THE NIGHT I MET THE LOVE OF MY LIFE

I will never forget the New Year's Eve I met George for the first time. I had recently left my husband of five years. I was 23 years old. I was broke as I could be, but I wasn't going to let that stop me from going to college. I had lived near this college town, Carbondale, Illinois, for the past five years and I was tired of just sitting by envying all those kids who got to go while I was stuck in my hum-drum boring life. I had read in the local paper that, thanks to the Democratic party, anyone who wanted to go to college now could. I took them at their word. So far they had done well by me. I had enough loans and grants to get started. There had been a problem figuring out where I was going to live and how, but then I saw an ad for someone to be a personal attendant to a paralyzed woman in return for room and board. I had never taken care of more than a turtle and it died, but I was game if she was. So I moved into her apartment out on Lincoln Avenue where mostly grad students and alumni lived. It was kind of quiet and I liked that. The only wild one was old Janet, the quadriplegic woman I was caring for. Turned out she was a nymphomaniac which I hadn't been aware paralyzed people could be. Oh yes. One night she had invited over a man, also in a wheel chair, with cerebral palsy, and she wanted me to stick his penis in for him. I had to refuse. I tell you that nowadays after having lived quite a few more life experiences and losing most of my prim and proper mind sets, I would do it. But then I was shocked and repulsed, I'm embarrassed to say. Anyhow I wasn't looking forward to anything out of the ordinary happening on New Year's Eve. Same old same old, but then old Janet up and surprised me. She had gotten one of her lucky wrong numbers, kept the guy on the phone, and convinced him to come over and have sex with her. I don't know how she did it, but 99% of the time she was successful. I guess it was the advantage of living in a college town full of horny young men. So this meant, she told me in no uncertain terms, I had to get out, but I wasn't to go too far in case he turned out to be a creep or she needed me for some other reason. This meant, in other words, I was to spend my New Year's Eve sitting in the most depressing, dreary "lounge" of a TV room tacked on to the front of our apartment building. Most people wouldn't be caught dead being seen there any day, and I would be there on New Year's Eve. What the hell. So far most of my life had been spent not really giving two shits what people thought about me. I had grown up the poor and ill-dressed daughter of raging alcoholics who embarrassed me daily, and then as I grew, I became an outrageous "freak the people out" hippie myself, so I was really beyond caring very much. I got my special celebratory bottle of Cold Duck that I had paid less than five dollars for, and a book and headed on down there. I hoped nobody would be sitting in there watching the damn TV. Watching Lawrence Welk or some damn thing--now that would be depressing. But the coast was clear. I set out my cigarettes and filled up my water glass with the Cold Duck. Could be worse. I could be back in Sand Ridge, pop. 50, sitting with my ex-husband watching the geese run down the street, which was about the only action in that one-horse town. I'd no doubt be drinking suds from a quart bottle, and he, abstaining as usual, would be launched into his routine about "whatever happened to the sweet flower I married". It was enough to make me puke. I was so sick of him running his mouth on the same old subjects. I tell you nothing could get so bad in my new college life to equal the misery of my old married life. I had gotten married at 18. That shit ought to be illegal. Everybody and his uncle tried to warn me against it, but I knew better. I was so damn smart. I filled my glass again and got out my book. This kind of thinking was going nowhere but down. The book was a novel by Kurt Vonnegut for English class. It killed me how they were giving me college credits for reading books I would be taking out of the library and reading on my own anyhow. What a scam--giving me loans and grants to do it too. What a wonderful world. So I sat and read for a couple of hours. Once I got up and stood outside of Janet's door. I didn't hear anything suspicious so I guessed she was alright. Just before midnight a man walked into my solitary confinement. He turned around a few times, as though he wasn't sure where he was or why he was there. "Hello," he finally said. "Hello, to you," I said in a friendly voice. He didn't look like he was out picking up women that night. In fact, he was carrying a briefcase. He was also wearing a wrinkled, old black trenchcoat that Columbo would be proud to wear. "Are you waiting for someone?" he managed. I guess he was trying to figure out why I was sitting in there by myself on New Year's Eve at midnight. "No, well, I'm sort of waiting for my roommate to be finished with her personal business so I can get back into our apartment." "Oh, is that right?" He had a nice country drawl to his speech that drew out his words and sentences and made it seem as if