Chapter 5: Grand Ole Opry

24 April 2015

I stayed in Florida a month too long. It was great fun to sit on the beach and watch the butts of cute college girls all through March and it was great when Maddie came down to join me for beach time. Of course, the second week of spring break was nothing like the first. The entire population changed over. No one knew me and they weren’t interested in the old guy who sat in the shade.

The real problem was writing. By the end of the first week of April, I’d simply trashed the entire first fifty thousand words of El Rancho del Corazón. I’d decided it was time to give people an out from Living Next Door to Heaven at the end of high school. The conclusion to The Rock was a great ending point. There would be a bunch of people clamoring for a continuation, and I had the story arc set for twenty more years with the kids, but making that much time interesting is a bitch.

I’ve seen it in a lot of stories. You can sustain a ‘diary’ type of story for a while, but no one has a life that is interesting every day. So, you end up manufacturing interesting things to keep the story lively. One author either shoots someone or knocks up another girlfriend. Another author introduces a new sex partner every week. A third author breaks up with someone every week. The essence is that you end up with teenagers who are the world’s greatest lovers, get fabulously wealthy, and can kill bad guys with impunity. Just who we all want to be, but I can’t go there. At least not all the time. Brian had already accumulated more lovers than most people do in a lifetime. If he got any more, he needed to start losing some.

I have an Excel workbook that I keep track of plot developments and characters in. At the end of LNDtH1, I already had a cast list of 236 characters. That spreadsheet included names, when they were introduced, and a brief description. I’d decided to start releasing the series as eBooks and the names I’d used for several characters just wouldn’t fly for that. So, there was a column for name changes. There were nearly thirty spreadsheets in the workbook covering everything from class schedules, tournament brackets, and seating arrangements at parties, to birthdays, clan organization, and housing. I had a calendar timeline for every part of the story. The spreadsheet was open on my desktop all the time. Sometimes I had to crosscheck the list of names to be sure I hadn’t left a lover out at the dining table or in bed.

In a desperate effort to keep everything straight in my mind, I even created Outlook calendars for the story so I could record what was happening and when things were coming up. I was desperately writing. The last chapter of Part 1 had posted and people were waiting for the first chapter of Part 2. And here I was, tossing the whole thing out and starting over.

To keep people from being upset that I wasn’t posting, I started releasing Blackfeather on the first of April. People were enjoying the story, though I’d changed massive amounts of it. One of the saddest things I had to do was cut Mandy from the story. I hoped I could bring her into the next story. And Aubrey became a major character. And I was wishing I could swing back through Laramie and renew my acquaintance with both.

I was feeling overwhelmed.

A Long Time Ago: Sex and the Single Man

I should know all about the dangers of sex as a form of stress relief. Been there, done that.

I say that I finished my PhD when I started teaching playwriting and tech directing at a small college. In reality, I still had to defend my dissertation and I was getting pretty stressed out. I’d designed and built 24 shows in 24 months. I wrote my dissertation. I was a teaching assistant. I’d been divorced. And I had a couple of relationships that were off the charts. And none too stable. Toss in the fact that I’d had an auto accident and totaled my car.

Carly and Rose knew about each other. Not by name, but they knew I was seeing and sleeping with another woman when I had time to sleep with anyone. Rose had put it in a nutshell at the end of the summer.

“Ari, you can’t expect me to fulfill all your sexual needs. For Pete’s sake, if I’m who you turn to for sex all the time, pretty soon all we’ll have is sex.” I wasn’t sure what Rose wanted other than sex because whenever we got together, we headed straight for bed.

And it was great!

About twice a month. That was all the time we had to spare for each other with our busy schedules. She was rising fast in her company, selling medical equipment for a big manufacturer. It kept her traveling because her territory covered most of the eastern half of the U.S. I’d get a call—yes, she called me from across the hall—and Rose would tell me she had to catch a plane for Richmond or Miami or Detroit in the morning and was stressing out while she was packing. I’d go to her apartment—only twenty feet away—and dutifully spend ten minutes approving each item she put in her suitcase. We’d zip it up and put it by the door and then rush to bed. It was predictable. We’d hit the sheets about one in the morning and try to satisfy each other’s cravings in every position we could think of before we went to Perkins Pancake House for breakfast about four-thirty. We’d hold each other, laugh, and feed each other. Then I’d take her to the airport. Sometimes I didn’t know when she got back. I’d see her in the hall two weeks later, drag her into my apartment, and we’d fuck desperately for a few hours before she had to hit the road again.

