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Notes from a Boy @ The Window

Tag Archives: Romance

Kiss From A Rose – 20 Years On

20 Wednesday May 2015

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, Carnegie Mellon University, culture, Eclectic, eclectic music, Marriage, Movies, music, Pittsburgh, Pop Culture, race, Work, Youth

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"Kiss From A Rose" (1994/1995), 71B, Angelia, Angelia N. Levy, Batman Forever (1995), Bruce Willis, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, CMU, Dating, Die Hard With A Vengeance (1995), Friendships, PAT Transit, Romance, Samuel L. Jackson, Spencer Fellowship, Val Kilmer


Twenty years ago on this date, I re-met the woman who’s now my wife of fifteen years, Angelia on a PAT-Transit bus in Pittsburgh, the old 71B-Highland Park into Oakland. It was an eighty-five degree Saturday afternoon in the ‘Burgh. I decided to treat myself to a movie, Batman Forever (1995), mostly because I knew Val Kilmer was in it. After seeing him act as well as he did in Tombstone, I figured I needed to give it a try. I needed a break, between the euphoria of the Spencer Fellowship and the depression from the fire at 616 that had rendered my family homeless.

So here it was, 3:15 in the afternoon, with me dressed in a blue t-shirt with blue basketball shorts and sneaks. I was standing at the corner of Highland Avenue and Penn Circle South, across from my apartment building, waiting for a bus. The 71B showed up first. I jumped on, sat down on the right-hand side in a front-facing seat. As soon as I sat down, I saw her, sitting right in front of me. It was “Angela with an ‘i’,” Angelia, like that Richard Marx song from ’90.

Seal's second album/CD, Seal (1994): "Kiss From A Rose" re-released as part of Batman Forever (1995) soundtrack in June/July 1995. (http://www.allmusic.com).

Seal’s second album/CD, Seal (1994): “Kiss From A Rose” re-released as part of Batman Forever (1995) soundtrack in June/July 1995. (http://www.allmusic.com).

The thing was, I had a dream that she showed up in the Saturday before this one. I hadn’t seen Angelia in more than two years, hadn’t given her any thought. But it seemed weird that she would just show up a week later in the flesh.

So I said, “Hi Angelia!,” excitedly, wondering what she was doing on the bus. She paused, said “Hi” with the heaviest, stop-bothering-me sigh I’d heard since my high school days. That didn’t deter me. I coaxed out of her the fact that she was pissed off with Carnegie Library because a book she was looking for at the East Liberty branch wasn’t there, even though the catalog said it was. It was a conversation that was one-sided, with Angelia doing most of the complaining.

I listened, and thought, “Yep, same Angelia, same weird Angelia.” But since I was weird also, I kept listening. Finally, she asked me what I was up to. I told her about school, my Spencer Fellowship, my family’s homelessness situation. I kept it brief. I mean, I hadn’t seen her in two years.

By the time we reached Oakland — me to catch one of the 61s to Squirrel Hill to catch the movie, Angelia to walk over to the main branch of Carnegie Library — we exchanged numbers, with Angelia saying, “It was really good talking to you.” I wasn’t so sure about that myself, but at least, she didn’t seem as weird as the woman she was five years earlier.

Screen with Samuel L. Jackson and Bruce Willis from Die Hard With A Vengeance (1995), posted February 28, 2013. (http://chud.com).

Screen with Samuel L. Jackson and Bruce Willis from Die Hard With A Vengeance (1995), posted February 28, 2013. (http://chud.com).

I went to see the movie, but it turned out that it wasn’t out yet. It wasn’t due out for another month! I ended up seeing Die Hard With a Vengeance with Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson. Though much better than Die Hard 2 (1990; one shouldn’t really watch any feature film with John Amos taking up significant screen time, it still sucked, because Willis and Jackson spent half the movie yelling, and Jeremy Irons’ performance didn’t have Alan Rickman’s sense of social irony. I walked home, got together some grub, and through all preconceptions out the window. I gave her a call to tell her about the film mix-up. We ended up talking for more than three hours! It was the first time in a long time I had talked to a woman who wanted to hear what I thought about, well, anything, at least anything outside of sex. It was the start of a beautiful friendship.

