At 7:45 this morning my brother left me a message. It seems my girlfriend from ~30 years ago found him on classmates.com and wrote to ask if he was my brother.
She was a singer and I was a drummer. Whatever else I might say about her, she had some pipes. Her Amazing Grace was stunning, her White Rabbit electrifying.
We met in a psychiatrist’s waiting room. It later occurred to me that was not an ideal place to meet women. So, soon enough (about midnight on our first date - hmmm, probably coincidental, but my home burned down that night) we were [Tra-la-la-la-la] in love. For about 6 to 8 weeks. Then we spent a couple of years breaking up.
Y’all know the drill - why break up just once when you can do it over and over again? Once, she rought her best friend over to give me as a replacement. Her brother was a biker, and she ran with his group a lot. Women were given to people often enough - you could pick up an “old lady” in a poker game with that crowd.
Anyway, that was years ago. I last talked to her in 1983 and she told me she’d become a CPA and had a nice income from a string of four rental houses. One for each marriage. It had only been eight years since I’d seen her last, so it did occur to me that she was knockin’em down at a pretty good clip.
My brother emailed her back my phone numbers and she replied with a long message that included that she’s “not so good on the telephone anymore” and asked my brother to ask me to email her. I don’t recall what her last name was when I talked to her in '83, but it’s different now. But it doesn’t match the amail addy she gave, which was robertxxxx@notanisp.com.
She also added that she’d read that article on the internet about our father and said, “Well, I guess you never know about some people.” That got a WTF? out my brother and me. I searched Google and found nothing that might generate that comment.
And she told my brother that she recalled the years spent with me as the happiest time in her life. If that’s the case, I’m not sure I could bear to listen to what her last 30 years have been like.
Another odd thing - she found my brother on classmates.com. Well, I’m listed there as well and if you know my name and google it, you can have my home address, phone number and email in less than a minute.
OK, so I’m wizened enough to realize there’s 40 kinds of danger signals here. “You got out of that lion pit once, boy; don’t go back to see if they’re still hungry.”
Still, why has this generated such a gnawing curiosity? Will I forget it in a couple of days?
