Steven Hunley
08-15-2016, 12:57 AM
Forever Man
Around three o’clock, just before class let out, my phone went off and I glanced at the number. It looked like an LA number but wasn’t familiar, so I ignored it.
“Probably some jerk trying to sell me something,” I figured. Or, “Maybe the Department of Education tracked me down about that ancient student loan.”
The loan was so old, it was petrified. Cavemen wrote it up. I was fool enough to sign it and take the money and run. I can’t even remember what I spent it on, it was so long ago. I looked out the window down at Broadway and saw a shirtless scarecrow solicit spare change for a cigarette and two Brazilian students smoking with two Saudis. San Diego had finally turned autumn and I was wearing a long sleeved shirt and tie. I’d jettison the tie as soon as I left the building.
I was off in twenty minutes and would be calling Robbins Bros about the ring. I’d plotted the whole scheme out on MapQuest. The territory was unfamiliar and even labeled as a Hazard! Hazard Center was what they named it. I didn’t like the sound of it.
“Even so, a name is only a name and this should be a walk in the park.”
I decided to do something different, something to insure that our love was unique, something over the top and past all limits to convince her of the depths of my love. After all, I was serious as a heart attack, and I wondered if the ring was symbolic enough, or if it would take something more?
Did Barbara need a grand gesture? I just couldn’t figure out how to pull one off. I’d read about grand gestures once, in a story posted on Lit Net called ‘Dude Dreams of a Grand Gesture’. It made quite an impression and I still remember it word for word. It was so black, so bleak, so noir, I couldn’t help it. It was about a down and out loser who suffered from attacks of romantic imagination while being locked up.
Dude Dreams of a Grand Gesture
Dude didn't fight fires all the time. In the night the men slept. Here's where the inmates took their true recreation. In their dreams they made their escapes on a nightly basis. In the morning they'd return their night-wandering consciousness to the camp. So Dude did his share of dreaming.
Another thing was what he planned to do with money. He got it for the girl, that's true. But once he had it, what exactly was his plan? How was money the solution in his small brain? How would the money make the difference in his state of affairs with the girl? Just this: the money would make him her equal.
These two things, the money and the dream, were to fuse while he was in camp. In truth, being a fan of film, Dude was planning a grand gesture. It was a combination of film with happy endings and his flair for the dramatic. It would be grand, on an epic scale, and all for her benefit. So this grand gesture was what he dreamed of, even now locked up, even so with the money run out. He no longer had the girl, or the money, but he still had the dream. Sometimes for a man the dream is enough.
On Monday and Friday nights he dreamed this:
His pockets bulging with bills he proceeded north east to Michigan. The drive was sumptuous and the weather perfect. He would pull up to her work place at the YMCA, run inside, grab her by the hand, toss a roll that would choke a horse to the supervisor, and snatch her away and off into the sunset, that's what he'd do. That was the up-front in-your-face version. It wasn't a cinematic triumph, but it would do. He dreamed that one frequently.
On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday night when his REM sleep was longer, there was this version:
He'd drive up again in a wonderful shiny car, chrome flashing in the sunlight, music playing something triumphant, like the theme to Rocky in stereophonic and Dolby sound, eight channels. The road, quite straight in southern California would grow curvy and tortuous with each mile it progressed farther north-east to Ironwood. But not to worry, the car, usually a Porsche 911, would only laugh at the roadway and negotiate every turn with ease.
He would wear aviator sunglasses and a leather bomber-jacket, it had to be a leather bomber-jacket, the ones with the map of Europe printed on the lining, and he'd pull up and stroll into her pasty shop. Naturally, she wouldn't recognize him. Then he'd engage in some clever repartee full of hidden innuendos. He'd try to seduce her with his words only to find out it was ‘no can do’ because she was enamored with some guy with a disreputable past that she had lost touch with but had never given up hope for his return, kinda like he was in the foreign legion. Then he'd remove the glasses and she'd faint dead away. He always liked it when they fainted dead away, it seemed so lady-like, and he'd take it from there.
Long shot, profiles in silhouettes kissing in the sunset, black construction paper cut-outs, lip to impassioned lip, that sort of cinematic thing.
Variations on these themes were his nightly companions. In the morning he'd wake up to find himself alone in his bunk, no woman, no car, no freedom and no money. It wasn't much of a way to start your day, but it was all he had. Kind of discouraging isn't it? Always measuring our narrow pathetic lives against the width of the silver screen. But we're Americans. That's what we do.
