Intrigues from the Sixties

Saturday night in Champaign-Urbana. I believe there was a football game today at the university. We avoided that part of town, but did end up going to Hessel Park in our old neighborhood. The place was completely surrounded by parked cars and people started walking across the park and driving away. It was about the end of game time so I figured out that everyone there had walked about eight blocks over to the stadium. We didn't last too long at the park. Poor Piper started coughing something fierce and we diverted her with a bookstore at the far end of town.

Strange things pass through this very public act. I noticed a comment on a poem yesterday that I hadn't seen before. A piece, published in August. It turned out to be a comment from a girl I dated in high school and who's story at that time I used as the basis of one of my unpublished novels. Marcia Froelke. Marcia took offense because I said in my notes that she was a "snobby girl." Also she wanted me to know that she was apparently much more successful than I seemed to paint her; rather than running an animal shelter, which I know she has something to do with, she tells me she is a senior editor, I guess at Chicago magazine where she has been a columnist and writer for many years.

Well, Gary is always saying someone from my past is going to show up and slam me a good one for their perception of my perception. I certainly didn't mean Marcia an ill, though to be honest she was always a strong willed person and even now I am a little in awe of her energy. As to whether she was snobby, I was primarily referring to the time in the late 80s when I was starting the Writers BARBQ and I knew Marcia was on staff at Chicago and probably knew many people in Chicago in general. So I sent her the magazine and asked her for some help in getting the word of this project out. She called me on the phone and proceeded to grill me, clearly trying to see who I knew in this world that was important enough for her to know, also. I never heard from her again. She never commented on the magazine, me, or the conversation. Gone. Like another leaf from the tree.

In thinking about it, though, I remembered quite a lot about seeing Marcia in the spring of 1968. We knew each other through the theatre and I ran into her at tryouts for My Fair Lady at Mount Carmel Academy. Marcia sang "Don't Rain On My Parade" from Funny Girl and did a good job, but lost the role of Eliza to this insipid blonde girl who had a great singing voice. Happens all the time in high school theatre. Directors are always mainly concerned with getting the songs sung. I didn't get Higgins part, either. I did end up doing Colonel Pickering and having rather a good time.

Marcia and I dated through that spring, though when we started she was also seeing my close friend, Tom Bezzi (this was before he really knew he was gay). Marcia also had a major boyfriend in Kansas City, Mike Dwyer who I considered a good friend. I just went out with Marcia and didn't try to make out with her because of Mike. That lasted only a few weeks. Marcia was a very hot girl in them days. Sort of Faye Dunaway-esque. Really beautiful with a lovely body and great hair. Hot, as I said.

I was to come to understand that Marcia also had a major thing for Barry Paris. Barry went through my high school in three years, knew several foreign languages, and was at Columbia in NYC that year. She liked juggling a lot of men, I knew that. I also knew that my role was considerably down the list. But, of course, I was in town.

We went to a lot of movies, The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde. We went to Marat/Sade at the Wichita University. We even attended a production of the King and I at Madonna High School, in which the lead was acted and sung by my longtime girlfriend, Kitty Broderick. Most of these performances we left early, to drive around, park and talk. Well, and make out some. Oh, and before I forget it, we went to a Wichita Experimental Theatre production of Mark Twain Tonight, with Richard Geary, Barry's good friend, doing the humorist. I remember Marcia telling me that Richard was really just a "projection" of Barry.

We got involved in Bobby Kennedy's presidential campaign that spring. Barry was involved, also, and got back into Wichita, from Columbia, just after Bobby's assasination in California, June 4th. I remember going over to Barry's with Tom Bezzi, who wanted us to all commit suicide in solidarity with RFK. Tommy was a passionate guy given to crazy ideas. I miss him, these days. I re-read The Painted Bird, Jerzy Kosinski's remarkable "novel" the last couple of days and realized I was reading Tom's copy. There was his name on the inside fly leaf, circa 1966. Marcia often talked about how great it would be to sleep with Bobby Kennedy. I am quite sure, given the opportunity, she would have done it. She also hung out with my young friend, Giff Booth, who knew this group through the theatre at Kapaun, where I high schooled. I exchanged emails with Giff last year. He's a consultant living in the city, out gay male, long time partner and adopted gay son. A good person in every way. He was surprised to hear that Barry Paris wasn't gay. But I knew that in the sixties. Of course, I knew Tom Bezzi was, but I didn't really realize Giff was gay. He was so young when I knew him.