“Ari, you have to have other people to enjoy. I do.”

Oh. I guess I didn’t know that.

Carly invited me to her house and I helped her with her yard sale. Everything had to go. Carly was moving to Denver and then LA.

“There’s no future for a street performer in Minneapolis,” she said. “It’s too cold for eight months of the year. I have to get to a warmer climate. You’ll come and visit me, won’t you?” Of course I would! Sometime. If she’d call and tell me where she was.

But she was such a wonderful lover. When we were together, the world disappeared. We just weren’t going to be together any longer.

Rose even suggested once that we all three get together for a night, but Carly wasn’t interested in having another woman around. Just didn’t do anything for her.

I was trying to teach and put yet another show on stage. And into my office walks this retro-looking glamour girl and says she’s my student assistant.

Six weeks later, we were in the light booth at midnight the day before a show opened and I was also supposed to defend my dissertation. Her bib overall work clothes had been shed and she was doing a four-point back bridge while my cock was being treated to a very steamy eighteen-year-old pussy.

Stress relief.

I survived the defense and got back to the theater two hours before curtain time.

“Please don’t say that was the only time we’re going to have sex. I’d kill myself if I thought it was a one-night stand,” Anabel Lee said when she cornered me in the office.

Red lights flashed. Arms waved. “Danger, Will Robinson. Danger!”

Three months later I was fired for having an inappropriate relationship with a student. Six months after that, we were married.

Not once did the stress let up.

“What are you using for birth control?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

Fuck!

“Well, if you want a replay of last night, get yourself down to Planned Parenthood and get on something.”

She did. I bought a box of condoms. The next time we fucked, I shot her full of contraceptive foam before I put on a condom and rode her to mutual satisfaction. Repeatedly.

Belle wasn’t a virgin when we got together, but until the day we were married, I had an unlimited supply of teenage pussy. She was always willing, usually initiating. I hadn’t had an eighteen-year-old since ... I guess she was the only eighteen-year-old I’d ever had. I was a twenty-year-old sophomore in college before I had intercourse the first time and Melody was twenty-two. Sex with Belle was great.

Until we were married. From that point, sex was on an as-needed basis, and she didn’t need it unless I’d just bought her a diamond pin, a car, a house, artwork, antiques, clothes, or whatever her eye landed on that she desired.

In my defense... Nolo contendere. I had no defense. I was a fucking idiot and Belle had me wrapped around her little finger. Whatever she wanted, I’d do to fuck that hot wet box again.

Belle quit school and went to work because we needed more money for more things. Besides, her professors were all idiots who didn’t know what they were talking about. The same proved to be true of her bosses. None of them knew how to do their jobs. Neither did I.

“I can’t pay these bills,” she said, dumping them on my desk. “I’m going to file for bankruptcy.” I couldn’t pay her bills, either. Community property. I filed bankruptcy. When I took her latest diamond brooch back to the jeweler to settle the debt, she looked daggers at me and didn’t speak for a week.

Sex isn’t a cure for stress.

Back to Florida

I just needed to write. There was no place better than a nudist park to settle in and isolate myself so I could really focus on getting this book ready to post.

I escaped Florida and when I was settled in The Woods, I found I was the only one there until the music festival over the weekend. It was just what I needed, and I burned through the rest of LNDtH2, book six: El Rancho del Corazón. My editors were turning the chapters back to me and cleaning up my mess. I formatted them and started uploading them the twenty-first of May.

The music festival was quieter this year than last. It goes through cycles and this one had fewer people attend than the last one. I didn’t disturb anyone when I went out to grill thick slabs of bacon at six in the morning. I’d laid off the Fireball the night before and smoked only one cigar. I was focused again. That’s all it took.