you were saying the most interesting things he had ever heard. "You know I live here too. Right across the hall from you, in fact." "Is that a fact," I replied. "Want some of this warm duck?" "No, no I don't believe I do. Would you like to go out and get a real drink--it being New Year's Eve and all?" I thought about for about two seconds but made it look like two minutes. He had such beautiful blue sparkly eyes. I imagined angels had eyes like his. And when he talked to you, he looked full at you as though he could see into your soul. "I'd have to ask my roommate if she'll be alright without me first," I told him. "Why don't you just go do that," he directed. When I got into the apartment I saw that a little party had formed without me being invited. Oh, well, I was the newbie. What did I expect? Maureen, her last personal attendant was there and she had brought some mutual friends. Janet was pretty well smashed, but she assured me that Maureen would look out for her. I went in the bathroom and tried to do something about my plain-Jane weekday looks. It was kind of hopeless without attracting unnecessary attention. What was I going to do at this late hour? Put on a sparkly dress? I put on some lipstick and some blush and went back to the lobby. Surprisingly, he was still waiting for me. "What's your name, anyhow?," I asked him. "George, George Mack." "I'm Jeanine Casper. Nice to meet you." We went and got into his very cute little orange and black, convertible Kharmin Ghia. I was such an old hippie hick it might as well have been a Jaguar for my excitement. It was then that I got wind of his pheromones. Now I had been a hippie chick hanging out with the unwashed often enough to recognize pheromones from a good, long distance, usually to my great revulsion, but these were angelic pheromones. If I guessed right he was an all-natural kind of guy and knew his natural scent was a giant turn-on and so didn't use after shave or even deodorant. And why should he? He smelled of a manly scent that reminded me of sex and heaven. I wanted to just sit and smell him forever. I was nervous with him. He'd told me that he had been at work that night. He worked at the state hospital with alcoholics. He was a psychologist. He had just gotten his Ph.D. from S.I.U. a couple of years ago. He had been working that night with his alcoholic social club that he'd set up. I was touched with how much he genuinely seemed to care about his clients. I felt very unworldly and unsophisticated with this man with a doctorate. I noticed I was trying to clean up my language and to speak English the way I know you're supposed to. I even minded my manners and let him do things like open the car door for me and pull out a chair at the restaurant. When he ordered a rob roy, I said I'd have one too, although I had no idea what it was. I really didn't care for hard alcohol and liked beer and wine better. But I sipped my rob roy and found myself telling him the story of my life. He knew all the right questions to ask. He acted so interested. You would think that I had about the most interesting life story he had ever heard. I chalked it up to his being a psychologist. I guessed they were just really interested in people. Our hands brushed briefly one time when he was lighting my cigarette. I felt a spark. This man who looked like an angel with his long natural ringlets of golden brown curls could be dangerous for a nobody like me i told myself. For him it was New Year's Eve and he had missed all the regular dating and parties because of having to work. Tomorrow he would get back to his real life and forget all about the nobody across the hall. I told myself I was alright with that. We had two drinks apiece, barely enough to get me started and I wasn't even counting the Cold Duck, but suddenly I didn't want to look like a lush. We drove back the long way. When we got to the building, he invited me to come over for a nightcap. I was kind of surprised at the starkness of his apartment. It made me feel sorry for him. He admitted he had recently been divorced, and that his wife had taken pretty much everything. He actually used cement bricks and pieces of lumber for bookcases just like the college kids. He had a couple of director's chairs for furniture and a couch that pulled out to a bed. The rest of the place was kind of empty. He apologized for it, but it endeared him to me. I realized then I couldn't have dealt with a swanky bachelor apartment. I liked good old honest humble living. He put on some Bob Dylan. Then later he took it off, got out his guitar and played "Lay Lady Lay" for me. It was about the most romantic moment I had had since I couldn't remember when. Then he surprised me by putting some soul into "Give Me That Old Time Religion." I liked it that he liked that old standard so much. Then it was time to call it a night. He made some moves that I ignored. Finally I just came out and sort of told him that I hadn't been with anybody but my husband in five years, and I wasn't likely to start hopping into beds with men I barely knew now. He accepted this. In fact, he gave me a smile that seemed approving, and I went home to dream about him all night.

