Musings & Thoughts for Sunday, June 25, 2023, or: Weekend Update, Part the Second*

* Also counts as an entry in the On Writing & Storytelling category with the title A Writer’s Dilemma – Solved!

Hey, there!

Well, it’s early afternoon here in Lithia, Florida, on Sunday, June 25, 2023 – the 73^rd anniversary of the start of the Korean War (1950-53). Since it’s early summer (meteorological summer started on June 1, traditional or astronomical summer on Wednesday), it’s hot and humid outside; the current temperature is 88°F/31°C under mostly sunny conditions; the feels-like temperature is 92°F/33°C, which is also the forecast high for today.

I’m writing this A Certain Point of View, Too post later than usual because, as I knew I would, I decided to do some work on the manuscript today rather than wait until tomorrow to do so. I revised the third – and last – scene in Chapter Eight (titled “The Dream”) because to be honest, I wasn’t enthusiastic about some of the revisions I had made late last week.

Oh, most of the scene was fine, at least in first-draft mode. I’ll do some tweaks to the scene’s first half at some point in the Revise and Edit phase of pre-publication; that part doesn’t have as many issues as the second half of the scene.

The second and most important part of Scene Three, Chapter Eight looked good, but as I said yesterday, it just didn’t have the emotional weight or resonance that I was trying to go for. It didn’t suck, mind you, but after I read it a few times between Friday night and yesterday morning, I decided to do an alternate version – in a separate .docx file of its own – this morning.

Now, I usually stick to a set routine when I write: As early as possible – usually in the morning – I try to write a post for this blog. Partly to get my brain into “writer mode” and warm up for the main event, so to speak. Mostly, though, to get it out of the way so I can focus on what I consider to be real writing.

Sometimes, though, I wake up with stuff for Reunion: Coda fresh in my mind and, not wanting to risk letting go “stale” in my brain or – worse – forgetting it in the afternoon, I immediately start working on the story as soon as I’ve had some coffee and a bite to eat in the morning.

And, since I’m writing this in the early afternoon hours of a quiet, sunny, and torrid June Sunday in the Tampa Bay area, it’s obvious that this is what happened today. I woke up with a clear idea about what changes needed to be made, went on Word, created a new .docx file, and went straight to work after eating a bowl of cereal and drinking two cups of coffee (with milk and sugar).

I spent three hours on the updated version of The Dream; it’s – on Word, anyway – seven pages long, with a word count of 2,978 words. Of course, more than two-thirds of the material is from the first versions (original and first revised draft) and didn’t get deleted. I chopped off the parts I didn’t like and replaced them with three pages’ worth – 731 words, to be precise – and came up with a better ending for the scene.

Here’s a brief excerpt from The Dream (Scene Three, Chapter Eight):

“Maybe this time, she’ll stay away. She’s been dead for two years, right?” I hear myself say, not quite sure if it’s in my “Jimmy the Kid” guise, or my “Professor Jim” one.

Just then, in that quirky way of Dreamland that is so different from the waking world, Martina Reynaud – still the most beautiful girl in the Class of ’83 – walks into the classroom. The aroma of jasmine and orange blossoms wafts delicately in the air. She stands before me, as she did the first time I had the dream on that June morning so many years before, wearing a black dress that complements her long dancer’s legs. Her peaches-and-cream complexion is flawless; there is no sign of a pimple anywhere. Her long chestnut hair cascades down over her shoulders.  

“Hello, Jimmy,” she says. “It’s been a while since I last saw you. I’ve missed you.”

I stand there for a brief moment, trying to think of a clever opening line. When nothing comes to mind, I settle for a simple reply. “Hey. I’ve missed you, too, Marty.”

She smiles gently, then beckons to me, wordlessly but clearly asking me to get up from my desk. “C’mon, Jim,” she says. “Let’s dance. For old times’ sake.”

Slowly, ever so slowly, I put my copy of Macbeth down on my desk and rise to my feet. As I stand, I feel as if I’m seeing Marty through two different sets of eyes – those of 18-year-old me, and those of 34-year-old me – simultaneously. It’s a disorienting feeling; I feel like I’m floating outside of my body and looking down at an abyss from the edge of a cliff…or the top of the Empire State Building. I feel dizzy and a little teary-eyed.

Marty gives me a reassuring smile. Holds out her hand. “Come on, Jimmy. Dance with me, please.”

It’s only a dream, I sternly remind myself. It’s not like you’re going to be parachuting into German-occupied Holland in 1944.

And, as I have done countless times since June of 1983, I take Marty’s hand –

And, as in countless recurrences of The Dream, Room 203 fades away, violating every law of physics and reality, and morphs into a fancy ballroom, not unlike the one at the very real Moonglow Club.