I hit the road again with book six pretty much in the can and a good run at starting book 7, Hearthstone Entertainment. I cut north through Atlanta and camped at the Stone Mountain Park. It’s a beautiful park with a lovely RV campground. The park is beautiful, but I had to look on Wikipedia in order to find reference to its massive granite carving. It wasn’t in the State Park website.

The memorial park features a carving in the mountain of Stonewall Jackson, Jefferson Davis, and Robert E. Lee. It’s part of the ‘Southern heritage’. The roads in the park are named after these rebel leaders. This park was where the second Ku Klux Klan was founded in 1915 and given an easement with perpetual right to hold celebrations as they desired. Because the lynching of Leo Frank that occurred when the second clan was founded and the burning of a cross in the park are part of the Southern heritage. There was some debate going on as to whether the carving should be removed along with the Confederate Flag and other accoutrements of the Civil War, but this was all defeated because this is part of Southern heritage.

I don’t care. The one thing I discovered during two tours through the South was that no one won the Civil War. In fact, the longest undefended international border in the world runs right through the middle of the United States, starting on the Mason Dixon Line. We are two different countries with a common government.

It did get me thinking, though. We should probably have a memorial statue to Osama Bin Laden in New York City. There should probably be a street named Saddam Hussein Boulevard. On the Lower East Side, we should probably erect a memorial statue to Adolf Hitler. After all, our defeated enemies are part of our national heritage.

I take things to extremes sometimes. Who would ever think it is a good idea to put up a memorial to an enemy of the United States?

I moved north into Tennessee.

I avoided Knoxville.

23 May 2015

I wasn’t sure about what to do with Ella. We’d talked and I promised we would get together when I came through Nashville. I camped at a beautiful state park about two hours southeast of the city. I wasn’t making a pilgrimage to see Graceland or the Grand Ole Opry. The only reason I had to go to Nashville was to see Ella.

We met for lunch on Saturday at Chili’s. I know. That’s not exactly Ruth’s Chris Steak House. I wasn’t really trying to impress Ella. I didn’t think. But I really like Chili’s baby back ribs. And I wanted a casual environment where we could meet and just talk.

I got a hug and a kiss on the cheek when we met outside the restaurant. I tried not to trap her in my arms, but that peach-scented conditioner she uses just rocketed my sensory memories back to the nights she spent in my trailer in Fort Myers. Ella isn’t a small girl. I don’t mean that she’s fat or extremely busty, but she stands about five-eight and probably 135 pounds. I could pick her up and carry her, but not too far. In that regard she reminds me a lot of Treasure.

We caught up on what had been happening over the past two months. She was pleased with her progress. She was working on her Master’s in Computer Science and was already way beyond me. I left that crap six years ago and hadn’t stayed current since. Her phone probably had more computing power than my laptop. I told her where I’d been and what I’d seen. It was pleasant, but pretty superficial.

“How long are you staying around?” Ella asked.

“Couple days. I don’t have much of a schedule,” I answered.

“I need more time.”

“What?”

“I can’t go from a week of treating you like a fantasy dad—well, sometimes just as a fantasy—to seeing you two months later and jumping into bed to have sex with you. I need more time.”

“Ella, I didn’t come here to have sex with you,” I said.

“You don’t like me?”

“Why do women always do that?” I sighed. There are some worlds in which the hero of the story would simply say, ‘I don’t need this shit, ‘ and leave. Isn’t that what strong males do in all the stories? But I did need this shit in a way. I like people and I liked Ella.

“Do what?”

“Jump to the worst possible conclusion when a man says something. I say I didn’t come to have sex with you and you say I don’t like you. After you’ve just said that you need more time before that,” I said. I stared her in the eye until she looked away. See? I am an alpha male.

“Well?” she whispered.

“I came to see you. Did you think I came here to see Elvis?”

“We could if you want to.”

“No. Hell, no! Ella, there was no reason—zero—for me to come to Nashville except to see you. If I didn’t like you, I’d be in Kentucky by now.”

