Send In The Clowns
We’ve been trying to leave the Republicans alone, we really have, but they just won’t let us. Michele Bachmann, always tough on foreigners, promised that if elected President she would promptly close the American Embassy in Iran. Somebody needs to let her in on the little secret that it was closed in 1980 during the Hostage Crisis. They’ll get right on it after they show her the photos proving the Earth is not flat.
And what can we say about Herman Cain? Well, on the bright side—if you’re a Republican—he’s sure not gay. In his previous life, Herman has been a busy little devil, chasing all manner and make of women and even catching a few, despite being long married. Herman is not willing to admit this, of course, being a presidential candidate and all. We caught up with him the other day and he was nice enough to grant us an interview:
Flying Pie: Well, Herman, as you know, several women have come forward and accused you of sexual harassment.
Herman Cain: Ain’t true, never been true. Tryin’ t’keep the black man down.
FP: But Herman, these are reasonably respectable people with no reason to put themselves in such embarrassing positions.
HC: Ain’t true, never been true. Tryin' t’keep the black man down.
FP: What about this newest claim from the woman who says you’ve been carrying on a 13 year affair?
HC: Ain’t true, never been true. Tryin' t’keep the black man down.
FP: Now Herman, loath as we are to bring up such subjects, just this morning there’s been word that you’ve been accused of sexual molestation by a kangaroo….
HC: Ain’t true, never been true….what’s that?....a kangaroo you say?
Meanwhile, serial adulterer Newt Gingrich has waddled to the head of the pack, which seems to prefer anyone not named Romney. And speaking of Mitt, is it just us or does this guy remind you of the sneering character from the old movies that the mortgage company always sends to repossess Grandpa’s farm?
Thanksgiving Redux
Last week, we were giving thanks for Mothers and Home Towns and we never got to Girlfriends, which could be the category we’re most thankful for. Barbara at the gym scolds me for having too many girlfriends but I’ve only had one for the past 25 years so that ought to average things out. We’re not going to talk about her today because her birthday is December 13th and we have to save something for then.
My first real adult-world girlfriend was Karen Meckler, a Jewish Princess from University Heights, Ohio. I met her while I was at the University of Illinois, editing Chaff Magazine for Bruce Johnson. Karen was pretty and funny and down-to-earth and we had a lot of fun. Unfortunately, her mother didn’t like the idea of her daughter messing around with a Philistine of the non-Jewish persuasion and, to make a long story short, had me clapped in the county jail while her parents spirited her out of town. Nonetheless, I remain thankful for this jarring experience. It taught me that people in authority can manipulate the law when it suits their convenience, a modest jolt that would well prepare me for the future.
The second Major Girlfriend was Janis, who taught me a lot. Ways to behave, ways not to behave. Janis was brave. She would not be deterred by peer pressure, societal rules, insults or competition in pursuit of her goals. Janis was also reckless, compromising her chances for success by overindulgence, hostility and bad decisions. There was no way you could ignore her, though, and no way not to learn valuable lessons. “I don’t think I’ll be around too long, Killeen,” she once said, “but I’m going to have one hell of a time.” And nobody can doubt that happened.
After that came Marilyn Todd, who wound up being my first wife. In an earlier blog, I wrote a comprehensive history of that relationship and a long-due tribute to Marilyn, a superior being endowed with like measures of intelligence, innocence, loyalty and courage. Rare people like this give you qualities to aspire to even though you’ll often fall short. And you are thankful that they ever entered your sphere.
Then, of course, there was Pam Brewer. When we were challenging the University of Florida’s in loco parentis rules, Pam was bold and gutsy enough to pose nude for a centerfold picture in the magazine. This brought the unholy wrath of the UF administration down on her head and she would no doubt have been expelled were it not for a spirited defense by the ACLU, a campus trial attended by a couple thousand protesting students and a Gainesville appearance by Walter Cronkite and his six o’clock news crew. Pam’s parents, straight-laced Washington government workers, weren’t happy about all this (the newspaper publicity was nation-wide) but she made a trip back home and won them over. The University—and universities throughout the country—eventually tossed out the rule, the beginnings of an ease of universities’ control of the private lives of their students.
Pam and I later opened the Subterranean Circus in September of 1967. It was a monster success for over 20 years, adding a companion store, Silver City, a couple of years later. Pam and I eventually split up and moved on, she with a perfectly suitable husband named Tom Fristoe, with whom she eventually moved to California.
Years later, after minimum contact with Pam over the years, I received a phone call from a mutual friend. Pam had terminal uterine cancer and was not long for this Earth—I should give her call. I did, and her voice was faint, though still familiar. “We showed ‘em, didn’t we, Bill?” she laughed, enjoying one of her brightest memories.
“Sure as hell did,” I agreed.