Call for Manuscripts (from Absolute Write) And My Manuscript In Response Editor looking for manuscripts from people in their upper-fifties through their sixties who have something to say about their life experience. Consider any of the following jumping off points (or none of them) to write a cohesive, emotionally engaging essay or short story. (Maximum 1,500 words). If writing in story form, the events and people must be real. True stories about your youth, heart-warming reminisces, pathos, flower power, Haight-Ashbury, Viet Nam, Woodstock, The Beatles, etc. Dynamic individuals who changed your life, were your role models, who showed you something you had never considered, who changed the course of your life. What wisdom, what insights, what knowledge have you gained? What changes in perspective about business, religion, marriage, family, people in other countries, and the planet earth have you experienced? What have you accomplished that you, in your youth, never knew you would? What process/es brought that into being? What paranormal experiences have you had? If you had the opportunity to say something to someone who is no longer here, what would that be? What do you hold to be unshakably true that you didn?t know 40-45 years ago? How are you different from, or how are you the same as, you were 40-45 years ago? What things that you used to disagree with your parents about do you now agree, or what things that you used to agree with them do you now disagree? What is the most beautiful thing you?ve ever seen? What is the most beautiful piece of music you?ve ever heard? What was your favorite television show when you were ten to fifteen years old? What?s your favorite television show now? What is the greatest movie ever produced? What?s the best novel ever written? What?s the best nonfiction book you?ve ever read? Tell about the picture you had of your life as a child and how it has actually unfolded. What is lovely about that? Please do answer or address the following question: If you could say or express one thing that you believe, truly believe, in your deepest heart of hearts, would change the world for the better, what would that be? Be honest and tell your truth! Payment, at present, is shared revenue of profits, specifics to be determined by number of participants, and other minor details. Send via email, either in body or as attachment (Mac or RTF/TEXT) to: susie@alighthere.com. Put SUBMISSION: ?What I?ve Learned? in subject line. Failing to do so may cause your manuscript to be lost as spam. I thank you beforehand for your heart-felt work, Susie Wolfington, Assistant Editor ALightHere.com Books - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Here's my manuscript: My honest, deeply held, belief about what will change the world for the better is not a pipe dream. It is happening now among people of my generation as well as other age groups. Consciousness is being raised (without drugs this time). People are realizing that we are all One. People are becoming multi-sensory-- limited to the five senses. We are far less left-brained and much more intuitive. We know on a profound level that mother earth is emitting her death throes and that it is up to us to do something and soon before global warming and violence put an end to us all. This miracle will be brought about by a generation of people that have transformed themselves from fear-driven, ego-run automatons to human beings in touch with their souls who believe love is the solution to every problem. As one neighbor forgives another at home and across the world, just as a butterfly's motions in one pole are felt in another, healing will come to the world. Harmony will reign when love rules all. There are signs of it happening now everywhere if you look. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I am 59 years-old and consider myself an old hippie. I am self-employed as a freelance writer and an online bookseller. I don't really make enough money to support myself without my disability check. My work is the result of following Joseph Campbell's advice to "follow your bliss". I love books and I love to write. I haven't sold out and I'm proud of it. I don't have to get up every morning, hate my life and put on nylons. I try to only write articles that I can be proud of. I sell books I don't have to be ashamed of. I attempt to practice the same integrity in my businesses that I practice in my relationships with friends and family. I have worked to remain true to many of the idealistic beliefs I had when I was young and in the movement. I have turned my back on materialism. I own next to nothing. I think I may be one of the last Americans standing without a cell phone. I do not have a car. I buy things when I must at thrift stores. I can't remember when I last bought something new. I have no money in the bank--no savings or stocks for a rainy day or for my retirement. I trust God to take care of me and the lilies of the field as He has all these years. I eat simply, healthily and avoid meat. I don't drink or take drugs except for prescription drugs I must take. I went to my first rock and roll concert when I was 15. I had to go by myself because no one at my high school that I knew wanted to see the "dirty and disgusting" Rolling Stones. It was their first American