“I’m sorry, Ari. I just ... I like you.” She heaved a huge sigh. “I thought my so-called stepmom was an idiot because she was good looking and could have had any guy at college, but she chose to fall into the arms of my old father. Way more than twice her age. I just figured she must be a gold-digger. Why else would a 22-year-old girl sleep with a 50-year-old man? It’s obvious, right? Except it isn’t. She fell in love with him. Even my mother has grudgingly accepted that the two of them are happy together. Happier than she was with him,” Ella said.

“There are problems in any relationship that involves two generations. Or more. But I really don’t expect you to fall in love with me. I don’t expect us to have a sexual relationship. I like you. I thought maybe you wanted to spend a little time with me. Have dinner. Give me a hug. I...” She was about two years older than my daughter. Fuck! “I liked holding you, even as a daddy figure. I just didn’t come with any expectations.”

A Long Time Ago: Great Expectations

I think everyone enters their first relationship thinking it will last forever. I know some folks who never dated anyone but their spouse. Never kissed anyone else. Never screwed around. And it’s not about ‘staying loyal.’ These are people who simply never considered or wanted to consider any other future.

Summer camp was a big deal when I grew up. Everyone went to at least a week of camp. I usually went to two or three. That first summer after I moved and left all my friends behind—what few there were—I was thrown into a cabin of new kids from the new school I was going to attend. I’d recently had my appendix out—that’s another adventure for the stories—so I wasn’t moving as fast as I should be, but I was technically healed so when Jon suggested that we go shoot some hoops, I was all for it. Another couple guys who went to a school that had been on the losing side of the IHSAA basketball tournament in the spring when Tippecanoe Valley was in the final four and St. Joe Valley had made the sweet sixteen, met us on the court. Two-on-two. We might as well have been playing football. We still beat them. Heidi and Rachel watched our game, which was the only reason I could think of that we had won. The four of us hung out and sat together when we ate dinner.

Church camps have all kinds of special services and such. After evensong, there is quiet time when no one is supposed to speak for half an hour. Some kids would find a place where they simply couldn’t be heard easily and then go on with their dinner conversations. Others took it very seriously and just sat in the chapel for thirty minutes. And the vast majority just wandered about, sometimes signing something to someone and sometimes just going to bed. Of course, there were a few who snuck away to make out. At almost sixteen, I wasn’t one of those.

My total experience with girls was in ignorance. Cassie and I had walked in the woods and sometimes held hands when we were little. Betts had let me look and touch her between her legs. Jessica had made sure my hands touched her breasts as they passed and she rubbed against my cock. That was it. Each was little more than a vague memory and had been far too fleeting.

Thursday night after evensong, I smiled at Heidi as we stood to leave the chapel. She fell into step beside me. Who knew it was so easy to pick up a girl? I was panicked. I gestured toward the lake to suggest taking the long way back to our cabin and she nodded. It was still going back to our cabin, but there was a much shorter route by way of the road. Heidi never spoke, but even if she had, I wouldn’t have heard her. The noise of my heart beating in my ears would have drowned it out.

As we walked, Heidi stayed close to me. Really close. Then the back of her hand touched the back of my hand. It was electric. First contact! And we stayed that way. We walked all the way back to the cabin with the backs of our hands touching each other. It was not until we opened the door and went in where all the other kids were breaking silence that I became aware of any other sensations in my body. All my awareness for the past twenty minutes had been on that square inch of skin that was touching Heidi.

We all had our hot chocolate and headed to the boys’ room or the girls’ room for lights out. I lay in my bunk with the back of my hand up against my face trying to smell her presence. I kissed the spot where we’d touched as if somehow I was kissing cells of her skin that had transferred to my hand. I dreamed of what it was like to have a girlfriend.

Mind you, neither of us had said anything about being boyfriend or girlfriend. Neither of us had said anything. But, of course if you hold hands with a girl, that makes her your girlfriend, right?