A month later, we went to see Batman Forever, and it sucked, just like Angelia said it would. But Seal’s “Kiss From A Rose” didn’t. I bought his CD, though, and not the movie soundtrack!

Vicarious Valentine’s Day

14 Saturday Feb 2015

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, Christianity, culture, Eclectic, Jimme, Mount Vernon High School, Mount Vernon New York, Movies, My Father, New York City, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion, Youth

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616, 616 East Lincoln Avenue, Capitalism, Christian Persecution, Commercialism, Crush #1, Interracial Relationships, JD, Love, Lust, Martyrs, Observation Mode, Rita Moreno, Romance, St. Valentine, The Contrarian One, Transactional Relationships, Valentine's Day, Vicarious Living, Wendy, West Side Story (1961)


Fringe Observer 'September,' played by Michael Cerveris, circa 2013. (John Milton via Pinterest.com).

Fringe Observer ‘September,’ played by Michael Cerveris, circa 2013. (John Milton via Pinterest.com).

A couple of alternate titles could be “A Little Ditty About ‘Jack and Diane’,” or “The Legend of Crush #1 and The Contrarian One.” Really, though, I’ve never given much thought to Valentine’s Day, even in dating and marriage, mostly because until I turned twenty-five, I never had money to waste on such an aimless, unbelievably overhyped and commercialized “holiday.”

Few understand that the Catholic holy day of St. Valentine was about a Christian martyred in the midst of a period of Roman persecution under the emperor Aurelian, outside Rome, on February 14, 273 CE. Or that when combined with the St. Valentine’s Day massacre on February 14, 1929, the only heart truly associated with the day has been one punctured by a sword or a bullet, a blood-soaked one. Plus, it’s not as if I need capitalism to tell me whom to show my romantic side, with cards and flowers and chocolate, no less. Still, as a married man, I participate, although not with Western ideals of masculinity and romance in my head, if only to ensure my wife doesn’t feel left out.

But I must rewind about three decades, because while I don’t appreciate the fakery that comes with celebrating some candy-coated version of romance without actually celebrating St. Valentine, I did learn a thing or two about watching relationships bloom from afar. It was around this time thirty years ago that I noticed that Wendy and the contrarian one were dating, whatever that term means in the context of high school. Both would tell me that their relationship only began in high school, but my own recollections dispute that somewhat, if only because they shared roughly the same level of dislike for me during seventh grade!

Bloody woodchipper scene from Fargo (1996), February 14, 2015. (http://youtube.com).

Bloody woodchipper scene from Fargo (1996), February 14, 2015. (http://youtube.com).

The main point is, while for most of my classmates, it would’ve only been obvious in our junior year that Crush #1 and JD were together, I sensed it by the middle of tenth grade. If I’d been the exact same person I’d been during seventh and eighth grade, one head-over-heels in love with Wendy, I would’ve put my heart in a woodchipper, shot it all over a field, gathered it up again, and then put it into a mortar shell to explode into the sky to rain down all over Mount Vernon.

But I wasn’t that person in 7S, and hadn’t been for quite a while. My focus for most of tenth grade had been on living a sin-free Christian life, a transactional relationship with God that consisted of making good things happen for myself by prayer, fasting, and reading my Bible everywhere I went. Between that and my routine of watching younger siblings, washing clothes, tracking down my father Jimme, surviving another year of Humanities, running to the store two or three times every day, and so many other tasks, romance and dating might as well have been in an alternate universe. Even if I did feel envious, it would’ve been over not having money or a car or good food in my belly. Pining over Wendy — or any other girl or woman, for that matter — didn’t fit with any coping strategy that I had to get out of Mount Vernon as soon as my high school diploma and a college acceptance would allow me. At least prior to Crush #2.

What was more interesting to me, and what I knew was more interesting to my classmates, was the fact that Wendy and the contrarian one were dating, and in fact, an interracial couple, one a Black female (or, as some classmates still believed, biracial), the other a White male. I was interested only as an observer of people, because by tenth grade I’d actually grown to like JD and could be around Crush #1 without being conscious of the fact that she used to be my crush. I was interested in that the reactions of the folks at MVHS varied from my own “no surprise here” to dagger-eyed intolerance or head-shaking shame expressed by students across all cliques and most racial lines.

