My Love Life and Gilligan's Island
Even had a mate call his boat the Minnow....
The dreams are coming thick and fast like the waves off Montauk Point, Long Island during a hurricane. Hurricanes hit Montauk less frequently than the vividness of these reveries.
I dream in colour and I bleed red. Somehow I think this tinkering with my heart has supercharged something attached to more than just a valve. My breath seems clearer and my emotions and connections to everything are also very vivid. Yeah, the science papers say some of this can happen but sometimes I believe that something more spiritual has occurred.
I always question my sense of spirituality as if I am an imposter. I figured out some time ago that there are some spiritual bones in my skeleton. Approximately 2 years ago on a warm Venice Beach evening, I hung with my old friend Craig who I have known now for the last 40 odd years. Those friends from my youth, the ones I left behind in America, can shed light easily when you forget a bit of who you are.
‘I don’t know if I am spiritual. I mean, I believe my being and thoughts and love of nature point that way, but I have doubt’, I mused.
Craig beamed at me with that beautiful smile of his and said, ‘What would you call your endless search for beauty in music?’
There was a lightbulb moment in a sentence.
Right now, it’s like there are beams of spotlights whirring around me in whatever I do, see, speak of, look at, or listen to. Deep meaning is hitting me in the face like that hurricane wind coming off those dunes on the East End of Long Island.
I need emotional wet weather gear.
Darkness did not bring snoring last night. Lying around is getting to me a bit and I am not venturing far from my door. I am not allowed to drive. Seems I sleep well every other night. That is not much to complain about it’s just all the other stuff that goes along with healing. It’s like grief as you may know.
Not out on a dark desert highway and there is no warm smell of colitas, just the sheets and pillowcases and the scent of the woman asleep next to me. Is she asleep? Who knows, she has her nighttime problems, too. Reading a book about Eagles by Mick Wall I tune into some albums from 1974-75. On The Border and One Of These Nights were spun by me and my Long Island friends during that last year of high school and beyond.
What is a colita? Supposedly, a slang term in Mexico for the buds of the cannabis plant. We knew mucho about Mexican weed back in the day.
I was lucky to see Eagles and Dan Fogelberg at The Academy of Music on May 16, 1975. It was the late show that commenced sometime after 1130Â and my memory tells me it was close to sunrise as Tequila Sunrise closed down the night. JD Souther joined the throng. The only thing I cannot recall of that night is if I was there with anyone else. Who knows, maybe someone out there.
The morning was a warm 60F and there was a slight breeze. It took a little while to adjust our eyes, (using our means someone else was with me) and find our way to the Subway to take us to 179th Street and then the bus home. Saturday Morning back on Long Island abuzz from an amazing night. Who knew it would be the end of the original band and Joe Walsh would replace Bernie Leadon by December 1975? Do you care?
Well, I certainly did, but I am not about to go into the workings of that band. The music that I listened to at 5 AM brought tears to my eyes. They ran down my face. It was not sobbing, it was just another release. I know they say heart surgery can deepen these emotions.
My thoughts are moving in another way. I think that I may have been unwell and the true amount of oxygen and blood flow was impacting me connecting to my feelings in ways that I used to. I had a defect. Now the defect is fixed, something is going on and there will be more of that during the healing cycle.
Or as someone mentioned to me it is like I have gone through some sort of initiation and I should pay attention to the learnings as they rise to the surface.
Who knows for sure, but I tell you I am paying close attention.
1974-5 was a momentous period in my life. My Mother sick and dying, having sex for the first time, falling in love, my first trip overseas, turning 18, and dealing with what each of those moments brought to me and my family.
Everyone else was having a momentous year. We had lost our matriarch. The woman who held us all together with that sparkle in her eyes and her smart, delicate, strong way of moving through the world. Virginia Busch was never forgotten once you met her, people tell me. I was sort of biased as I loved her dearly even if I was a pain in the ass, youngest of the litter, teenager.
Propped up with pillows and some Panadol and resorting to a 5 AM temazepam, I finally started to drift off into sleep as The Best Of My Love played via my earbuds. I had not heard this song in such a long time. It was Eagles first number 1 record. It was played everywhere on every station. We got sick of it.
Tears continued to leak out of my ducts but I drifted into a dream. Let’s say this could have been a visitation. I was with Marianne in her room in New Hyde Park. She lived with her mom and we were upstairs smiling at each other, laughing, close to each other. Young lovers. I could feel her hair, her touch on my arm, the excitement of just being close to her. Her blue eyes, brown hair, and tanned skin make me think of sleeping in the desert with her. Another Eagles song. We never slept in the desert.
Marainne lived across the street from Pathmark, a supermarket chain, and in my dream I could hear the traffic. I looked around the room and saw the posters on the wall and the walk-in closet I once hid in (naked) Â when her Mom came upstairs one morning when I was visiting from college. I used to hitch 300 Â miles to return on a weekend to see her. My first months in college were not going as well as my sex life and love for this woman. I had to leave that college and continue school on Long Island.
I needed love. She was there at a time that helped me survive. We made it a couple of years until she got sick and had kidney failure and had to start going to dialysis regularly. After going through months of watching my mother wither away, hospitals were a source of PTSD. I had no idea what PTSD was, but I did know I was having difficulty entering the building with her when she had to get her blood rejigged. I felt like I was suffering again.
By 1977, I had decided to finish my last 2 years of school 300 miles away again. Marianne was not always able to keep up with me and I was starting to spend less time with her because I could not sit still. We were still a couple, but I could feel myself fracturing. That summer before I went away to college she called me and joked and said I should come over for some afternoon delight. That was a song we hated, but it was a funny comment and of course, I went over to spend the next day with her.
At this stage she was living in Hicksville with her mother and her health was making her lose more weight and her energy was slippery. It was a beautiful summer day and I could see her with a short-sleeved blouse and shorts and looking like something from the 70’s. Oh, she was.
We talked about a lot. We made love. We talked some more. We made some more love. Repeat.
Our hearts were wide open, and we both knew my going away was coming up soon. We had to talk about that and today was the day. And I will get to Gilligan’s Island in a second.
We decided that we could not continue. Marianne said we could not continue because of the pain it was causing me. It was the Déjà vu of hell for me watching someone fade away again. My heart, my heart, how do you work this out at 19? We decided to take a break and see what happens. No matter how much we hurt I thank her to this day. I never quit loving her but I could not be there as I felt my life force fracturing.
Marianne was my first love. She left the building much too young. Little did I know how school at Oswego would change my life for the better.
My sister Ginger and I used to watch all those episodes and re-runs of Gilligan’s Island. Ginger, yet another connection to Gilligan’s Island, but not the one I am trying to make here.
50 years later after that momentous year, I said that 2024 was ‘going to be momentous’. Fuck, I never make those announcements, but shit, I did and so far there is a list of big moments. They seem bigger than some of the other years.
The last 4 years have found me in love again. Surprised the hell out of me that I would be lucky enough to find love again at the age of 62. I was not looking and then I got roped into it.
Damn, that woman.
Not really, I just found this woman who makes me laugh, puts up with my nonsense, and who I can share my soul with or my minor annoyances with her without any thought of it being a concern. Â She can do the same.
How does this relate to Gilligan’s Island, I know you are begging me to tell you.
Ginger Grant, the character, of one of the castaways was played by the actress Tina Louise.
My spiritual wife and fellow idiot hold the name Tina Louise.
And she is a keeper. I hope she keeps me.
She sparkles.