We didn’t have time to talk on Friday. You don’t set three hundred hormonally charged teens loose without some structure of what we had to do and when. Adolescent group dynamics being what they were, girls still tended to cluster together during activities like swimming, so the guys played volleyball or basketball. I was the only one of our church group who was in the theater institute portion of the camp. I don’t think I’d ever looked forward to a chapel service so much as evensong that night.

We didn’t sit next to each other. I glanced down the pew at Heidi and caught her eye. She smiled and dropped her head. I could see her blush from four seats away. I bowed my head and felt the crimson rush climb up my cheeks. Being the last night they had us, evensong was extra long. There were professions of faith and dedication of kids who declared they were going into the ministry or becoming missionaries. I always wondered how much of that stuck. I’m sure some of them actually followed through.

After the service, quiet time was supposed to last the rest of the night. I waited at the end of the pew as my friends filed out and Heidi glanced at me as we walked out together. We just kept walking down toward the beach and turned toward the point instead of the cabin. The backs of our hands came together like they were magnets. While we stood looking at the full moon over the lake, our fingers interlaced. Our hands were still back to back, but this was a definite and deliberate holding of hands.

There have been very few times in my life when I experienced such a complete enjoyment of a simple, sensual experience. I honestly couldn’t tell you about my first kiss. I think it was Jill. I can’t imagine who else it could have been. She loved to kiss. But when I stop to think about it decades later, I can still feel the touch of Heidi’s hand on the back of mine.

The first week of school was the next time I saw Heidi. I was the new kid in town and decided to try to fit in by playing football. Half the guys in the school played football so we had both varsity and B-Team. I can’t remember when they started calling the B-Team junior varsity. I’m pretty sure it was sometime after I left for college.

Heidi saw me wandering around the hall looking for my geometry class and led me to the room. When class was over, we sat together at lunch. Craig and Lola sat next to us.

“Did you?” Lola whispered to Heidi. Heidi shook her head. “Do it! Do it!” I looked at Craig and he shrugged his shoulders. I found out pretty quickly that Craig had been Lola’s boyfriend since sixth grade and the two were almost always seen together. Heidi turned to me.

“There’s a party out at Ross’s farm Saturday night,” she said. “It’s just a fall party. Nothing big. Lots of people from our class will be going. Would you like to go?”

“Sure,” I said, then thought about what I’d just said. “Um ... with you?”

“Yeah,” Heidi whispered.

“I have to get permission from my parents. I’m pretty sure Mom would drive us. Can I pick you up?” Heidi nodded her head and the bell rang for next period.

My first date! I’d just turned sixteen and I was actually going on a date. I’d tried to date my freshman year at St. Joe Valley, but all the girls insisted that their fathers wouldn’t let them date until they were sixteen. I found out many years later that wasn’t always the case, but up until this point I’d never deliberately escorted one girl to an event of any kind. Mom scowled when I asked her and got on the phone to Ross’s parents to confirm that there was really a party and that I was invited. How embarrassing! But finally, she agreed to drive and pick us up at 10:30 to take us home.

I got a stern lecture from my Dad after I finished mowing the lawn Saturday afternoon. There was never a ‘sex’ talk with my parents. And believe me, Dad never mentioned the birds and bees. It was simpler than that. I was told that if he ever found out I’d molested a girl, behaved inappropriately toward her, or got drunk, he would use his belt on my backside until I had to be hospitalized. Period.

I went to the door to pick up my date, opened the car door for her, and went around to the other side to get in so she didn’t have to slide over. We sat on opposite sides of the back seat all the way to the party. I got out first and opened her door. I said goodnight to my parents, both of whom had escorted us.

I wouldn’t understand for many years what it meant for a parent to set their sixteen-year-old loose on a first date.

But there was a party.

This was also the first teen party I’d been to. Ross’s farm had the typical layout of a huge two-story farmhouse, a big backyard, barn, other buildings and sheds, dogs that were barking all the time. The barn had Ross’s family name painted on the gable with the words, ‘Est. 1869’. His family had lived there for a long time.

