We Must Have You In For Tea by Constantine Gochis

 

How to describe them. They are young. She is blonde and comely.  He is darkly handsome. She makes conversation easily. He is always silent. We have met perhaps three times in the elevator. We live on the same floor.

In these brief meetings--perhaps half a minute each--I have learned about her by observation, and more volunteered by her in a charming British accent.

They are newly married. She is a student at a university and is about to take final examinations. Our conversations always end with the same invitation: "When the exams are over, we must have you in for tea."

There is something endearing about her innocence and charm, though I feel she is perhaps a little too convivial on so short an acquaintance. My response is always the same, polite and laconic. There is little time to amplify our conversation. "It will be my pleasure."

One day she was effusively radiant and voluble with joy.

"I passed my exams!" she announced. I half expected her to jump up and down like a child. The encounter ended as before. "We must have you in for tea," she said, but there was nothing more concreted offered.

Her husband was, as before, silent, his head tilted downward.

It was several months since we had met. I assumed they had moved, as our building has been purchased and remodeled. And there has been an exodus of tenants taking flight for fear of a rent raise.

Yesterday, I rode up on the elevator with a young man I did not immediately recognize. I asked him if he had just moved in.

He looked at me with surprise, but did not answer. Then I recognized him. It was the dour husband of the exuberant English girl. We rode to our floor in silence. As we walked to our apartments he spoke suddenly.

"My wife has invited you to tea," he said, his head still inclined downward. I could not ascertain from his terse monotone what his opinion might be on the matter. I probed further.

"Your wife is British. Tea is important to the British."

"Yes," he answered quickly, looking up, his expression suggesting this was a condition he knew something about, and had particular meaning to him. His expression was conspiratorial, even friendly.

"It will be soon," he said, and I felt he had come to a decision about a matter that may have engendered much discussion with his ebullient wife. It is the springtime of their nuptial state.

"I will be my pleasure," I said, in parting. 

Jumping to 2010

The next album I pulled from the vault happened to be from one of my trips to New York and Massachusetts in 2010. I have usually mixed those two locations when I have gone back East to see family and friends. This visit had a special occasion, the graduation of a young friend from high school, and, though I am happy I no longer live there, I am paradoxically perhaps, a proud New Yorker, and from time to time need the infusion of the energy of the place.

I stayed in the area of Marshfield, Ma. which I have done on other visits, this time at a little oceanside place called the Fairview Inn in Brant Rock. As you can see from the picture, it had a splendid view.

The next time, a year or so or more later, when I wanted to stay there, the hotel and restaurant had closed. I stayed that time, around 2014 I think, at a lovely B and B not far away, but not directly on the water.  I was disheartened about so beautiful a hotel not in use, and every so often, I'd check the net to see if maybe some wise soul had reopened it. Before I posted today, I checked, and sure enough, the Fairview appears to be back.  Sounds like the restaurant has also reincarnated. Maybe next trip, a mere thirteen years after that original lovely stay.

Some of the graduates including the person I specifically came to see, Cait, who now is a psychologist, as was her late father. And to the right, her younger brother, Charlie, grandmother Jennie, Janey, and the late John, whose nickname was "Jock" just like the patriarch of the series Dallas. 

I still remember Charlie, then I think a Sophomore in the same school, telling me, before the ceremony that he planned on becoming a businessman. I smiled, and I knew he probably would. He is in the business and financial world now. 

New York, New York, 2010. Bet you already recognize the sites here. Times Square. Grand Central. Radio City. St. Patrick's Cathedral. I usually try to make my visit to St. Pat's, Gothic personified and full of history, maybe not so much as in Europe, but close enough for the colonies. 

And below, a really lousy picture of me, but a really lovely one of my cousin, Carol. 

And, a touch of Central Park. 

Finally, a swizzle stick from the Planet Hollywood that was in Times Square. Don't know if it's there now. The purpose of this photo? Reminder of the last time I saw my friend Noreen, who died only a few months later. I think of her often. What a sweet, kind soul she was. 

Delores II

 My father seems to have adapted the original story embedded in the last blog. Here it is.

DELORES II

Perhaps the original story was a true one.  On the other hand it may have been a writer's attempt to bring the sublime to the ordinary.  Furthermore, this tale also may be fanciful.  I leave the judgment to you.

Well, her name really was Delores.

She was--as I portrayed her in a previous story, lovely. Tall, dark and blue-eyed, trim, touching, vivacious and given to impetuosity regardless of decorum, particularly manifest where decorum is called for--qualities I discovered later. More, anon.