Black and White shortbread (or what President Barack Obama coined a "Unity Cookie" in 2008), July 23, 2007. (Punkitra via http://commons.wikimedia.org). Released to public domain.

Black and White shortbread (or what President Barack Obama coined a “Unity Cookie” in 2008), July 23, 2007. (Punkitra via http://commons.wikimedia.org). Released to public domain.

I’ve certainly known and know plenty of other people involved in interracial relationships and marriages since the spring of ’85. Some where only racial politics and stereotypes mattered, some where love and social justice mattered much more. In the case of my class’ Juliet and Romeo, maybe my crush took advantage of some of the racial politics involved with dating someone White, while my contrarian friend obviously doesn’t prefer blondes, and hasn’t in the years since. From my observer’s perch, though, there was much more to their relationship than racial preferences.

It was the first time I’d seen or heard about any interracial coupling beyond movies like West Side Story (I still love Rita Moreno, even at eighty-three) or in others telling me about them third-hand, after it was already over. To me, it was always a good fit and fitting, despite the racial politics playing out at school, not to mention the identity issues that had to be playing out between Wendy and JD, even unconsciously. What I gleaned from two and a half years of the two of them dating, though, was that they had found a world unto themselves, one which must’ve made MVHS a much easier hellhole to navigate, if nothing else.

Friendship, Marriage and Falsehoods

28 Monday Apr 2014

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, Christianity, culture, Eclectic, Marriage, Pittsburgh, Pop Culture, Religion, Work, Youth

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Tags

Angelia N. Levy, Family, Friendship, Husband-Wife Relationship, Love, Romance, Romantic Love, Wedding Anniversary, Work of Marriage


Me and Angelia at my PhD graduation, Carnegie Mellon University, May 18, 1997. (Edward Lomax).

Me and Angelia at my PhD graduation, Carnegie Mellon University, May 18, 1997. (Edward Lomax).

Today marks fourteen years of marriage. Statistically, we’re either a year away from divorce, or on board for a longer roller-coaster-ride of life and love, struggle and stress, revelation and renewal. Either way, it’s already been a great two decades of learning about myself and my wife, about the meaning of love (conditional and unconditional) and the limits of romance, about the real meaning of family and marriage.

Some of you may not believe this, but a marriage of any realness is hard work. We get tired of ourselves, our baggage, our bullshit. Now add another human being to the mix, the person you share most everything with. It can be a emotional meltdown of epic proportions if you’re not mature enough to have a well-honed sense of empathy, not to mention a sense of humor and a sense of when to back off.

I can say from experience that it helps to have been friends long before love, romance, marriage and parenting became part of the bargain. And not just friends, but the best of friends. Without having that, everything else is work without purpose, drudgery and painful struggles with personal and spiritual growth.

One of the many things I’ve learned in the past decade and nearly a half is that marriage itself has been loaded with context, deriving from Western ideas that have their roots in European royalty and the 19th century warping of such ideas for us ordinary folk. Including Whiteness and chivalry, of weird evangelical notions of masculinity and femininity, of patriarchy and high-born expectations. Only to realize that these ideas come out of an era of arraigned marriages, essential contracts to secure bloodlines and power for another generation of the elite classes. Romance, love, the eternal enduring bond between two soul-mates – that was never part of this bargain. But leave it to capitalism to distort a loveless process of procreation into an intense, always-falling-in-love – but without standing in love in the midst of struggle – idea of marriage.

Because of this knowledge, I know, too, that every marriage is different. And because of the unique nature of every relationship, I also know that my relationship with my wife is constantly evolving. Meaning that any ideas of marriage that I had fourteen years ago have been dead for a while. Trust me, this is a good thing. There is no singular road map to a happy and always-in-love marriage – that fairy tale is for the Anna Hathaway/Princess Bride set who remains at the mental age of eight or twelve.

