I think it took great courage for the Musketeers to let me tell their story. Understandably, only after they’d read the camouflaged version did they agree. Quite a bit of time has passed and they rarely see anyone that might have remembered these events from an outsider’s perspective. I have a much closer relationship with one than the rest. We got to talking one night and I encouraged her to share with my readers the feelings and sentiments she had share with me. Adventurous person that she is, she agreed. If you haven’t read the Beach house and Musketeers stories, please read them first as there are very definite spoilers in this. I did not edit it (with the exception of changing a couple of names that slipped through). It is simply her reminiscing. I found it to be very touching. She and her husband have asked that if you change anything in your life because of these stories, please send me a note – I do more of this or less of that or I’m going to start...

I will forward tastefully written comments to them. Thanks for reading and especially, thanks to those who have donated to the Dave Thomas Foundation for adoption support.

A couple weeks ago my husband’s long-time friend came to visit. They got into the single malt late one night and began reminiscing. One thing led to another and “Daniel” told him he’d been writing stories with an erotic twist to them for the practice and the feedback. “Michael” encouraged him to tell ours since he’d been so fascinated by it. I knew they had gotten into some detail and Daniel asked him to clarify on many occasions but I also know they never shared any of the smoochin’ and stuff. That’s not like Michael. I talked to the other girls and we told him to go wild with his imagination and he quite obviously did.

Reading through his telling, masked as it was, still got me on the nostalgia kick and then some. I looked through my old high school yearbook and even went with Michael back to Mesa for a picnic lunch at the dome. Talk about stirring up memories. A week ago, I ended up on the phone with Daniel for a couple of hours, telling him what thoughts and emotions he had stirred up. He told me I should write it all down. He wouldn’t change a word and just post it for anyone who cared. I didn’t think anyone would but then he told me how many people had read the stories and that many had made contributions to the Dave Thomas Foundation for adoption support. He seemed to think at least some people would be interested since he was. He also suggested some more of you might find them on the Internet and donate. I hope you do. So, here goes.

First – about those names. Lisa and Michael are pretty generic so I guess they fit. Tina definitely does not. Hard to imagine a powerful name for a girl. Victoria, perhaps. She doesn’t have what I’d call a powerful name in real life so I guess she would have made Tina seem powerful. Fallon is cute and unique and I kind of like it. It suits me. LuAnn or better, Lulu is perfect and we’ve all started calling her Lulu and she loves it which probably shouldn’t be surprising to the reader. It’s hilarious, so thanks for that. Jadok Nelson and Artie both fit remarkably well. Oh, and Daniel January does not. Silly. Enough about names. I’ll try to use them here.

All four of us Musketeers had begun to change physically and emotionally a year or more before this chronicle began. It was a little fun and a little scary. But we’d each begun to notice boys long before that. Tina had older sisters and knew their boyfriends and then husbands. She had dated a little and she shared her insights with us. We were fascinated and hung on every word. LuAnn and Lisa had been pretty quiet, socially. I had been surrounded with band geeks who were just as socially inept as I was. As a group, we leaned on Tina for our understanding of men. However, “Lisa” was the only one of us with a brother. He was close. He was nice. We all liked him. It seemed only right that one of us would get him. That’s the way we thought of it. One of us would get him.

I wouldn’t. I was an orchestra geek and Michael was a jock. He was also smart and he just didn’t fit into our little cubby holes. He was different. One day he would have a Letterman’s Jacket. No one in orchestra ever dated a Letterman. It simply didn’t happen. I was in orchestra, ergo, I wouldn’t get him. Tina had dated older boys than Michael and since LuAnn was completely taken with him and since she was so pretty it seemed the most natural thing in the world to conclude they would date, go steady, get married and live happily ever after. LuAnn thought she’d get him. It was sort of an unspoken truth.

A week at the beach house that summer in 72 changed everything. Daniel captured much of that pretty accurately in his telling. Obviously, Michael has a good memory and Daniel’s storytelling triggered some great memories (and some not so great memories). I loved A Month with Fallon. I hated the months with LuAnn and Tina but he actually gave me some insight which I thought was pretty remarkable for someone who wasn’t there.

At the beginning of the week, we, The Musketeers, played a game of Truth or Dare. When Truth or Dare took a turn away from the norm it ended up becoming a kissing contest with Michael. Now that I think about it, he was far too willing to participate. However, he was willing to kiss each of us in turn and somehow the unlikely became the possible. I had something of a chance. We were all feeling edgy and I did the most daring thing I’d ever done in my life. I climbed onto Michael’s lap and kissed him and he kissed back. Boy, did he. I was unbelievably excited about that. I didn’t want it to end. Ever. I’m tingly thinking about it. As things progressed the next day, he asked LuAnn out and then the rest of us. It wasn’t surprising that he would ask Lulu (I love that name) out. It was surprising that he would ask Tina and me.