The setting where it all began--for those who look for things I would rather not have you know--was pre-World War II.  In a street lined on both sides with Germanic type Brau Hauses--in what was called Germantown-a little one block long enclave between Second and First Avenue in Manhattan, where there was music and dancing, where the girls came in groups and sat at tables exuding their charms, and the men clustered at the bar surveying the panorama of beauty so as to be ready to make their approaches as soon as the music started. 

I am impelled by nostalgia to name some of these dance palaces.  Those of you who have seen the movie Cabaret will envision the ambience.  They were named as I remember, in part, The Gloria Palast, the Corso, the Platzl, the Grinzin and the Lorelei.

Walking on either side of the street, one could hear, as he rubbed shoulders with Nazi Bund members in uniform, Viennese waltzes and the meticulously timed tangos tht iimposed their rhythmic invitations above the importunate cacophony of traffic.

It was at the Lorelei I saw her first.  She sat alone at a table, a study in casual elegance. Throughout the evening she refused the any suitors asking her to dance with an imperious dismissal. I was intrigued but not brave enough to present myself for summary rejection.  My attraction to her was so strong I determined to employ some stratagem to invite her interest.

I did not attempt to approach her while there was music. I waited for the quiet of an intermission and walked to her table.

Before I could say anything she waved me to a seat.  I was astounded.  More surprisingly, she began to speak. "You want to know why I come here and refuse to dance--yes?"

I had no words in response.

"You want to know why I let you sit--yes?" She had a decidedly foreign accent.  I managed an affirmative nod.

"Vee came here always and vee danced--ant vee held each other close--and then he was gone. 'I go for my country,' he said--'the fatherlant'--ant I hated him and the Fatherlant ant I did that night three year ago, ant I knew he would not come back. . ."

She stopped, taking a deep breath.

"It is three years we are married ant it iss our anniversary.  Then I see you at the bar ant my heart leaps, 'he is back' I say aloud and ven you approach. I am sure it is him so much you resemble--even now vere you sit."

"Come," she said rising, 'you are back, come, vee dance like we used to, come, I want to hold you so you never leave again."

We danced as if we were one.  Her body was close to mine. I could feel her heart pounding against my chest.  I don't know if it was love I felt, but I responded and we danced till the head waiter ushered us out.

"Come," she said. "Vee go home."

We did.  The doorman welcomed her, and me.

"Good evening Madam," he said and looked at me, smiling. "Ah, Herr Meisner, you are back."

There really is not much more to tell.  It was 1940, a time of innocence. There was a war in Europe but it was far away. We had a happy year.  When we were together, she held me close, her fingers on my arm, or holding my hand in the subway, or taxi, or at a party when we agreed to share ourselves socially.

If I withdrew, she would question immediately. "You do not love me," was always her plaint. Her eyes would glisten with a tear or two.

One night as we dined at the crowded Casino in the Park, outdoors, crowded, she cried out suddenly:

"You did not kiss me when you came home," then a preemptory, "kiss me now."

I bent obediently and she responded with such ferocity that the headwait remonstrated with me.

"Please, sir," he admonished.

To be frank, I cannot suggest that there was any severe suffering at the excess affection.  Occasionally, the thought that she really loved someone else raised a shadow in my mind, but the thought was transitory.  I loved her and there was nothing more she could give me that she had not already done.

When I received my notice to report to Governors' Island for military duty, she insisted on coming along. She did not cry. "Come back," she said, simply and clung silently and limp in my arms. We held hands over the restraining chain on the ferry until the moving boat separated us with the cruelty of the inexorable. I watched her forlorn figure fade gradually.

I came back, four years later. She was not there. 

Delores By Constantine Gochis

A Dad story. You know, my father was a very good writer. He should have been officially published. He should I think have been vaguely famous as a writer.  But there you are, sometimes things don't happen that should. Actually, in this world, mostly things don't happen that should, and things happen all too often that shouldn't. I attribute that to the consequences of Original Sin. But I digress.

DELORES

"Do you love me, really?"  It is a question I hear from her--more often, now. Always I assure her, sometimes with words, sometimes with a kiss, fumbling ways men attempt to allay female distress.  I take her in my arms and hold her tight, and glory in the sinuous loveliness of her body against mine, as it was then, long ago and I think, to tell the truth--not that I don't love her--but that I love her more, that I knew her in a different incarnation. She lived in another time and place, and I felt then the way I feel now. I do not tell her where, when and with whom. Surely, she would not understand.

