My Funny Valentine Ch. 01

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Too much expectations for love day.
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Part 1 of the 7 part series

Updated 09/22/2022
Created 10/17/2013
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maxicue
maxicue
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Chapter One

Happy Valentine's Day 1980

I could look out the window. I could look at the window. I could look in the window. That day I did all three.

Snow covered the city street like a bleached sheet, a thin clean layer. White would become as gray as the gunmetal sky but grimier eventually. Even in the congested metropolis it would take awhile. Not much exhaust fumes altered virgin snow in the quiet one way street that led no one anywhere with any convenience beyond itself. And few residing there owned those pollutants. Few could afford them and even fewer really needed them. City buses and subway trains got you anywhere needed getting to; even places beyond the edges of the borough, beyond the water that defined it as an island.

It could make you feel peaceful, the gently floating snowflakes, if you allowed it. I wished I could. I felt too upset.

The pane held my pain in. No one strolling by outside could see my pained eyes and avoid them. No one could hear my sighs or my sobs or my shouts of frustration that would tear at the interior walls of my larynx even if I did let them out instead of keeping them inside building tension in my throat and my chest while fueling the burn in my stomach.

The pane, held by an old frame scraped and painted many times, had a dinginess to it that spoke of age as well, as if time itself became a filter in which to view the outside world. It really just needed a good cleaning.

The pane and its frame reflected the room they held within, the dinginess and the age, multiple paint jobs hiding aging walls of the shotgun apartment, an exact replica of hundreds in the block long row house. Only décor, furniture and furnishings and knick knacks and pictures, made it different; made it mine. And to tell you the truth, there weren't a lot of those things. Maybe the absence of clutter defined it.

The pane, as the dark sky got darker before streetlights illuminated the street, became more and more reflective, becoming a mirror holding me as its central image.

Me the morose. Me the despondent. Me the fucking whiner.

I had time to study my reflection. I had nothing better to do.

I saw the untamable, thick, wavy brunette hair reaching my shoulders as it framed my face, its thickness creating a sort of lion's mane, which is what I often called it, especially when even longer than it was.

The face it framed looked elongated, an oval thin at the sides. The elongation continued at the nose standing out long and thin, a combination of my dad's long thick Jewish nose and my mom's smaller straighter WASP nose. The elongated visage also reflected the body that held it: long and thin. Six feet six inches to be exact, including the head of course, but not the extra inch or so of hair.

My fairly wide mouth with its narrow subtly purple lips stretched quite a bit wider when I smiled and created dimples like parentheses below my slightly pronounced cheekbones. In my youth it had been deemed cute, this effect. Less so as I aged and my skin tightened and matured, but somehow still there despite my height and long face making cuteness less likely. I always found cute girls to be of short stature. Cuteness attracted me in females despite the great difference in height between them and me. So me being called cute seemed odd, but I'd heard it a few times.

My mouth also helped the expressiveness of my face. I had a hard time hiding emotions. But it was the eyes, despite their smallish size, that did most of the expressing. A blue/gray hue, they seemed to emphasize every emotion, whether cheerful or sad, playful or serious. They'd water at the most inopportune times; very unmanly.

Unfortunately my eyes revealed seriousness most of the time. I found seriousness not to be conducive to seductiveness. Along with confidence, which, being both shy and unsure (maybe the same thing), I lacked, women seemed to prefer something else than what I offered; the more playful man, one who could make them laugh.

I did have my moments though when I freed myself of seriousness or self-consciousness and presented an attracting front to ladies. Out of those moments I gained lovers, sometimes for just a night, sometimes for a few weeks or months. Only once did it last longer than that, and that had been my high school sweetheart. We had given each other our virginity and shared our lives for two years until I abandoned her to move east to college and then, quitting college, to Manhattan.

By and large, that was the only relationship I ended. The others the women abandoned me.

Which brings me back to the moment of staring forlornly at my refection in the mirrored window.

I hated Valentine's Day. It creates the worst expectation: love celebrated. Monica, my current (or so I thought) lover, never showed up. She never called. My calls went to her answering machine. After three times, I thought I'd be bordering on annoying or worse if I left another message.

We planned to spend February 14th together, walking hand in hand across town, from East to West Village. We'd stop and shop at boutiques and record stores. We'd share lunch together and then a really nice dinner and then a concert of one of my favorite (and I thought hers) jazz pianists, McCoy Tyner. I had two tickets burning a hole in my pocket.

She never showed up. I waited for her to be late. I waited an hour to make the first call. Two hours later I knew I had been abandoned. Fuck Valentine's Day. I wanted to die it hurt so much.

Monica was smart. Monica was beautiful. Monica was playful. Maybe too playful. She loved to flirt. She loved to drink and get high, mostly pot but anything else really. I wasn't interested or could not afford much of anything else. I could afford nickel bags of pot at my friendly neighborhood Puerto Rican social club. Drinks were on the house at the bar/restaurant I worked at at the end of my shift, and the tips let me buy her drinks at the afterhours club we enjoyed.

