A couple of weeks ago, I read on a few diaries a series of questions, you know, writing prompt-type questions, and one of them -- the first one, I think -- was, What was the middle name of the first person you slept with? And the thing was, I couldn't remember.
Not the guy, I remembered him. (Hey, two guys in my life, and I've been married to the second since about 1910.) I could not remember his middle name. This began to gnaw at me, mostly because it's unsettling to me to realize that there's something I knew once but don't anymore. I'm thinking, middle initial L. I remember that. Wayne L. Guy. (No, his name wasn't Guy. He had a last name.) Then I'm thinking, the L was for his father's name. His father had some kind of unexpected first name.
I'm not going to go into all kinds of personal detail here, because I used to be afraid that he was going to be a stalker, back before the word stalker even existed. Clearly, he's lost interest in the last 30 years or so, but why tempt fate? Anyway, he lived on my floor in the dorm during my first two years of college, and then I transferred home and he graduated, but we still dated for another year and half, breaking up in the middle of my senior year. We were together for almost three years, and I was certain during most of that time that this was the guy I was going to marry.
We could not have been more different, or from more different backgrounds. He lived at the edge of a cornfield in a very rural area, although his parents were not farmers. His father worked in construction, I think, and was very much a hunter, a builder of things, a backbone of America type. He scared the crap out of me, and I only understood some of what he said, his accent was that thick. (The Guy's grandfather, who lived nearby, was totally unintelligible.) There were guns in this house; I had never even been in a house with guns before.
They were, needless to say, not Jewish, but that was not an issue, really, even to my parents. The fact that when I visited his family I knew that I was the only Jewish person in a fifty-mile radius was a little unsettling, however. I knew that if I married him, he would expect us to live there, and that was a little icky. It was like an alien planet.
North Jersey, on the other hand, scared the crap out of him. He couldn't drive here; the constantly merging lanes, and clover-leafs, and endless ramps, as well as the classic New Jersey jug-handles, mystified him, and he shut down. When he visited my house, he looked as if he expected my gentle parents to boil him alive and eat him with their matzo balls. Honestly, how I spent three years with him is a mystery, but everybody's been there, done that, or will be.
For weeks now, I've been working on his father's name; what the hell was his name? It was not a rugged, redneck (their word, proudly used, not mine) sort of name; it was more like a sissy name. I know that no one ever used it, and that he had some kind of nickname that suited him; I don't remember that at all. Every so often, I think, L, L, it started with an L. Lamont? Latrelle? What WAS it?
So a few minutes ago, I decided to write this entry about having a brain freeze and how I so don't like this forgetting stuff I once knew -- anything I once knew -- and I turned and put my hands on the keyboard and then I yelled out
"LEIGHTON! THE MAN'S NAME WAS LEIGHTON!!!"
Once again, I rock, and I rule. The man's name was Leighton, and I think that was the Guy's middle name, too. Or not, maybe, but it was definitely his father's name, and that's what's been driving me crazy. So, brain thaw, at least on this one. At least for now.
--------------------------------------------------
I'm watching The Daily Show
--------------------------------------------------
last ::
next
Sweet Sorrow - 06.12.2007
So ... - 12.19.2006
Christmastime Is Near - 12.18.2006
Fifteen Years - 12.17.2006
A Message From Our Sponsor - 12.16.2006
|