“I have to go now,” she said, weakly. “Time to go to sleep.” And she was gone, and—shortly thereafter—really gone. It was shocking and sad to lose someone of such spirit and liveliness at such an early age. Years had passed but, when we spoke, no time had passed at all. My grandfather had died, or course, and my father at an early 63, but no one like this, nobody so young. I remembered the time we had together and I was grateful.
Harolyn
Harolyn Locklair, a native of Miami, was my second wife. I have not written much about her, perhaps because it was one of my very few unsatisfactory breakups, featuring animosity, bickering lawyers and general unpleasantness, which eventually disappeared with time.
I first met Harolyn in the Circus when she came through Gainesville with a dress salesman named Al Roller, who repped several popular lines, including one we did particularly well with called, of course, Funky. Al was on his way to a big show in Atlanta and Harolyn was his main model and for good reason. She was tall, about 5-7, thin—maybe 115—with long brown hair, longer legs and high cheekbones, which she attributed to being one-eighth American Indian. She was gorgeous enough to have been on the cover of the Miami Herald’s Sunday Magazine in a bathing suit and she also did work for Eastern Airlines, among others.
It’s easier to buy women’s clothes when you actually see them on a woman so Harolyn tried on about a dozen dresses (I think I bought all of them and in the colors she suggested) and was on her way to Atlanta. A friend of mine named Lee Shaw, then a professor in the Architecture Department at UF, dropped in while the dress-modeling was going on. A few years later when I told him I was getting married, he remembered right away. “The one with the ass?” he asked. “That’s the one,” I told him.
Anyway, Al mailed a copy of the order from Atlanta, said thanks and told me when he would be back again. I told him I didn’t care when he was coming back, but let me know when Harolyn was coming. I also told him to tell her I loved her.
Months later, Johnny Bolton, one of my smart-ass employees, told me a girl had been in to see me. He didn’t catch her name.
“What did she look like?” I asked him.
“Not like anybody who ever comes in here,” he said.
Harolyn called back in a couple of hours. She couldn’t understand how someone who said he loved her couldn’t remember her.
“Oh, I remember you,” I told her. “Are you going to be in town long enough to have dinner?”
“Longer,” she said.
I got my Summit House Apartment roommate, Danny Levine, to clean up our place and find alternate sleeping accommodations that night. I know this sounds tacky, but we had a great dinner at the Manor Motel Restaurant, across from the original Gainesville Mall, one of my favorite haunts and a much better choice than it sounds. When we got back home, Harolyn asked me if I wanted to “drop a little acid.” Sure, I told her, as if I did this sort of thing all the time when, in reality, I had never done it at all. LSD scared me a little bit—I knew you sorta lost some degree of control of your faculties and that sounded a little discomforting. But I took it and soon enough was convinced that Harolyn was the love of my life. “It’s the acid,” she said, modestly.
Anyway, when I woke up in the morning, Harolyn was gone. She had left a flattering lipstick note on the mirror. Danny Levine returned, asked how it went. “She sounds kinda wild,” he said. I told him she might be the love of my life. “It’s the acid,” he said.
We met again at the National Boutique Show in New York a few months later. Suffice to say, I spent less time at the show than on any trip ever. I had written to her several times from a little Italian restaurant in the Village where I had promised to bring her, so we went there. The staff knew about all this and treated her like Cleopatra. It was all very romantic, but Harolyn was still in the end stages of a dying relationship so it didn’t go any further.
It was several months later that she called me and asked if she could visit. I was going out with Patty Wheeler and Claudine Laabs at the time and regretted the timing. “Absolutely,” I told her. And this began bus trips to Gainesville every two weeks for the weekends. Eventually, Harolyn told me she had a little boy, Danny, five years old (they always wait until they suck you in to bring up the kid), and gave me a chance to ruminate on that for awhile before proceeding further). Soon enough, my friend Rick Nihlen, his wife, Lynn, and I drove down in his van to pick up Harolyn, Danny and all their earthlies. About a year later, we got married in a little park next to the Gainesville airport. Harolyn wore a beautiful floor-length dress I had found on the designer floor at Bonwit Teller, primarily a little darker than a Carolina blue, offset with maize and red. Danny Levine, a legal minister of the Universal Life Church, officiated, with Irana as Maid of Honor and Rick Nihlen as Best Man. The reception was at our house, next to the store, and prodigious quantities of alcohol were consumed by all, including Harolyn’s feisty parents. Danny (Harolyn’s son, not the minister) and one of his little girlfriends named Stacy Juris got into the alcohol and passed out in the living room. A good time was had by all. And somehow nobody got arrested. On a down note, Harolyn had a trifle too much to drink and fell into a deep slumber, making for less than a memorable wedding night. For several years, things went swimmingly and I got to be a for-real parent, hard as it may be to believe. And so, despite later events which will be chronicled at another time, I am thankful for these years as well.
There were, of course, other girlfriends and other times and other things to be thankful for and I haven’t forgotten any of it. So anyone who lurks out there unmentioned, your time will come. After all, I have a few Thanksgivings left. Always assuming.
That’s all, folks….
