The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of
’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-When Elvis (No Last Name Needed)
Made All The Women Sweat-“Are You Lonesome Today”
Sketches
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
He’s Got It Bad-With Elvis’s Are You Lonesome Tonight -Take Two
…he wondered, truly
wondered, whether she missed him just then, missed her walking daddy, her
walking daddy when they walked down
the street hand-in-hand and later when high as kites they messed up the
pillows at her place, got those satin sheets all sweaty and love moist from
their exertions when their fling was fresh and bright. Yes, he wondered for
the millionth time that night, that seemingly endless sleepless night when he
wondered once again whether she missed
him after all the slow meaningless time that had passed these past few months
since their over-heated short love affair had gone down in flames almost as
quickly as it had started.
That walking daddy
moniker by the way was a little term of endearment that she had tagged him
with after they had, well, done the “do the do” and she though that she had
him reined in, reined him in with kisses and a few little special things that
he liked, and that she knew he liked even before he told her that he did.
That “do the do” sex stuff was the least of their problems, he knew she liked
his kisses and a few little special things that she liked, and that he knew
she liked even before she told him that she did, although at the end maybe it
was the sex stuff too that did them in when he started asking her to do stuff
from the Karma Sutra and she who
previously had been the aggressor practically pulling his pants down balked
at a few of the kinkier positions described in that manual, it could have
been everything jumbled together. But if anybody asked him he missed that
part, no question.
He did not really
believe underneath it all although he kept his doubts open based on a few odd
facts about going the other way, that she did, did miss him. She was not
built that way, had kind of a steel-trap mind on the subject of men and missing
them after she was done with them (and others too, subjects she was
steel-trapped about). He knew from the first, and she made the fact
abundantly clear in all their conversations, that once she was done with a
man that was that and she moved on, maybe to the next man, maybe just off to
lick her wounds. She would illustrate the point with examples citing, chapter and verse,
whenever the subject came up ex-husbands and lovers, one husband of whom she
said had asked if she needed a blackboard to help lecture him once she got on
her high horse about the subject. Still he took a ticket, took a chance that
he would be, what she called him at the beginning, oh yeah, her “forever” man
and in a chillingly ironic shift a few short months later her “never” man although
she did not say that word exactly he just plucked it out of the air one
night, one early on sleepless night when he first thought about whether she
missed him. Yeah, so no question he
was as sure as a man could be, a man who no longer was on speaking terms with
her, that he would not be surprised to find out that she did not miss him.
He wondered too
whether she was lonesome tonight for her walking daddy, a very different
proposition than whether she missed him. He was not sure on that score, although
he thought in the far recesses of his brain she might. See as she also
explained in detail with those same ex-husbands and major lovers example
complete with blackboard remark even if she was through with a man, had moved
on to another man, or just went off to lick her wounds the way she put the
fact in those same conversations about her way with men, she was as likely to
be licking her wounds as looking for another man. As likely to be filled with
solitary sadness as out on the town, out with another man.
That is where those
two marriages and many love affairs came in, came in and softened rather than
hardened her to life’s romantic ups and downs. She had mentioned to him one
night that she had since childhood and a very savagely cruel upbringing had a
hard time letting go, letting the past fade, and that it took her a long time
to get over a man once they were through. How did he say she put it one
night, oh yeah, she was fast to love a man when he got under her skin and
slow to forget him. That fast love start had been her way with him in their
whirlwind love affair smothering him with all kinds of undeserved accolades
based on fairly limited knowledge of who he was, what he had been through,
and his own spoken appreciations of his worth which added up to a profile of
the usual man of clay, nothing more. All of the above smotherings by her not
giving him time to breathe, to think things through, before trying to plan
their future unto infinity after about a month into their relationship.
Yeah, in the far
recesses of her brain might be just the right way to put it about whether she
might be lonesome that night he spoke of but let me tell you what he told me
one night about that night he was wondering and many other nights before and
after while we were sipping white wines at a Boston bar, listening to some
old time piped-in jazz music as background (could have been Cry Me A River starting out, in fact I
think it was), which started him off to tell me what exactly had happened the previous few
months. Let me give you some of the story and you try to figure the damn
thing out:
He had met her
sitting at the bar in Cambridge, a rock and roll bar, an “oldies but goodies”
bar, a 1950s classic age of rock and roll bar that he frequented when he needed
to hear Elvis, Chuck, Bo, Jerry Lee or some Warren Smith rockabilly beat
after some hard court case was done or he just needed to blow off steam when
some appeals case was slipping away from him for lack of presentable issues
that could win. Some nights, like that night, he wound up just slugging
quarters in the juke-box, others, mainly weekend nights he would wind up
listening to a live band, The Rockin’ Ramrods, covering the classics. He
noticed that from his vantage point a few stools down she looked very
familiar in a long ago way. After he slid down the few empty barstools
between them to get beside her he had mentioned that fact to her as a come-on
and offered and bought her a drink on that basis (a glass of red wine which
she loved, loved to perdition as he would find out later) they spent the next
several minutes trying to figure where that might have been. Work, no, some
godforsaken political conference, no, another long ago bar, no, the Cape, no,
College, no, and so on.