An extension cord ran out of the house to a big radio on the porch and it was tuned to WLS in Chicago, blasting out across the yard. There were a couple coolers of Cokes and a picnic table laden with chips and dip. It wasn’t a dinner party. We talked to our classmates and played a little volleyball. There was a huge security light on the barn and a porch light. Otherwise, the night started to close in. That was when ‘hide and seek’ was announced. Heidi and I took off and found a bush to hide behind.

We’d been laughing and having a good time but, of course, we needed to be quiet or we’d be found right away. I felt Heidi’s hand touch mine and this time our fingers interlinked palm-to-palm. From that point, I couldn’t tell you anything that happened at the party up to the time my parents arrived promptly at ten-thirty to take us home. I just know that I never let go of her hand, even when we were caught and had to be ‘it’ for a turn.

I won’t pretend these country parties were all innocent like I was. I was still at that point where I was overwhelmed by the fact that I was with a girl and she held my hand. I knew there were certain ‘obvious’ hiding places where the couple that was it was never supposed to seek in. I eventually knew that the birth of Roxie’s baby was almost exactly nine months from that night. But, of course, she’d dropped out of school in March and married Steve during the summer.

But that Indian Summer night holding Heidi’s hand while we hid behind a bush was indelibly scribed in my memories.

Our high school football field didn’t have lights. We played on Friday afternoon right after school. Craig and Lola walked with us out to the bleachers and we sat together. Heidi laid her hand in mine. It was a really nice, comfortable feeling.

“Wow! That was quick,” Lola said looking at our joined hands. Craig was sitting there with his hand palm up on his knee next to Lola, but she was ignoring it. He looked at me with a plaintive expression. Heidi and I both giggled.

“So?” I said. Teenagers are so articulate. Lola heaved a big sigh and put her hand in Craig’s.

There were school dances after some of the games. That was the extent of our dating. Most of the time, we had separate rides home. I expected that this would go on for a long time and that someday we’d get around to kissing and stuff. The stuff was a little ill-defined, but I knew enough that things were supposed to progress beyond holding hands. I expected them to.

Heidi and I never broke up. Somehow things changed slowly and when we came back to school after the holiday break, Heidi and I were no longer a couple. We still saw each other at school. We still went to games and dances. We just weren’t together. The expectations sort of evaporated.

I still think back to those times and if I’m really relaxed in the evening with a glass of wine, I sometimes feel the soft brush of skin against the back of my hand.

Back to Ella

We made up a Bible verse a long time ago. “Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he shall not be disappointed.” It’s in the Book of Hezekiah. Look it up.

I had expected that after seventy-five years of happy marriage, I would die in Treasure’s arms. I seriously hadn’t expected anything since our divorce.

“Can we spend more time together this weekend without expectations?” Ella asked. “I sort of jumped the gun and got us tickets to the Opry tonight.”

“Miss Ella, I would be delighted to accompany you,” I said. “But you are stuck with me looking the way I am. I can’t drive two hours out and two hours back to change clothes.”

“Well, there is a dress code at the Opry,” she laughed. “You have to wear something.”

A Long Time Ago: Short Wave

One of the benefits I got as a newspaper carrier was scrip. Carriers got points for new customers, on-time delivery, even for selling term life insurance. Those points were turned into scrip that a couple dozen stores around town would take in lieu of money. One of those stores was the local electronics and television store.

The first thing I bought with my scrip was a five-band transistor radio. AM/FM/Weather and two Short Wave bands. I was fascinated by the various stations I could pick up from all across the country. One of my favorites was WLS in Chicago with DJs ‘Ringo’ Ron Riley and Larry Lujack. All rock & roll all the time. Another was listening to Wolfman Jack on XERB out of Mexico. But then there was short wave. It was amazing to pick up broadcasts from Quito, Ecuador and Radio Free Europe. But most amazing of all was Saturday night at the Grand Ole Opry.

I’d head for bed early on Saturdays—I was way too young to be going out on the weekend—and carefully tune my radio. I’ve no idea what station had intercepted the signal and broadcast by short wave. Maybe it was WSM itself. But Grand Ole Opry shows could last until midnight. I’m pretty sure my dad came into my bedroom to turn my radio off after I’d fallen asleep on Saturday night.