The post work drinking happened exclusively on Friday and Saturday, at least with her. She worked days during the week uptown at a publisher as a receptionist. She hoped to move to assistant editor or assistant agent or something. Her roommate had become an editor that way. In fact her roommate had gotten her the job when she advanced.

Her roommate. Jill. They shared a small two bedroom apartment only a couple blocks from their place of work on the Upper East Side.

They met in graduate school, a SUNY school on Long Island, both studying for their Masters in English Lit.

They couldn't have been more different. Monica was tall and lithe with lovely handful breasts and soft handful buttocks. Jill barely broke five feet in height and filled that height with curves. I wasn't sure of the dimensions of those curves as she tended to hide them in loose clothing. Even her power suits fit loosely.

And they had opposite temperaments: party girl as opposed to serious and studious.

During the month and a half of our relationship (Monica and I met drunk at a New Year's Eve party, fucked all night and made love the next night enabling it to continue) on my days off during the week, most often I'd be invited to spend the evening and night at their apartment. Those evenings occurred no more than twice a week and often less. Sometimes we only saw each other on weekends. We talked on the phone though almost every other evening between when she got home and I went to work.

On those occasions when I visited, if we didn't order in pizza or Chinese, either Jill or I cooked. Mom instructed me on cooking when I decided to quit school and live on my own. She was (and still is) a good cook albeit with simple fare. I did well with her lessons.

Jill, on the other hand, cooked with flair. With every meal she created an adventure. She always experimented and Monica and I were her guinea pigs. Not that we minded. Rarely did she miss. And she did this with the healthiest of foods, defying the blandness they usually conveyed with interesting and unusual combinations of foodstuffs and herbs and spices. By her last meals, I couldn't stop myself from being assistant chef to learn from this master.

And so Jill and I got to know each other in the kitchen and at the table. And in the morning she inevitably joined me for breakfast, waking up earlier than her roommate.

"How early do you wake up?" I asked her.

"Very," she told me. "I jog before I shower."

"Really? Could I join you?" I asked. I used to jog, but hadn't since moving to the city. The hard sidewalks of the East Village just didn't seem conducive. Being near Central Park would make it much better.

I couldn't believe the barely heard response, "Jog or shower?" but saw the blush.

"Um, jogging?" I replied. I was dating her roommate after all.

"I'd like that," she said timidly, a little louder. She said most things timidly unless we'd had a couple glasses of wine at dinner.

I surprised her at six-thirty the next morning (I stayed up after work, not needing to sleep until eight to wake up at four and head for the dinner/night shift at the restaurant). She had thought it would be those mornings when I stayed the night with Monica.

Her smile beamed at me once she recovered. I hadn't realized how cute she was until that moment. I guess I was distracted by Monica's beauty and vivaciousness.

In the last couple weeks before Monica stood me up, I ended up talking to Jill when I called their apartment as much as I talked to my girlfriend.

"She's working late," Jill would tell me. "She's trying to impress the bosses."

Any doubts I had soon got lost in the easy conversations Jill and I shared.

Thoughts of Jill began a slow dissolve of the gloom of that unfortunate mid February evening. The anger that shared that sentiment began taking over. The bitch stood me up! And I realized something as well, perhaps out of thoughts of Jill or perhaps just reflecting on Monica and my relationship. Maybe I never loved the bitch. Maybe we just fucked well.

The phone rang.

I didn't want to answer it. I didn't want to hear any of the bitch's excuses probably said in a drunken slur.

"Joe, pick up," I heard the answering machine say. "If you're there, please pick up. It's Jill."

I nearly knocked the phone over picking it up. "Jill?"

"I just got back from work," she told me. "I just got your messages. I love my roommate to death, Joe, but I know how flighty she is. I just never knew what a fucking cunt she could be. I'm sorry."

"Why should you be sorry?" I asked her with a chuckle. I never heard Jill swear so strongly.

"I don't know," she chuckled. "I guess I'm sorry for you getting fucked over. You sound okay though."

"I haven't been. Not until now." Our conversation went silent for a moment. Jill understood. "I still have a reservation at the Tapas Lounge and two tickets to the Village Vanguard."

"When's the reservation?" she asked me.

"Forty-five minutes? Do you know where it is?"

I gave her the West Village address.

"Shit. That doesn't give me much time," she sighed.

"Time for what?" I asked her.

"I'm a girl, Joe."

"I noticed," I said.

Another silence.

"See you there," she said.

"Can't wait," I replied.

********************

After dressing much quicker than I presumed Jill did in my best duds, black slacks, black fitted shirt, black leather shoes that felt like my usual walking shoes on my feet (thanks to some Italian intelligence), my full length black wool trench coat, and for color, a cashmere blue/gray scarf that matched my eyes (ironically bought for me by Monica) and even more colorful my ubiquitous multi striped and colored wool ski hat, the colors subdued enough not to be tacky, which I wore everywhere in winter, I trudged cross-town over a shallow layer of snow that coated the dirty piles along the streets making things look momentarily pristine. I noticed the streets had become wet instead of icy, the temperature a tad above freezing, and figured if Jill chose a taxi rather than mass transit it would be relatively easy driving. I had a feeling though that, unlike Monica, Jill would be a mass transit kind of girl. The subway actually had a stop not more than a block from the restaurant.