Strangely they
found out once they discussed where they had grown up (she had told him at
first she was from New Hampshire and he said that he lived in Cambridge so
the subject of home towns did not come up on the first run) that the link had
been that they had gone to the same
high school together, she a couple of years after him, North Adamsville High,
located on the South Shore of Boston although they had not known each other,
had not had any of the same classes back then (but since they had also gone
to the same junior high school they agreed later after they were “smitten”
with each other, her term, and wanted to make some symbolic “written in the
wind” closeness count they must have been in the same space at some point if
only the gym, auditorium or cafeteria). That revelation got them cutting up
old touches that night for a while, well, a long while since they closed the
bar that night. They agreed that they had some common interests and that they
should continue the conversation further via e-mail and cellphone. See, since
she lived up in New Hampshire in a town outside of Manchester, was a
professor at the state university and had been in Cambridge to attend an
education conference at Harvard getting together soon in person with her busy
start of semester schedule was problematic.
So for a while, a
few weeks, they carried on an e-mail/cellphone correspondence. Both were
however struck by the number of things they had in common, things from
childhood like growing up poor, growing up in hostile and dangerous family
environments, growing up insecure and with nothing and nobody to guide them
left to their own resources. Moreover they found that they had many similar
teenage angst and alienation episodes in high school in common as well as
current political and academic interests. Both agreed that they should meet
again in person since they had already “met” in high school (somehow in the
rush of things they discounted that they had really met in Cambridge in a
bar, but such are the ways of love in bloom go figure).
And so they met
again, met many times in neutral territory since they lived so far apart
(they called their romance, the Merrimack romance for all the old mill towns
they met in for half way convenient, Lowell, Nashua, Manchester, Haverhill,
Amesbury and a couple of others I forgot), had many chatty dinners and did
other things together like museums and took long walks along the river. He
explained to me the powerful first dinner where they talked for hours and
when he escorted her to her car in the parking lot for them to go their
separate ways home she got teary-eyed and he caressed her hair to console
her. Yeah, it was like that when it was good. Before long they agreed to meet at a hotel
in New Hampshire to see if they had a spark that way. Well you know they did
since otherwise there would be no story to tell. You also know, at least you
know what he thought about the matter, that they did very well in bed
together. Yes, they, he and she, were
both smitten, both felt very comfortable with each other and were heading
forward with eyes open.
Along the way she
had discussed her two divorce-ended marriages, her serious love affairs and
her attitudes toward relationships. Those were the times she would emphasize
her take on men, her jealousies, expectations and her limitations. She also
early on started her campaign to get him to go to stay with her in New
Hampshire and leave Cambridge. He although not as well formed in his take on
their relationship as she did likewise explained his two marriages,
especially the hard fall of the second marriage which left him very stunned,
and major love affairs, although he early on balked when she spoke of leaving
the city for the Podunk country up north as he called her place, called the
whole state of New Hampshire for that matter. So yes both sets of eyes were
open, open wide.
She pulled the
hammer down, pulled it down early. Within a couple of months she spoke of
love, of living together, of sailing out into the sunset together. He, slower
on the uptake, slower having been more severely burned in his last marriage
than he let on to her or had thought had been the case, was a bit bewildered
by her speedy emotional attachments to him. They went on a couple of trips
away to New York and Washington together, had some good times, had some rocky
times interspersed in between too when she tried to rein him in. He wasn’t
afraid to commit exactly (well maybe he was as he confessed to me although
not to her when it could have helped, maybe had a little “cold feet” problem
but he insisted it was a small blip) as much as he wanted the thing to
develop naturally, give him time to breathe although I have already said that
air to breathe thing before didn’t I, there always seemed to be an air of
suffocation every time she got on her high horse, got her wanting habits on,
got the best of him sometimes.
Then he made his
fatal mistake, or rather series of mistakes, starting with strong words one
night at one of their Merrimack River trail dinner when they both had had a
bit too much to drink, too much wine, and she was going on and on as she did
after her second or third glass depending on how tired she had been after a
long day’s work. He admitted he got snappy, told her they needed to slow down
and enjoy each other. She responded with a blast that shook him up but they
were able to kiss and make up that night. The real mistake though was one
time after they had not seen each other for a week or so when he sent her an
e-mail speaking in sorrow of the drift of their recent relationship and he
wanted the spark back that had go them going.
She exploded at
that e-mail seeing that as a callous rebuke of her actions rather than as
what he thought was a plaintive let’s go forward love letter. What did he say
she had called it, oh yeah, a closing argument, a damn lawyer’s closing
argument (the “damn” part a result of having been married to a lawyer the
first time out and now being with him). They agreed to meet at a neutral
restaurant to discuss the matter (on the Merrimack River of course but I will
not give the location since there still may be blood on the water).