tour. I sat so close to the stage I could see Mick Jagger sweat. I didn't miss a Stones concert after that until after my kids were born and I was in my 40's. I even caught them in Europe once. I married my childhood sweetheart when we were both 18 and we left Illinois after the wedding and headed to Haight-Ashbury to live. I remember driving across the country with nothing to eat but a jar of homemade pickles his aunt had given us. We had all our wedding gifts packed into a little Ford Falcon and no real money or job prospects. We weren't worried. We figured everyone took care of everyone else and the universe took care of those that got looked over. When we got to San Francisco, we immediately met a young man from Illinois. He told us he wasn't doing anything that day except planning to jump from the bridge and kill himself so he would show us around. After the tour we went back to his place and, sure enough, he had written a suicide note on the mirror. The next time we moved it was to Northern Minnesota in the Superior National Forest where we built a lean-to and planned to "get back to the land", a popular movement at the time. We were city kids with no camping experience and we floundered a lot. We spent three months in those woods in 1969, and missed Woodstock because we didn't know anything about it. Boy, were we mad. I never knew I would graduate from college. I didn't start until I was 23, after I divorced my husband. There was a time I had to work three part-time jobs while in school, and I always worked at least one, but I was able to put myself through college. College was the most fun I never imagined growing up. My counselor kept bugging me to choose a major, but I wanted to learn it all. Unlike the kids who went straight to college from high school, I was thrilled every single day to be there. Finally I realized that as an English major I would be getting college credit for reading books that I would have been home reading anyhow. What a scam I thought. Those sun-drenched days reading Shakespeare beneath shade trees with the smell of pot smoke all around me from other students--those were golden days. I specialized in creative writing. I didn't want to teach. I learned that I loved to write short stories and poetry. I wrote some of both about my hippie days with my by now-ex husband and our adventures. The professor said they were some of the best of that kind of stuff he'd read. I only knew then what I know now: when I write there is no time. One minute it's ten o'clock in the morning and when I look up it's six a.m. I have learned quite a few things in my life, thank God, that I didn't know or appreciate 40 years ago. "To thine own self be true" is a maxim seriously worth living by. Forty years ago I wanted to be a non-comformist, a flower child, then a hippie, so I wore my hair long and straight, wore paisley and fringe, and said "Holy Shit" a lot. I lived in fear some fellow hippie might not think I was cool enough. I was pretentious as hell. I had to be up on the latest music and pop cultural icons or I was nobody. I thought I was so damn free and I didn't know how to be spontaneous. I couldn't be silly because I was too hip. I thought like others, talked like others--probably even walked like other people. All the posturing robbed me of my youth. Today I know who I am and I really don't give too much of a good hot damn what other people think about my somewhat strange ways, whereas when I thought I was being so outrageous as a kid I sometimes was bothered by "straight" people's reactions to me. I re-married when I was 36. I managed to find another aging hippie. He was, of course, like I was at the time a bit crispy. We met in A.A. He died about eight years ago from a cancer that started in his eye. I have wondered if it was the result of the time he dropped acid and stared at the sun all day. Now that would be something I finally agree with my mother about today, and my father if he were living. I wouldn't want my two kids, ages 19 and 22, doing all the drugs I did. I am thrilled that they only smoke pot. They both deny ever getting close enough to cocaine to have ever seen it. I have told them the truth about my drug experiences in the hopes that they might listen, learn and save themselves some suffering. I think I took LSD over 250 times. I would not want my kids taking it once and that sort of surprises me but it's the truth. Other things i have learned in the past 40 years are that I don't want a life that is ego-driven. I need to meditate to hear the still small voice within. I can follow inner guidance and act lovingly or I can fall asleep to my soul and end up being self-will run riot and make a mess of my life if I choose. I have learned that romantic love is a trivial pursuit compared to practicing compassion. I am open to the idea of a spiritual partner but not a love interest of the romantic variety. I am too old for such nonsense and wasted far too much time on it in my salad days. I have learned more about respecting my body, and I regret a lot of the abuse I put it through back then. Neil Young is still one of my rock and roll idols, but I spent one Christmas utterly moved by "The Messiah" and wanted to hear it over and over. I would like to read the finished compilation of these manuscripts.