She persists. "Was there someone before me? Was she as pretty as I?"

I could tell her that she was. I could tell her that when we first me I thought that it was a miracle, that she had come back, so remarkable was the resemblance, that it really was Delores who had returned to me after all these years.  But I won't tell.  I simply hold her close and stroke her long black hair.  She is quiescent. 

I feel a tremor of fear. Women sense things. The dread overwhelms me that she knows. I fear that somehow I will lose her for a second time.

But for now, she is asleep.  I lie awake and remember Delores. 

It is a name that has its origins in sadness, and, as it happens it was a time of joy sundered suddenly and turned to sadness.

I saw her first in a Florentine night club that was called, Il Pozzo di Beatrice, The Wall of Beatrice.  She sat alone at a table as if waiting for someone. She was dark haired. More correctly, her tresses were long, ebony. She was dressed elegantly, also in dark shades. A tall glass rested on the table, which she sipped from time to time.  There were no other uniformed men in the establishment.  Like she, the other guests seemed too well caparisoned, too well fed and clothed to be victims of war.

When it became clear the one she expected was not coming, I approached her table and addressed her in my limited Italian. "Are you waiting for someone?"

"For my husband," she said.  My expectations were shattered, but she smiled and told me she had been waiting for him for several years.  She noticed my consternation, laughed and waved me to the empty seat. She continued, "He was reported missing at El Alamein. We used to come here often."  She smiled and looked at me with amusement out of two very wide set blue eyes.  It was at that moment I fell in love.

There is no new story here. We danced in perfect harmony.  We walked together over the old Roman Bridge. We sipped Lacrima Christi on the Fiesole Hill overlooking the Duomo, the domed Cathedral, from the hills where Boccaccio regaled his friends with bawdy stories hundreds of years ago. We took a place abutting the Palazzo Vecchio, the Old Palace, where Michelangelo's David stood. We were in love, in our sanctuary, in the year the war ended, and the whole world was external to our love.

She asked me frequently if I truly loved her, whether she was my first love and would I come back to Italy for her. I promised always that I would.

One day she was gone. She left a note with a single phrase. "I love you but I must go." No explanation, just a sudden departure and inexplicable cruelty. I was distraught. At this point I blotted the memory from my mind and I turned and looked toward Elsa, who had been sleeping next to me.

She was awake. I was unaware she had been watching me for some time.  She looked at me with her very wide set blue eyes. A tear made its way downward. "You were thinking of her!" she exclaimed.

I took her in my arms. She sobbed, "I felt you had gone away somewhere.  It was like a bad dream. Don't ever leave me again, not even in memory!"

I pressed her sinuous body against mine and caressed the jet black hair that fell disordered against my breast, and kissed away the tear.

"There is no her, no yesterday," I assured. "There is only one love in my life."  

I did not say her name.

Memories 2

This little endeavor of posting memories via photos isn't necessarily going to be neat or horribly organized or chronological. It will be kind of like Quantum Leap, you know, that TV show where a scientist goes from place to place within his own lifetime. His job is to help make history better. I really don't have a job here, just memorializing my and other lives. So here is the next in the series. Hopefully I won't exhaust myself with going through and scanning the photographs and give up this little project, along with the other I have been doing sporadically, posting some of my late father's short short stories. These two things alone could keep me busy for the rest of my life, and yep I do get distracted. So, we shall see. 

Today, I shall begin with cats. I have had a large number of them in my life. Here are two of them, Hollywood, and Trouble. Hollywood is the one whose face is being pushed by Trouble in the upper left. Trouble is the one on the window and the stool. Hollywood is the one on the piano bench. I got Hollywood shortly after I moved to Los Angeles in 1981. I had a bed I got at Ortho I think for 200 bucks. I had a small TV. I had my upright piano shipped from New York, which my parents bought in 1963. My uncle Steve had loaned me some motley furniture from his garage, a child's desk on which I studied for the California Bar, and a faux leopard chair that had rollers on it which I enjoyed on the bare in need of repair wood floors before I covered them with rugs. What I really needed was a cat! So off I went with another secretary at the law office I was working at (I worked as a secretary/paralegal until I passed the Bar in California) to Torrance to look at a litter of kittens. Hollywood was the one that climbed up my leg and so it was love immediately. He lived 18 years until 1999. Trouble came in 1989, appearing at my apartment door. I put up flyers to see if anyone owed her as she did have a flea collar, but no one came forward. She was with me until 2008. The two of them looked like siblings but they were not.