Dude was the King of Wishful Thinking... that’s all. Everyone wants to be the King or Queen of Something. Without that, life just isn’t worth living.
To paraphrase Shakespeare, “There is nothing more common than the desire to be remarkable.”
I wasn’t sure what it would take, but decided Barb deserved a grand gesture to assure her she was the only woman in my life, and that she was never second best. She got this second best impression on Lit Net. She’d read all the old stories concerning Venom, her pet name for a woman I’d known earlier who lied and then dumped me…twice. They were written when I was exercising my theory that writing, as a form of communication, but without body language and gestures, was poor communication and lacking. Therefore the writing should always be over the top.
“With you and her,” she once told me, it was like this!”
She snapped her fingers, and then continued.
“But with you and I, it was first a glow and then a spark and finally a conflagration. Why was she so different?”
“I exaggerated. It was a long-distance relationship with dozens of comings and goings artificially inflated with drama.”
It was a weak explanation. I was embarrassed to discuss the relationship because I was uncomfortable when admitting my lack of judgment about Venom’s true character. It was one of those “I don’t want to talk about it” items.
I didn’t know how to mend the situation. But I had more pressing matters at hand. I checked my phone again and called the unknown number back just in case it was one of my kids.
“Hello, Robbins Brothers of Torrance.”
OMG it was them, the ring people, and it turned out they connected me to San Diego and the ring was ready! And I could have it engraved too, but due to the slim design they couldn’t make the B in Babygirl a capital B, it was too narrow!
Barbara and I picked it out together. The narrow loops of diamonds complimented the loops in her mother’s wedding ring and matched. Forming an infinity sign, they symbolized a connection to her mother and a love forged with precious earthy minerals to last forever, a promise wrapped around her finger.
And besides, I intended to be her forever man.
I should have picked a wider band! I should have picked a bigger diamond too. The Hope! The Koh-i-Noor! Something from the Crown Jewels. I check my wallet. No Can Do. So I make a command decision.
“Use a small b.”
Now we’re in business.
©2014 StevenHunley
http://youtu.be/BGlRG44WSDc King of Wishful Thinking
https://youtu.be/0gDvR1sZ6I4 Forever Man[/QUOTE]
Around three o’clock, just before class let out, my phone went off and I glanced at the number. It looked like an LA number but wasn’t familiar, so I ignored it.
“Probably some jerk trying to sell me something,” I figured. Or, “Maybe the Department of Education tracked me down about that ancient student loan.”
The loan was so old, it was petrified. Cavemen wrote it up. I was fool enough to sign it and take the money and run. I can’t even remember what I spent it on, it was so long ago. I looked out the window down at Broadway and saw a shirtless scarecrow solicit spare change for a cigarette and two Brazilian students smoking with two Saudis. San Diego had finally turned autumn and I was wearing a long sleeved shirt and tie. I’d jettison the tie as soon as I left the building.
I was off in twenty minutes and would be calling Robbins Bros about the ring. I’d plotted the whole scheme out on MapQuest. The territory was unfamiliar and even labeled as a Hazard! Hazard Center was what they named it. I didn’t like the sound of it.
“Even so, a name is only a name and this should be a walk in the park.”
I decided to do something different, something to insure that our love was unique, something over the top and past all limits to convince her of the depths of my love. After all, I was serious as a heart attack, and I wondered if the ring was symbolic enough, or if it would take something more?
Did Barbara need a grand gesture? I just couldn’t figure out how to pull one off. I’d read about grand gestures once, in a story posted on Lit Net called ‘Dude Dreams of a Grand Gesture’. It made quite an impression and I still remember it word for word. It was so black, so bleak, so noir, I couldn’t help it. It was about a down and out loser who suffered from attacks of romantic imagination while being locked up.
Dude Dreams of a Grand Gesture
Dude didn't fight fires all the time. In the night the men slept. Here's where the inmates took their true recreation. In their dreams they made their escapes on a nightly basis. In the morning they'd return their night-wandering consciousness to the camp. So Dude did his share of dreaming.
Another thing was what he planned to do with money. He got it for the girl, that's true. But once he had it, what exactly was his plan? How was money the solution in his small brain? How would the money make the difference in his state of affairs with the girl? Just this: the money would make him her equal.
