elevated_subways: Blog

Also, I think can write a last chapter that will finish the Paradise Theater series which was ended without a true resolution. I rewrote parts of it on another site, especially the first two chapters, that gave me clues as to how to end it here. However, that will probably be a couple of months from now at best. I also will not replace any of the existing chapters here.

In his first month in high school in 1969, Hank spends an increasing amount of time with his unexpected new girlfriend Arlene. During that period, he does not travel out to New Jersey to be with his mature lover Molly whom he met a couple of months earlier. On the surface, everything seems to be going well, but Hank realizes that his youth and inexperience are hindrances to him handling two women at the same time.

"The Soul of an Immoral Woman." Actually, he's continually led stray by his young, skeptical (of Catholicism among other things) parishioner Ellen. However, he admits that he has given into her charms since the very beginning. Here, she plays the role of a difficult but kinky middle-aged woman and they both enjoy it. She sticks to authenticity and abruptly leaves when they are done, leaving him to wonder what her eventually intentions about him will be.

There was an inconsistency in the story, so I replaced two chapters. As of August and September, 1969, Hank hasn’t yet moved out of his old neighborhood in the West Bronx although his family will be doing that in the fall. Thus I had to make some changes in Chapters 6 and 9 to account for that. The revisions in chapter 6 (“Excursions with Molly”) are fairly extensive, as they give more detail about their time together when she drives him home from a state park in Westchester County. I also changed the wording of a few sentences elsewhere in the story.

Even though I've written about her a number of of times, I've never explained the exact motivations for much of what she does. Here, she indulges in a ritualistic purging of her emotions from the previous year, and she gets her boyfriend to join in. Larger questions - like what happened to her parents and why she came to live with her uncle just before entering college - have been left unanswered. Maybe it's best to follow Oscar Wilde's advice here, “Those who go beneath the surface, do so at their peril.”