up with someone who will put up with you. Or not. Anyway, here are a few lessons I’ve learned in my long apprenticeship. I hope they save you some time.
1. Pocahontas
My first real girlfriend was Rita Payton at Oklahoma State. I met her in the OSU student union while trolling for women with a friend. Rita was great, smart and very funny. She was also part American Indian. She even grew up on a reservation. We stayed together, though living apart, until I left college. I snuck her into my rented apartment (carefully patrolled by a vigilant granny-lady who, fortunately, went to bed at ten o’clock) the last night I was there. We stayed up all night discussing Great Ideas, etc. When I left for the last time, we knew we would not see each other again. “Do me a favor,” she said. “Just get on the bus and don’t look back.” Gee. It was just like the movies or somethin’. I even got a lump in my throat.
Lesson Learned: You’re liable to find somebody great almost anywhere, even Oklahoma. Stay alert. And always wear nice underwear. No holes.
Would You Date Another Indian Girl? Absolutely. They own all the big casinos now. And, as the Lone Ranger will promptly tell you, they are great to send into town for supplies.
2. The Jewish Princess
I met Karen Meckler when I was about twenty. I was at the University of Illinois, hired by publisher Bruce Johnson to edit his magazine Chaff and Karen came by to join the staff. (On a side note, Roger Ebert also came by with a science fiction story. It wasn’t the type of thing we usually published, but knowing he would be very famous in the future, we published it anyway.)
Karen and I had a lot of fun, but her mother kept sending her newspaper clippings from Dear Abby about “reckless relationships” and encouraging her to find a nice Jewish boy. Eventually, I left Chaff in a disagreement over editorial autonomy and got an apartment in a building owned by Indians (from India Indians), which reeked of incense and Indian food, a dubious mix. With tons of time to spare, I saw Karen a lot—so much, in fact, that her parents got worried.
One night while I was sleeping in my odiferous little room, the Champaign-Urbana police busted in. The first thing I heard was the doorlock crashing into my mirror, then they took me off to jail. If you ever get the notion you have certain inalienable rights, remember this: you have no rights if you have no power. The cops don’t have to give you any phone calls if nobody is going to come looking for you anyway. My first day in jail, I was introduced to a little fat guy who liked to play preacher during the day. He trooped around reading the Bible to anyone who would listen, and you didn’t have much choice. The individual cell doors remained open all the time, making access free around the cellblock.
“I’m glad you’re here,” he told me after I was assigned the bed above his. “Those men over there come into the cell every night and try to kill me.” (He pointed out a couple of mean-looking and very large individuals who were in for attempted murder, waiting shipment to a state prison.) “Now you can help me when they come.” Yeah, I thought, I’m sure I’ll be doing that. Sure enough, that night—and every night—they came in around ten o’clock and started strangling the little bastard. I looked over the edge of the bed and surveyed the ugly scene. Eventually, after everyone had enough fun, the jail guards came in and pulled the guys off. Ashen, the victim looked up at me with an accusatory stare.
“Hey,” I told him. “If I were you, I’d lay off that business with the Bible.”
After a week, Bruce Johnson started looking for me and tracked me down at the jail. The cops were worried about Bruce’s magazine so they let me out pretty quick. He asked him what the charges were and they told them “Threatening to do damage to private property.” I had earlier written to Karen, jestingly threatening to burn a cross on her bigot parents’ lawn in University Heights, Ohio. Some people just can’t take a joke.
Lesson Learned: They say opposites attract and that can be true. But you might be better off, generally, finding someone with whom you have a lot in common.
Would You Date A Jewish Girl Again? Why, of course. But only if there were no Beijing Buddhists, Somalian Shiites, Liverpool Protestants, Bangalore Sikhs or atheists from the Kamchatka Peninsula available. Everybody has his preferences.
3. Texas Girls
Texas girls are my favorites. Where else are you going to find a parlay like Marilyn Todd, Pat Brown, Janis Joplin and Karen K. Kirkland? Nowhere, that’s where. Alright, I will admit there was Louise. But even Louise was beautiful, after all. I went out with Louise in Austin one night to dinner and a movie. I couldn’t understand why she was available—and none of my supposed friends told me, either. From the time I picked her up until the time I saw her home—minus time for good behavior in the movie—Louise never stopped talking. It was like being confined to a place the size of a confessional with a buzzsaw. It wears you out. You start planning little retributions for your pals. It’s all that keeps you going.
Lesson Learned: Don’t judge a book by its cover. My mother told me that. We’d all be better off if we’d paid more attention to our mothers.
Would You Date A Texas Girl Again? Without hesitation. Hey, four out of five ain’t bad. Ten minutes from the time Siobhan throws me out, I’ll be at the airport.
4. Not Our Types.
I guess I have an inclination towards tall girls with long hair. Any hair color is alright, any complexion. But I don’t do this on purpose, I just seem to fall into it. And there have been some great against-type girlfriends, like Dani Hughes and Claudine and Betsy Harper. Betsy was way against type—about five-three with curly hair. She was always upbeat, though, ready to travel, fit as a fiddle from her fitness instructor job.
We had known each other for years but always had our own relationships, mostly travelled with different crowds. One day, we showed up at the same wedding. Everybody always looks great at weddings, right? Betsy, wearing a long antique ivory dress, looked better than the bride. Shortly thereafter, I mailed her a couple of plane tickets to Miami where I had a horse racing. Mailing is good, it gives a girl the time and space to think about it a little before she decides whether to accept or reject. Betsy accepted. When I went to pick her up, she asked me if we’d both be staying in the same room.
“That would be my preference,” I told her.
“Mine, too,” she said with a smile.
Lesson Learned: It’s one thing to have a “type.” It’s a little silly to be rigid.
Would You Date An Against-Type Girl Again? In an Alabama minute.
The Object Of My Affection (Current Day)
Okay, we’ve been having a little fun, but seriously folks….
The hard-won lessons of a lifetime are there for us to draw upon if we have the sense to recognize them. Unfortunately, many don’t. People keep making the same mistakes, year after year, relationship after relationship, and expecting things to work out. What was that old definition of insanity—something about continuing to do the same things time after time and expecting a different result?
As you move along in life, you run across more couples who have made it work. Some of them have just decided to endure, but many of them are very happy. The happiest couples have a lot of things in common. First and foremost, they have made good choices in their mates—in addition to being husbands and wives, they are great friends. They appreciate the fact that their partners need their own time and space and friends and they are not resentful of any of it. They have merged finances, but they also have their own money and do not have to ask for it from their partners. Each partner participates in decision-making and each has veto power over decisions. Each has areas of expertise in which they take the lead and the other willingly follows. Each partner has an iron commitment to the relationship and there are no little threatening games played—nobody is leaving. Each has individual goals that the other gladly helps them attain. Great effort is put forth to avoid hurting the other person’s feelings. Anger and disagreements are dealt with in short order and quickly forgotten. Love conquers all.
As for me, after years of mucking about and ungallant behavior towards good women who deserved better, I have mended my ways in order to preserve the treasure I have unearthed in Siobhan. Not to mention, she would kill me in some very diabolical way if I didn’t.
That’s all, folks….