I took my time, even stopping at a florist to buy a dethorned white rose, having the counter girl clip it down to a small stem perfect for slipping behind Jill's ear contrasting with her deep black hair. I was lucky they had any left for Valentine's Day.

Nearing my destination I glanced at my antique rectangular Goering watch courtesy of my friend from my home town, an up and coming jeweler and watch fixer, and realized I may have dawdled too long. Stepping up my pace to the midtown midday pace I used to use in my first job delivering manuscripts from a Grand Central copy center, I couldn't halt my momentum, sliding into a petite woman just emerging from the subway who also seemed to be in a hurry. I grabbed her to me to prevent both of us falling and found myself embracing Jill.

"Whoah, sorry," I said before realizing it was her.

"Joe," she squeaked, adrenalized.

It must have been the intensity of the moment, all those roiling emotions beforehand and the startling collision. Whatever it might have been, when I steadied the two of us, I found myself lifting her into my arms and pressing my lips to hers in a passionate kiss. If surprise caused her to resist any, it only lasted a fraction of a second. Our passions equaled. We may have been there for a long while, forgetting where we were or anything else except the kiss, but a moment after I felt the electricity of her tongue tip tapping mine, her lips withdrew and she wriggled just enough to let me know she wished me to drop her to her feet.

"Joe," she breathed, "we're going to be late."

We grinned briefly at each other, hers looked adorable, mine probably goofy, before I took her petite hand in mine and pulled her into walking. "Let's go then," I said.

Maybe 5 minutes late, not nearly late enough to lose our reservation, we ended up waiting several minutes anyway for the big table to clear.

Removing the Tartan patterned scarf that warmed her head and the modest peacoat that warmed her body to hang them on hooks in an alcove beside the entrance revealed Jill in all her glory. She wore a white blouse that hugged her middle and a charcoal gray midlength skirt that clung to her perfect round bottom, full yet somehow pert matching her full yet resilient breasts I could see suggested by an unbuttoned neckline showing firm cleavage and the edges of a black lacy bra. She kept her surprisingly perfect, strong yet not thick legs warm with what looked like black Danskin tights.

Stunned, I murmured, "What have you been hiding?"

She looked worried for some reason. "Too much?" she asked me, her dusky, Northern Mediterranean skin blushing subtly.

"Perfect," I managed to say, leaning down to brush my lips against her naked neck, strong and proud support for her head, revealed because her long hair had been wound on top of her head held together by what looked like crisscrossed white enamel chopsticks. "Let me finish it up," I added, extracting the rose from its bag and sliding it behind her ear.

After I removed my coat and hung it beside hers, she scanned me and told me, "You look great all dressed up. Yummy in fact." Again she blushed.

Leading her to the tapas/alcohol bar, I lifted her onto the remaining stool. "What would you like?" I asked her, still gazing at her in amazement.

"Besides you?" she murmured, barely heard. She glanced quickly behind the bar before returning her gaze back at me. "Ouzo?"

"Sounds good." Hating to look away, I had to to catch the bartender's eye. "Two Ouzo's over ice," I ordered.

"Would you like it on a tab?" asked the pretty Spanish looking lady.

"Yes please," I answered her before returning my gaze to cute perfection.

Like most Americans, Jill's bloodlines mixed. Unlike mine for instance, with its mix of Scotch/Irish and Eastern European Jew that long ago had weaned away most of its Semitic heritage resulting in pretty much Caucasian white, or the more Spanish/Semitic Jewish American Princess beauty of Monica, she looked unique. It came from a blend of one quarter Japanese with one quarter Greek and one quarter Southern Italian and one quarter Scots. The Mediterranean half darkened her skin and softened her hair and broadened her figure. The Asian quarter featured in her eyes, both in their near black irises and in their shape, and in the deep black luster of her hair. The Northern Britain heritage showed in her upturned, almost pug nose and possibly her bee stung lips as well as the subtlest of freckles on her face and chest. The exoticness of her looks had an oddness to it that distracted from what I realized was incredible cuteness and, looking deeper, memorable beauty. Being my favorite attribute of women, the intense cuteness factor did me in.

As we sipped the licorice flavored aperitif, we gazed at each other in an almost staring contest. Like them, we'd end up giggling, or in my case chuckling, but we continued.

Once called to dinner, Jill was surprised that we shared the large round table with four other couples. She understood when the waiter brought us the huge mound of saffron rice filled with delicacies from the sea.

"Paella!" she exclaimed. "I always wanted to try it."

"Me too," I chimed in. "It's supposed to be as good as any in Valencia."

One of the men we sat with raised his glass of deep red wine. "Happy Valentine's Day," he exclaimed.

"Happy Valentine's Day," the rest of us returned tapping wine glasses. Both Jill's and mine contained rich red Spanish house wine.

I spooned up the dish for Jill first, filling her plate with deliciousness. She rubbed my arm as I served her, gaining my attention. "It is a Happy Valentines day after all," she said in her usual quiet voice.

"Very," I grinned, kissing her lightly once I set down her plate. Maybe I didn't hate the day so much after all.

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