Tuesday July 19, 2005
	First loves and Sue and Nora in Michigan.
	We're sitting in a small bar in Tarpon Springs (just a short walk from Paul's Shrimp House) and we're talking about first loves and she's telling me about one of hers:   "It was our first date and he took me out on his boat and he had wine and this big elaborate meal all set up in advance and even flowers and he never tried anything," she says then inhaling from her filtered cigarette and when she exhales she says: "He was a gentleman." "That's really something," I say then putting the Budweiser bottle to my lips.  The beer is good going down and when it's almost gone she says (to the bartender): "He'll take another one." "Tell me about your first love Norm," she says. Privately and to myself I'm thinking: I was in love with a girl named Susan and I wanted to marry her and I had lots of plans and we went to the movies every weekend and one Friday night I called her and she said she couldn't go to the movies anymore; she was getting married.  Of course, I wasn't even aware of her dating anyone other than myself.  Jesus that hurt.  She had gray eyes and long hair and even her mother was good to look at not fat and dumpy at all but her father was afraid of me and he worked on her like you'd work on a block of ice (clumsily and with a big handled ice pick) and eventually I started to look a little messy to her. My smoking date says (again): "Did you even have a first love, Norm?" I'm not going to tell her about Sue 'cause it still hurts and it's too private so I tell her about Nora from Michigan:  "We were behind a school right around 23 Mile Road and Van Dyke in Utica, Michigan." "Did you go to school there?" she says then lighting another cigarette. I say:  "It was raining hard and it was getting dark and we parked the car in the back of the school and we ended up doing one another four feet from the school entrance and I remember being on top of her and looking over to my left and seeing rain water come out of the gutter and thinking, one of us is going to have to pee soon." "You're bizarre, Norm," she says. My smoking friend is laughing now but the truth is I didn't think one of us is going to have to pee soon (while water rushed out of the rain gutter). In actuality I had some kind of religious experience while we banged one another on the concrete stoop of that school.  In addition to the falling rain there was a good amount of thunder and lighting and I imagined the water (coming out of the gutter) to be Holy water (all water on Earth is as old as the planet and recycled again and again).  Perhaps a few molecules from a pot of blessed Holy water from some church somewhere someplace made its way to this gutter, I remember thinking at the time.  Evaporation. Of course, I don't tell my smoking friend anything about Holy water or about the  lightening and thunder or about how I lost myself onto her (Nora) or about how I can still smell her perfume and instead I just say: "How 'bout another drink, Sarah?" "Why not?" she says then kissing my cheek.  Initially, women think I'm bizarre but once they get to know me I have trouble shaking them. "One Budweiser and one whatever she's having," I say to the bartender.  I'd rather not be thinking about Susan so I move on and away from whatever it is I think I remember about her.  On to another story.  Sarah likes my stories. PREVIOUS   HOME   NEXT