I left Wichita for good that summer, and didn't see much of Marcia, though we exchanged letters (which of course I still have). In the fall I started at St. Louis University and Marcia went to Kansas U. in Lawrence. By Halloween Marcia had convinced me to take the bus to come see her, and she talked about consummating our relationship on this trip. Naturally, I went.

That weekend was one of those strange trips one takes in this life. When I got there I discovered I was being picked up by Mike Dwyer, Marcia's longtime boyfriend. Then we ended up hanging out most of the weekend with Marcia's current throb, who's name I forget, but I do know she called him "the kindred spirit," or TKS for short. He didn't like my being there at all, but of course Marcia handled him. That is to say she got rid of him at one point. Then she devoted an hour or so to holding my hand, then sent me back to the men's dorm she had wangled me a place to stay.

I left Lawrence the next day and knew there was no good reason to try and keep up with Marcia. She was out of my league, in the sense that I just couldn't really figure out what she wanted from me, or anybody. Still, it was an interesting ride.

She did have this long weird obsession with Barry Paris. And he did turn out to be a fairly successful guy; long time movie critic in Pittsburgh, author of several star biographies and other books. I assume she got over the obsession; she is credited in the Barry's Louise Brooks book in the thank yous.

The form that obsession took was the basis for my novel, Stones Out of Time. It was a concept piece, wherein a dead girl was trying to take over a living girl's physical body, for the purpose of revenge. This idea played out in a couple of my books. At the time, and it was the sixties, I just thought Marcia was playing a game with my head. But there was always the possibility that she really did think that. I never heard one way or the other. It certainly doesn't matter.

As for snobby, when we were dating in Wichita that spring, one of the things Marcia liked to do was to go over to Katy Wilson's house and try and shock Katy with the details of Marcia's life. She made fun of Katy when she was with me. Katy was, ultimately, the valedictorian of their class. As it turned out I ended up dating Katy in St. Louis, where she attended Washington University while I was at St. Louis U. In retrospect I always felt a little bad about how Marcia treated Katy. But, just as likely, I didn't understand the politic that was going on there. Katy seemed to really care about Marcia; we talked about her in St. Louis. Later, when we had started to date, Katy asked me not to tell her about Marcia and myself, meaning of course she didn't want to know if we'd been having sex. But, we hadn't been. Lots of making out. No actual sex. That was the sixties for us catholic kids.

So, having offended someone from my past who is inherently a stranger, all I can say is that these poems and stories are simply my version of my life. I know there is a great range to our being, and I accept that we are all judged. I can say this to Marcia, though, in the forty years that have passed, I have read many of her columns and other pieces and I have told her how much I respect her writing on a couple of distant occasions. She has never commented to my writing, much like she never responded to my magazine. Well, I suppose it must have sucked to her. She was probably just protecting me from the truth. Who knows? And, frankly, who cares?

I like my work and I keep doing it. Perhaps I will pass in the next twenty-thirty years and it will all turn to smoke in the human wind. I suppose that is the most likely possibility. Too bad. I think I am good and have important things to say, but we are all capable of self-deception, so maybe I have succeeded in deceiving myself about this.

For those of you that struggled through this particular post, thanks for your patience. I actually cut some of it out. I tend to remember entirely too many things. Plus I go back and dig out Marcia's letters and my notebooks and try and review those days and there you go, watching the blonde girl drive away in her corvair, one more time. It was powder blue, I remember. She gave me Simon and Garfunkels' album Bookends that spring. She wrote the lyrics to "Hazy Shade of Winter" on a card:

Hang on to your hopes, my friend
Thats an easy thing to say, but if your hopes should pass away
Simply pretend
That you can build them again
Look around, the grass is high
The fields are ripe, its the springtime of your (my) life

Ahhh, seasons change with the scenery
Weaving time in a tapestry
Wont you stop and remember me
At any convenient time
Funny how my memory slips while looking over manuscripts
Of unpublished rhyme
Drinking my vodka and lime

I hope she is well and has had the life she hoped for. I respect the animal shelter thing, even it she doesn't think it important enough to characterize her. I ask the Lady for Her mercy for Marcia, and for all of us who cross paths in the days and nights of this ride on the silver wheel. May we all know Her love.