No, a good marriage is about two people working toward similar goals, to a friendship that keeps changing, even if the contours of that friendship become ever more complicated. After all, it’s from that ground of friendship that our love shot up in the first place. Yay, us!

Woman In Love

15 Saturday Mar 2014

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, eclectic music, Marriage, Mount Vernon New York, music, Pop Culture, Youth

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"I'm Every Woman" (1979), "Sweet Love" (1986), "Woman In Love" (1980), Anita Baker, Barbra Streisand, Bipolar Disorder, Celine Dion, Chaka Khan, Crushes, Drugs, Empathy, Endorphins, Euphoria, Love, Male-Female Relationships, Phyllis, Romance, Understanding Women, Wendy, Woman


Cover art of "Woman In Love" (1980) single by Barbra Streisand, August 9, 2006. (JeanMarcDekesel via Wikipedia, http://www.discogs.com/viewimages?what=R&obid=539484). Qualifies as fair use under US copyright laws (low resolution and subject matter).

Cover art of “Woman In Love” (1980) single by Barbra Streisand, August 9, 2006. (JeanMarcDekesel via Wikipedia, http://www.discogs.com/viewimages?what=R&obid=539484). Qualifies as fair use under US copyright laws (low resolution and subject matter).

I actually like a couple of Barbra Streisand songs, both from ’80, and both from her collaboration with The Bee Gees (specifically, Barry Gibb). One is “Guilty,” the other “Woman In Love.” And yes, this is but one sign of how weird I am. But for the past thirty-four years, these songs have been part of my mental and actual music rotation, allowing me to ponder the mysteries of the opposite sex in the process.

For those moments, I’ve sometimes found myself wondering, has any woman ever felt that way about me? “I am a woman in love/And I’d do anything/To get you into my world/And hold you within.” I honesty have no idea, but the possibility of stirring passion in someone other than myself has fascinated me since the days of my Wendy crush in March ’82.

So, every time I’ve had a crush or love of major note, Streisand’s “Woman In Love” has given me to ability to think about what it would be like to be a woman. Young. In love. With all of the hopes and hurts, battles and betrayals. In ’85 with Phyllis, in ’91, in ’95 with my eventual wife, even after marriage. Somehow, the overwrought and — dare I say, Jewish — angst with which Streisand sang the song resonated with me and has stayed with me after all these years.

Cover art for Anita Baker's  Rapture (1986) CD, April 25, 2006. (Faustlin via Wikipedia). Qualifies as fair use (low resolution).

Cover art for Anita Baker’s Rapture (1986) CD, April 25, 2006. (Faustlin via Wikipedia). Qualifies as fair use (low resolution).

It wasn’t just Streisand that’s given me this feeling over the years. Anita Baker’s “Sweet Love,” and “Body and Soul,” Chaka Khan’s “I’m Every Woman” (still like this version better than Whitney’s, may she rest in peace) and “Through The Fire,” even some stuff from Celine Dion. Their music has gotten me about as close as could get to understanding what it must feel like to be a woman, at least in a generic sense. My wife, though, could probably testify to a lot more moments.

Of course, I can’t actually be a “woman in love,” no matter how much experience, imagination and empathy I can muster. Passing a kidney stone for nineteen hours in ’02 may approximate what my wife went through in giving birth to our son in ’03. But I didn’t have to carry that kidney stone around for nine months while it made noticeable changes to my body, my diet and my psyche. And having a child that you’ve fallen in love with before their birth often make the process worth it. I couldn’t get my doctors to let me see my kidney stone, much less keep it!

“It’s a right I defend/Over and over again,” Streisand sings in “Woman In Love.” As a boy and man who’s been “in love” at least four times in forty-four years, I feel that I can relate — a lot, if not in total. Taken to it’s most illogical extent, though, would mean obsession, possibly even stalker-like tendencies, especially if someone else doesn’t feel anything near the same way. But, when you’re in the middle of it, you might as well be on coke, Oxycontin and weed all at once, and with some latent form of bipolar disorder to boot. And the hangover from being in love requires much more than a Bloody Mary to get over.