These two things, the money and the dream, were to fuse while he was in camp. In truth, being a fan of film, Dude was planning a grand gesture. It was a combination of film with happy endings and his flair for the dramatic. It would be grand, on an epic scale, and all for her benefit. So this grand gesture was what he dreamed of, even now locked up, even so with the money run out. He no longer had the girl, or the money, but he still had the dream. Sometimes for a man the dream is enough.
On Monday and Friday nights he dreamed this:
His pockets bulging with bills he proceeded north east to Michigan. The drive was sumptuous and the weather perfect. He would pull up to her work place at the YMCA, run inside, grab her by the hand, toss a roll that would choke a horse to the supervisor, and snatch her away and off into the sunset, that's what he'd do. That was the up-front in-your-face version. It wasn't a cinematic triumph, but it would do. He dreamed that one frequently.
On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday night when his REM sleep was longer, there was this version:
He'd drive up again in a wonderful shiny car, chrome flashing in the sunlight, music playing something triumphant, like the theme to Rocky in stereophonic and Dolby sound, eight channels. The road, quite straight in southern California would grow curvy and tortuous with each mile it progressed farther north-east to Ironwood. But not to worry, the car, usually a Porsche 911, would only laugh at the roadway and negotiate every turn with ease.
He would wear aviator sunglasses and a leather bomber-jacket, it had to be a leather bomber-jacket, the ones with the map of Europe printed on the lining, and he'd pull up and stroll into her pasty shop. Naturally, she wouldn't recognize him. Then he'd engage in some clever repartee full of hidden innuendos. He'd try to seduce her with his words only to find out it was ‘no can do’ because she was enamored with some guy with a disreputable past that she had lost touch with but had never given up hope for his return, kinda like he was in the foreign legion. Then he'd remove the glasses and she'd faint dead away. He always liked it when they fainted dead away, it seemed so lady-like, and he'd take it from there.
Long shot, profiles in silhouettes kissing in the sunset, black construction paper cut-outs, lip to impassioned lip, that sort of cinematic thing.
Variations on these themes were his nightly companions. In the morning he'd wake up to find himself alone in his bunk, no woman, no car, no freedom and no money. It wasn't much of a way to start your day, but it was all he had. Kind of discouraging isn't it? Always measuring our narrow pathetic lives against the width of the silver screen. But we're Americans. That's what we do.
Dude was the King of Wishful Thinking... that’s all. Everyone wants to be the King or Queen of Something. Without that, life just isn’t worth living.
To paraphrase Shakespeare, “There is nothing more common than the desire to be remarkable.”
I wasn’t sure what it would take, but decided Barb deserved a grand gesture to assure her she was the only woman in my life, and that she was never second best. She got this second best impression on Lit Net. She’d read all the old stories concerning Venom, her pet name for a woman I’d known earlier who lied and then dumped me…twice. They were written when I was exercising my theory that writing, as a form of communication, but without body language and gestures, was poor communication and lacking. Therefore the writing should always be over the top.
“With you and her,” she once told me, it was like this!”
She snapped her fingers, and then continued.
“But with you and I, it was first a glow and then a spark and finally a conflagration. Why was she so different?”
“I exaggerated. It was a long-distance relationship with dozens of comings and goings artificially inflated with drama.”
It was a weak explanation. I was embarrassed to discuss the relationship because I was uncomfortable when admitting my lack of judgment about Venom’s true character. It was one of those “I don’t want to talk about it” items.
I didn’t know how to mend the situation. But I had more pressing matters at hand. I checked my phone again and called the unknown number back just in case it was one of my kids.
“Hello, Robbins Brothers of Torrance.”
OMG it was them, the ring people, and it turned out they connected me to San Diego and the ring was ready! And I could have it engraved too, but due to the slim design they couldn’t make the B in Babygirl a capital B, it was too narrow!
Barbara and I picked it out together. The narrow loops of diamonds complimented the loops in her mother’s wedding ring and matched. Forming an infinity sign, they symbolized a connection to her mother and a love forged with precious earthy minerals to last forever, a promise wrapped around her finger.
And besides, I intended to be her forever man.
I should have picked a wider band! I should have picked a bigger diamond too. The Hope! The Koh-i-Noor! Something from the Crown Jewels. I check my wallet. No Can Do. So I make a command decision.
“Use a small b.”
Now we’re in business.
©2014 StevenHunley
http://youtu.be/BGlRG44WSDc King of Wishful Thinking
https://youtu.be/0gDvR1sZ6I4 Forever Man[/QUOTE]