Above. My friend Carol at various moments in our friendship including her engagement to her now long time husband.  No doubt there will be more of her on these pages. The top left is Carol in Utah. The other photos are of her beloved Rosebud, a Springer Spaniel. The last two are of our mini trip to Coronado, sometime in the 1990s.

A variety. Photos of my college friend Len, my father, me (one in a kind of Piaf pose no?), and my Aunt Mary.

Gatherings also I think in the early 1990s with various Church friends and acquaintances and my late pastor. Several, Ken, Fr. Heany, Bill McKenna, Patrick Elliot (who became a priest), Daniel Donahue, Bill Parnassus, Gloria Haley Parnassus, Marie Whalen are long gone from our midst. A couple are still around, Donald and Pierre, and Fr. John.

Above, my brief enchantment with sailing. This was a day at Mission Bay with my friend Karen. After that I took lessons for a while down in Long Beach on a 12 or 14 footer without a keel. I learned to tie knots (can't remember one). I took my turn at the tiller. The other student who took his turn capsized us in Mother's Bay. I lost my shoes and my beeper. I was pulled into a motorboat, which by the way, is quite an undignified operation. I drove home without shoes, beeper or a change of clothes. The end of my sailing career, although later I did get a nice ride, with Karen, on a bigger version, that did have a keel, and when it heeled your butt nearly touched the water. 

Memories 1

Long time, no blog. I would have made that the title of this entry, the first for about wow! nearly four months. Lots went on in between, but my current preoccupation is the one I'm focusing on, for now at least, peripatetic soul I seem to be. So, you might ask, what's that?

Well, I've done a little of it before, but now I think I am going to be determined. I have lots of photos from before there was the cell phone and the cloud. And so, seems to me that in the interests of my latest project, paring down, as well as a small bit of familial and friend immortality in so far as such is available on earth, I should make a serious effort to put my photos on line. Will they be there in the year 2100? I am not sure human beings will be here then, or even in the next 20 years, so really, that isn't a big concern. I am just taking the shot. So, for today, a few that I have already downloaded. Do I think people will be interested in the faces of people, some of whom are already long gone, and the rest of us who aren't too far behind statistically speaking? I can only tell you that I find looking at photos of people and places fascinating, places I've never been and people I've never known. I am not unique so I'm guessing there will be people interested in the life of another in photos and memorabilia. So, here is the blog of today, Memories No. 1. I will try to tell you the background or context of each, thus providing a story along with the photos.

Four different shots of several different years. The one at the upper left is my father just after he returned home from World War II. It's one of my favorite pictures of him. I think he was in my mother's apartment she shared with her mother and sisters. He was always handsome but in this stage of his life he had a certain swashbuckling, movie star look, no? Cigarette in hand. You can see from the photo on the upper right that he lost little of his good looks. By this time, he was about 60 years old at an apartment near Fort Independence in the Bronx. My mother had already died, and it was just the two of us. He was wearing a smoking jacket, even then a bit of an anachronism. Besides him is his beloved mandolin. I still have that, at least for now. The photo in the lower left is circa 1979, at the reception for the first wedding of a childhood friend. My father was set up on a blind date around 1978 with this lovely lady, who though much younger than him, shared Greek heritage. She was, she remains, a joy. Their relationship did not work out, as I really wanted it to do, but they remained good friends until he died. She and I are still friends, years after my father's death. She ultimately left New York to be closer to her son. The picture on the lower right is my late mother, circa the late 1940s, in front of the Bronx Lebanon Hospital. She would die there several decades later.

I have few photographs where my father smiles. This is one, probably in the 1980s, or early 1990s. With me. I'm smiling too. 

This photo is just about faded. I was able to retrieve the facial features with the help of my phone's editing tools. These are my father's parents, George and Mary, probably in the late 1940s. My grandfather died before I was born.

My mother so much wanted to be a model. It didn't happen, alas. And she died too young. Here she is about 18.