A couple of days later, we had an amazing first date. I’d never been on a date and it exceeding my wildest dreams and we ended up on the deck of a nearby empty beach house. It was very dark and I was still feeling adventurous. I thought that it might be my one and only chance with him. We embraced, and I did the ridiculous, most over-the-top thing I’d ever done in my life. I stripped off my shorts and bikini top, leaving just my bikini bottoms. I essentially bared myself to him in the dim light. We hugged, skin on skin. He felt wonderful. My imagination took flight and the possibility of dating Michael, even becoming his steady, became very real for me. I had simply thrown caution to the wind and risked total embarrassment by exposing my skinny little self to him but I had to let him know how I felt. I was a skinny little flat-chested girl but he made me feel like a woman. It was intoxicating. I was in love. I was in love with Michael and I was in love with being in love. What’s more, he was enjoying it too. With me. He was enjoying himself with me. Bliss.

I didn’t sleep that night. Not a wink. My mind raced with all the possibilities and all the emotions only a young girl can have. These were thoughts and dreams I couldn’t share with the other Musketeers. Not even Tina. These were mine and mine alone. It seems so strange to me now that I would risk so much, baring myself to Michael, but I wouldn’t share my thoughts and dreams with my closest friends. I wouldn’t risk ridicule from them, although that’s not something they had ever done. LuAnn and Michael were a likely couple. Everyone thought so. Tina and Michael were a possible couple. We all knew that. Michael and I weren’t. I thought everyone knew that too. But Michael didn’t know that. He had made it seem possible. He had set my emotional world on fire.

A couple of nights later, things got heated. It was one of the most heated discussions we’ve ever had and we settled it in ridiculous teenage fashion. We played Dutch Blitz to see who would set the order for dating Michael. I almost always won. Not that night. Tina rarely, if ever, won but she did and she won decisively. Things changed. She was determined. I knew Tina when she got determined. It didn’t matter that she let me date Michael the next month. It mattered that she had a determination about her. I’ve known her for over fifty years and when she makes her mind up about something, it rarely ends in disappointment. Still, I had him for the first month. I would take what I could get and enjoy it.

It was a wonderful month. Just wonderful. And it flew by. My promise to play a Bösendorfer, a wonderful piano, for Artie at Ocean Music changed my life. That night I didn’t play for Jadok or Artie or the rest of the curious. I played for Michael. Artie called him my man and it gave me goosebumps. I hardly remember the interview for TV or my conversation with anyone else. Just Michael. The rest didn’t matter. Later that night, when he made love to me and told me he was simply trying to make me feel as good as I must have made the piano feel – well, that changed everything, too. I’d been told to play with emotion; to uncork it, Jadok had said. Michael showed me what that meant in a way I wouldn’t have imagined. It changed how I played forever and it undoubtedly helped my scholarship chances. It cemented how I felt about Michael. The innocent emotions of a fifteen-year-old.

By the end of that month, I knew my whole future. Of course, I didn’t but I thought I did. It was so clear to me that it simply had to be clear to everyone else. I couldn’t understand why LuAnn would date him when the outcome was so obvious. She was wasting her time and mine. She did anyway and for the next two months my emotions went on a roller coaster ride. I went through them all. I loved Michael as much as I knew how to love. But I hated him for dating LuAnn but that didn’t last long. I knew he would because he said he would. I hated LuAnn for not seeing that he was mine. But she was enjoying herself so much and they seemed so good together. I hated it.

And then I had a long talk with Michael’s mom. What an amazing woman. She was so kind and understanding. We talked about everything. She told me about her own dating experiences and emotions and how they had completely consumed her. She understood. She encouraged me and built me up, reminding me of what an incredible Autumn I was having. She told me how deeply Michael cared for me and that LuAnn would be my friend for life. I couldn’t hate her for wanting what I wanted. I tried to talk her into intervening on my behalf but of course she wouldn’t.

When Tina started her month with him, things changed quickly. It seemed that even after an amazing month, LuAnn’s chances vaporized within the first few days. I know now that wasn’t the case but it seemed so. I still held out hope but it seemed that Tina had the inside track and her choice to date Michael last would pay off. Tina’s a lifelong friend but this was different and we both knew it. Michael was such a sharp contrast from the boys she or her sisters had dated and she wanted that for herself. I understood and wished I could be an encouragement to her, too, but I just couldn’t. For the first, and only time in my life, I wanted my best friend to fail and I hated myself for feeling that way. Oh, but I wanted her to fail. We hardly spoke that month. I didn’t have Michael and I didn’t have the ear of my best friend. I was miserable.