Parts of your brain on drugs (endorphins) when in love, June 28, 2004. (Andreas Bartels, AP/Forbes.com).

Parts of your brain on drugs (endorphins) when in love, June 28, 2004. (Andreas Bartels, AP/Forbes.com).

How women do it, I guess I’ll never know.

One Good Woman

28 Thursday Apr 2011

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, eclectic music, Marriage

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"Another E", "One Good Woman", "Ordinary People", Crush #1, Images, John Legend, Love, Marriage, Peter Cetera, Pitt, Pittsburgh, Romance, The Power of Another E, Understanding, University of Pittsburgh, Women


My Wife, Angelia Levy, April 2010. Angelia N. Levy

Today is our eleventh wedding anniversary. Tomorrow is a Crush #1 day. The next month covers a series of events that includes my first “date” with my now wife nearly sixteen years ago. Not to mention my last “dates” with the woman who’s the subject of my blog post, “The Power of Another E” (April ’09) from twenty years ago.

And then there’s my Mom, somewhere in the background, distant but still there, reminding me of all that made me, well, me. At least the me that wanted Crush #1, thought too highly of the twenty-two year-old version of “Another E,” and was ready to be involved with my eventual wife. Things have grown so much more complicated since the days when I couldn’t say “Hi” to a woman, much less date or be married to one.

One of my favorite adult contemporary songs about how women can inspire in relationships is Peter Cetera’s “One Good Woman” (1988). It was the first song I’d heard that really summed up the way I’d felt about my first crush back in ’82. And it provided a stark contrast to the way I felt about my second crush/obsession by the time the fall of ’88 rolled around. I bopped to the feelings in that song for much of my sophomore year at Pitt.

But I wasn’t a fool. I knew that there wasn’t anyone in my life at the time, or had been at any time, who could measure up to those lyrics. While Crush #1 definitely “brought out the best in me,” it certainly wasn’t because of her “love and understanding.” The two things I longed for in my life from others I cared for and about was love and understanding. My mother had little of either by the time I was a teenager, even though I know that she did the best she could. It just wasn’t close to good enough. So I put some of my faith in those lyrics, my romantic side in singing those words, eventually with no one in mind.

Even with dating and the ’90s, and even though I played “One Good Woman” less and less, I sought someone in my life who’d fit those lyrics. The problem with a country full of arrogant narcissists — me included — is that most of us present with DSM-IV neuroses (and in some cases, psychoses) long before we reach the stage of love and understanding. For better and certainly for worse, my mother was really the only woman who approximated any sense of the feeling Cetera releases so well in his song. And by approximate, I mean less than one-tenth of the full strength of the music and lyrics of “One Good Woman.”

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Sons shouldn’t really think too often of their mother in a romantic light. It certainly would’ve helped to have known how deeply or how superficially I was loved by my mother, but I had nothing in my dating life really to compare it to.

That was, until I met my eventual son’s mother. Angelia was everything in Cetera’s “One Good Woman” lyrics. She wasn’t a dream of it like Crush #1. Or an obsession like Crush #2. Or someone who could be that for a moment like “Another E” or be a trifling ass the next minute like so many women I dated between ’91 and ’96. She was a real woman, good, bad, warts and all.

So when we married eleven years ago, with the Napster era that was, I downloaded Cetera’s “One Good Woman” and made it a permanent part of the collection that would end up on my iPod in ’06. Except that in recent years, my “One Good Woman” image feels more like John Legend’s “Ordinary People,” proving that even women that inspire you to love, cherish and understand are human beings as well.

When I listen to “One Good Woman” these days, I do think of my wife. But I also think of all of the other women who’ve inspired me over the years. Including my mother. Including even some of my more trifling exs. I love my wife, and I hope things in our marriage continue to work even as we work through whatever issues we have from time to time.

Still, I need to remember that romance comes and goes, but marriage only works when people work hard to communicate when they don’t understand, despite their love for each other. If either of us were to quit, it shouldn’t diminish all of the good that I saw and see in that woman, my wife, and the life we’ve had over the past fifteen plus years.

Boy @ The Window: A Memoir

Boy @ The Window: A Memoir

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