In about 1992, I decided I wanted some decent pictures of myself to give to friends and family. A prideful enterprise I realize some 30 year later, but I really enjoyed the experience. There was a professional studio at the corner of Holloway and La Cienega at the time. Mostly they did aspiring actors. I might have been the first and only lawyer they ever had ask to do a photo shoot. I don't remember the man's last name but the photographer was the wonderful "Attila". I brought several outfits and I really did do the Vogue thing, making spontaneous poses as he shot a huge roll. I still have the proofs somewhere. When I find them no doubt I'll put them on here. Funny isn't it? I didn't think I looked good in those days. I never thought I did. So much the pity as life goes very fast and then you really don't look good. 

Anyway, I hope you who do stop by enjoy the photo play!

Discordant Sights and Sounds of a Declining Culture by Constantine Gochis

Time for a Dad piece! It's been a while. I get distracted. I get lazy. Today, waiting for a plumbing problem to be resolved (yet again) after just about a month, I had to wait around so an opportunity to read and write and post arose. I have still so much of Dad's writing that has not yet been posted. He alternated in his writing between little stories about his life, about philosophy, personal and otherwise, and political commentary that reflected his increasing distress and anger about the incapacity of our leaders, the domination of the Left over our culture, and the insanity of the destruction of Western Civilization to be replaced by an association of identities obsessed by all permutations of sexuality we are all expected not merely to tolerate (and that is hard enough) but to embrace and celebrate. 

This commentary/observational piece was written in about 2007, based on the references in it. That is 16 years ago. He thought it was bad, then. Even he, a keen observer of the cultural wars, could have no idea how bad it would get. I have softened some of his language. It is one of the paradoxes in the behavior of our censors that unvarnished expression is allowed for approved groups and individuals, but not for the unapproved or their opinions. Nothing my father wrote in an unvarnished way would be forbidden in say an Oscar show or movie script or streamed television show, or a Sam Smith performance, or on a whole bunch of other blogs, but since it critiques the direction of the society, it is suspect, and impermissible. WE shall see. 

                         DISCORDANT SIGHTS AND SOUNDS OF A DECLINING CULTURE

Pee Wee Herman is back. I noticed his name on a list of programs scheduled for last night. I was pleased. He has come out from under the clouds of social opprobrium heaped on him for daring to engage in a particular activity in a theatre of bawdy exposure.  The children who loved his "family" comedic gyrations are now sufficiently indoctrinated to be compassionate about inconsequential matters of prurience. The National Education Association, and the socially correct elementary school teachers, have imbued them with the correctness of sexual mores, of gender preferences, of absentee fatherhood, multiple parents and test tube fertilization.  It is the millennium.

Youth can now aspire to greatness without fear of some pernicious accusation of wrongdoing, even unto that ultimate seat within the sacrosanct corridors of the Washington Dome, even within the Oval Office. There is nothing "wrong" in our thesaurus of heroic behavior to preclude this dream of youth.  And advanced concept of "playing doctor" is nothing more that youthful exuberance in the new rites of passage.

"Let the word go forth," to borrow a maxim from the sainted Arthurian heir to Camelot.

 "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone," posited an ancient kill-joy. 

The United Nations invites an ambassador of the "new truth". It is an actress who has achieved film immortality merely by crossing and uncrossing her legs under the careful scrutiny of an affectionate camera. To be fair, she is reputed to have other qualifications. They say she is a member of MENSA. She was chosen for the international dissemination of the secular "Word" of the today generation. I admit, I doubt the high I.Q. was the precipitating reason for the invitation. 

The caring parent of maturating children should keep a supply of condoms, she says, not just a few secreted for private parental use, but several hundred for application to family purposes.

This cautionary measure is the apogee of an expression of parental love.

"Let's just say it," is the ubiquitous cry. If the kids are going to have a casual encounter, leave a supply near the exit.

If I am allowed a suggestions, why not include some in lunch boxes or back-packs.

It is good that the multi-colored condom is recommended as a decorative and practical addition to gifts from Santa. 

All this is not in vain.  Our educators, our public moralists are dedicated to the ancient Platonic good. 

An elementary school child asked to write an essay on forgiveness wrote the story of one brother who forgave the other for wrongs done to him. The teacher refused to allow him to read the story to the class. HE made the egregious error of calling the brothers, Esau and Jacob. His parents might have warned him that these names appear in the Bible, a grievous association, and given him a daily supply of condoms for protection from a less perilous chasm.

A very young child separated for the first time from her mother on her first day of school cried. She returned home tearfully that night to the comforting embrace of her mother who asked, "Why are you so sad?"

"I asked the teacher for a hug," she sobbed, "and she said, 'I can't do that'. I was bad. I must have been bad. I did something wrong. All the kids laughed."