Indeed, the musicians on the bandstand look remarkably like the Swinging Millers, a Big Band “tribute” ensemble that is popular in New York City these days. Dressed in snazzy-looking white tuxedos with black bowties, the band members are already playing one of my favorite standards: an instrumental version of Jerome Kern’s All the Things You Are.

“Oh, Jimmy. I love this song! It’s so….so….”

“Romantic?” I finish for her.

“Yes, that,” Marty says. She gives me a sly, knowing look. “And it’s a slow dance. Your kind of dance.”

We dance, holding each other close as we sway to the rhythm of Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II’s beloved standard – from, my history professor’s trove of facts reminds me, a 1939 Broadway musical called Very Warm for May – and losing ourselves in the moment.

Halfway through the song, Marty looks deeply into my eyes and lets out a slow, deep sigh. Her smile falters, and her chin begins to quiver ever so slightly. “Jim?” she manages to say in a subdued voice.

“I’m here, Marty. What’s the matter?”

“I wish…” she whispers shakily, “I wish we’d gotten together when we had a chance, Jimmy.”

“That was my fault, sweetie,” I say huskily. “I should have told you that I loved you long before we graduated.”

Despite the tears welling up in her lovely hazel eyes, Marty stares intently into mine. “Why didn’t you?”

As I ponder how to answer Marty’s question, that odd sense that I’m seeing her from two different sets of my eyes – those of teenaged me and thirtysomething me – washes over me again, and for the first time, I see Marty as she must have looked in her early 30s: not as slim as she’d been at South Miami High, and her hair cut to just above her shoulders. Still gorgeous, though; as some of my students might have put it, even as a posthumous apparition in a dream, Marty was still “hot.” 

“Well, Professor Garraty?” Marty insists, and I realize that she, too, can “see” Present Day me, complete with laugh lines, five o’clock shadow, and a few gray hairs that have recently made their appearance on my temples.

“I was scared. At first of Kenny, mostly. Later on, though, I didn’t want to risk losing your friendship…or being rejected. Or…”

“Being hurt again by a girl,” Marty interjects. “Yes, so you said in that letter.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. It sounds lame, but it’s the only response I can give her.

“Well, if it’s any consolation, I was, I must admit, willfully oblivious to how you felt about me back then. I know you tried hard to not be obvious about it, but if I hadn’t been terrified about dating after, you know, I broke up with Kenny, my love radar would have been…um…active. And who knows? I might have made the first move!” And even as a single tear runs down Dream Marty’s cheek, she manages to give me a smile.

 “Oh, I kind of did…without really knowing, though,” Marty adds in a conspiratorial tone.

“Really? When?”

Marty places her hand on one hip and pretends to pout. “Jim Garraty! Don’t tell me you forgot…our kiss. In the chorus room. On the last day of school.”

“I’ve never forgotten that kiss,” I admit without hesitation.

“Neither have I.”

As she says this, the fancy ballroom shimmers and swirls in a multicolored display of light reminiscent of those special effects sequences in science fiction movies where spaceships jump to lightspeed, and I swoon with dizziness and disorientation. Oddly, there’s no heat, but the light is so bright, as if a Hiroshima-type atomic bomb had suddenly gone off, that I involuntarily shut my eyes.

When I open my eyes again, Marty and I are back at a spectral version of South Miami Senior High School, only this time, we’re not in my English 4, Advanced Placement classroom, but in the last place where we had spent time alone together – Room 136 in the school’s music department wing, on the last day of school in June of 1983.

And, of course, Marty and I have reverted to our 18-year-old selves, wearing the same outfits we’d worn almost 17 years ago. Marty – Levi’s jeans, a white and orange South Miami High School Chorus T-shirt, slightly scuffed Keds girls’ sneakers, and white socks. Me – Levi’s bell bottom jeans, a brown and beige plaid shirt, my Army surplus olive drab fatigue jacket, and blue-and-white Converse tennis shoes.

A sudden stab of pain – both physical and emotional – lances through me as I stand next to Dream Marty, only a few feet away from the very spot where we’d shared our first – and only – kiss.

I turn toward her. “Why – why did you bring me here?” I ask.

– * –

It’s still early Sunday afternoon, and I – happily – have plenty of time left to enjoy a Sunday Funday now that the revision and editing are done. I don’t have any set plans, but I might go watch one of my three “John Williams in Concert” Blu-rays out on the “good TV” in the Florida room. Barring that, I might game for a while, although that’s less appealing right now.  Or I could read for a while out on the Florida room couch – if it weren’t so beastly hot outside, I’d go read at my favorite bench at the nearby park, but it is, so….

Without further ado, then, I’ll close for now. Until next time, stay safe, stay healthy, and I’ll catch you on the sunny side of things.