When he thought
about it later he could see where she had prepared herself to be
confrontational toward him or at least be prepared to force the issue because
the first words out of her mouth were an ultimatum-“come live with me or the
affair is over.” The exchange got heated as she drank more wine on this night
as well (he did not drink that night having learned a lesson from the last
session). She said something that
when we talked he could not for the life of him remember but they were
fighting words. He exploded saying “I don’t need this,” threw money on the
table and stormed out. That was the last he saw of her not even looking back
to see how she took the matter. Oh
sure the next day he tried frantically to call several times knowing that a
decisive turning point had been reached, no answer. Tried some e-mails-same
response. Later that day he got a message on his voicemail from her giving
her walking daddy his walking papers. She told him not to call, not to write
as she would not respond. He never did. As he explained it to me he never did
although he spent many a night thinking about whether he should call, about
what he would say and thought too of an e-mail but he knew in his bones she
would not answer like with his first attempts so he let it go. Knew her
steel-trapped policies toward men, toward him in her walking papers summary.
So he let it go to spend his time, his free time, fretting about what had
happened. Jesus.
What he did do
seriously in the few weeks after their break-up, what he was doing this night
he spoke to me as well as months earlier
when he first fretted over what had gone wrong, was think through how
it could have played out differently. Did that blame game in order to curb
his own lonesomeness as he replayed their short affair, as he tried to try to
figure out something that had bothered him since that fierce parting night.
No, not about the specific details of what had caused his downfall, although
he was still perplexed about why his concern about the over-heated pace of
their relationship and his anger at that last meeting over her ultimatum
should have been the irretrievable cause. He would accept that, had to accept
that was the way she perceived the situation and that those were the causes
of his downfall pure and simple. He didn’t like it but he has come to see
where what she said in her voicemail message that she could never see him in
the old way, the way she had in the beginning of their affair when their love
flamed, precluded any future romantic relationship.
What he thought
about mostly though concerned one point-how could two intelligent, worldly
people, who individually had many strong and powerful inner resources
gathered through surviving stormy childhoods and life’s hard knocks, not be
able to figure a way to avoid letting their fragile relationship blow away in
the wind, blow away without a trace after many professions of desire,
devotion and fidelity. He fretted over how little energy they had devoted to
using some of those personal inner resources in order to build the
foundations of a strong relationship. He had been willing to take his fair
share of the blame for his “cold feet” which had him, more often than not,
attempting to walk away from not toward her. That last marriage had damaged
him more than he had thought and it had still colored his worldview on
intimacy, on commitment, no question. That walking away from her in fear as
they got closer, as she started to get under his skin, always seemed
strongest as he left her after some bad days when she was pushing him hard.
Or when he thought the whole thing was hopeless since they lived too far away
from each other to compromise on a living arrangement. Yeah, he would take
his fair share of blame on that.
She infuriated him
though with her interminable future plans while disregarding the present,
although he could not speak for her and whether she believed his house of
card blown in the wind idea about what had happened. She had plans for them
to go to live in California when they retired, deemed it mandatory that he
spent a certain number of days up in New Hampshire even while he had pressing
business to take care of in Boston, but best, best as an example, was that
she had their next Christmas and New Year plans already mapped out in March.
All the time not paying attention to the drift of the tempo of their day to
day relationship where he was, frankly, unhappy, very unhappy. In the end he
was shocked by how little there had been to hold them together in a serious
crisis which he conceded, or would have conceded if she had ever decided to
talk to him again, was a serious crisis. Now that he thought about it for a
while he told me, now that he had talked it through with me, he decided, no,
whether she had a new walking daddy or not (or whatever new moniker she would
make up for him) she would not be lonesome for him that night.
Are You Lonesome Tonight? Lyrics
Are you lonesome
tonight,
Do you miss me tonight? Are you sorry we drifted apart? Does your memory stray to a brighter sunny day When I kissed you and called you sweetheart? Do the chairs in your parlor seem empty and bare? Do you gaze at your doorstep and picture me there? Is your heart filled with pain, shall I come back again? Tell me dear, are you lonesome tonight? I wonder if you're lonesome tonight You know someone said that the world's a stage And each must play a part. Fate had me playing in love you as my sweet heart. Act one was when we met, I loved you at first glance You read your lin so cleverly and never missed a cue Then came act two, you seemed to change and you acted strange And why I'll never know. Honey, you lied when you said you loved me And I had no cause to doubt you. But I'd rather go on hearing your lies Than go on living without you. Now the stage is bare and I'm standing there With emptiness all around And if you won't come back to me Then make them bring the curtain down. Is your heart filled with pain, shall I come back again? Tell me dear, are you lonesome tonight?
Songwriters:
ROY TURK, LOU HANDMAN
Are
You Lonesome Tonight? lyrics © BOURNE CO., CROMWELL MUSIC
The Teen Scene In Between- With Ike Turner’s Rocket 88 In Mind
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