Heck Of A Guy

This post is the sequel to The Half-Sister Of Mercy, Leonard Cohen, & Me¹

The Half-Sister Of Mercy Prototype

While the primary focus of this post is the Half Sister Of Mercy, the delightful woman I met just prior to the Leonard Cohen Beacon Theater Concert and with whom I spent the evening, I must  point out that this is by no means the first time I’ve convinced a good looking woman I’ve never before met into accompanying me for a night’s festivities.

It’s the second …

in 35 years.

There are similarities in these cases. Both women were lovely, animated, funny, and knowledgeable.

Both were also in their 20s.

And both met the primary criterion of  acceptability – they  could have done better than me.²

Perhaps the most significant difference between the two episodes is the accessibility, in the first, of liquor.  As a medical student, I was the guest of the Missouri  Academy Of Family Practice at their annual weekend meeting at a lakeside resort.

After the Academy’s Award Dinner, there was live music and dancing. More accurately, given that 90% of the medical students attending this shindig were male and that our hosts had unaccountably failed to provide escorts, there was live music with the potential for dancing.

And, in the main dining room, one young woman was notable for two features – she was extraordinarily attractive and she was seated next to a man, whom we assumed to be her father, with a disconcertingly precise resemblance to the James Bond villain, Goldfinger.

Fueled by equal parts ethanol and desperation, I strategically approached her table from her father’s blind side and spoke the four words she wanted to hear, “Uh, you wanna dance?”³ An evening of merriment ensued.  While my liaison with the vixen did not survive the weekend, I enjoyed enhanced esteem in the eyes of my male peers for some time until they finally concluded that my success was only a one-time fluke.

They were, of course, wrong.

That phenomenon would prove to be a two-time fluke.

That’s the cue for the scene to fast forward 35 years and shift from the Ozarks to Broadway, where we watch as …

DrHGuy Lays The Smooth Patter On Half-Sister Of Mercy #2

At the conclusion of the preceding post,  The Half-Sister Of Mercy, Leonard Cohen, & Me,  my attempts to decide what to do with an unexpected extra ticket to the Leonard Cohen Beacon Theater Concert has been interrupted by the arrival of

…  a young (mid-twenties), tall, lovely, vivacious, companionless woman, who is a long-time Leonard Cohen  fan and who is, as one might imagine, most desirous of attending the concert.

Yet, doing so is no easy decision for her. It turns out that once one subtracts the expenses entailed in living in New York from the subsistence level wages paid yoga instructors, “splurging on entertainment” comes to mean picking up a sack of microwave popcorn to go with the video from Blockbuster, not buying tickets for Leonard Cohen’s first US concert in 15 years.

Practicing, in emulation of the Strategic Air Command, eternal vigilance, I detect an opportunity to resolve our respective problems and, based on my earlier experience (see above), make my move.

Once I locate a source of alcohol, however, I am unable to construct a pragmatic plan by which I could somehow imbibe sufficient  Johnny Walker wisdom in a timely, below the radar manner before approaching the targeted damsel.

On the other hand, a quick survey of the crowd discloses no Goldfinger doppelgängers.

Adapting to the situation, I go directly into my slyly seductive rap, “Uh,⁴ I’ve got an extra ticket. You could be my guest for the concert – if you want.”

Pretty slick, eh?  I’m  especially proud of the “if you want”  part that adds just the right combination of awkwardness and implicit  guilt.

I repeat the same lines at least three times, the final rendition taking place after she had already agreed to my suggestion.

I’m not certain in retrospect, but I may have also told her I was Kris Kristofferson.⁵

Regardless, she accepted.

Leonard Cohen Sings For The Half-Sister Of Mercy And Me⁶

The rest of the story is one more replay of the classic they lived happily ever after until around midnight when she had to leave, this being a school night and all ending.

For that night, we were boon companions. She was duly impressed with my vast repertoire of arcane and useless Cohen trivia – or was practiced enough in dealing with men to present a credible facade of interest, either of which is a satisfactory response. Genuine interest is gratifying, expertly feigned interest, in a one night, one time only situation, is admirable.⁷

And, she seemed sincerely pleased by my capacity, developed as a result of blogging about the first 99 or so concerts in the tour, to predict the elements of the show. (Yes, I asked her first if she wanted to know what was going to take place or if she preferred being surprised. I do have some rudimentary social skills.) My reassurance, for example, that “this will not be the final encore” was especially well received.

For her part, she knew Cohen’s work intimately, having listened to it many more years than I and, further, was a musician by inclination and training.

What were the chances I would end up attending the Leonard Cohen concert with an opera-trained singer who, among other gigs, fronted a David Bowie cover band?⁸

I also learned about her work and life at an ashram, her current job as a yoga instructor, and her plan to attend medical school in order to become – yep, you guessed it – a psychiatrist.

And, yes, we exchanged sidelong glances and performed synchronized eyebrow arching when Cohen offered, should one want a doctor, “to examine every precious inch of you,” in tacit acknowledgment of one of the benefits of medical school.

She was a delight, ending the evening by initiating the requisite embrace.

What Does Leonard Cohen Have To Do With This?

A reader emailed me, asking why Leonard Cohen got titular billing in the preceding post, “The Half-Sister Of Mercy, Leonard Cohen, & Me.”

Obviously, this accidental rendezvous took place at a Cohen concert (and the “Half-Sister Of Mercy” reference wouldn’t make much sense if this were, for example, a Rolling Stones show), but the reason Cohen is significant to my story goes a tad deeper.

From my perspective, there was something between the two of us that went beyond the enjoyment shared by compatible companions at an entertainment event.

My Half-Sister Of Mercy, until and unless she reads this, was and remains unaware that I had spent the daylight hours the day of the concert touring the same  New York locations Julie⁹ and I had visited on trips to the Huge Honeycrisp: the hotel where we saw Tom Wolfe, who was speaking at the American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting, the Broadway theaters where we saw a batch of shows, beginning with the eight-hour version of Nicholas Nickleby in 1981, the restaurants where we indulged in the range of offerings from caviar and sturgeon at Petrossian (for a country girl, Julie developed some expensive tastes) to kielbasa sausage and falafel from street vendors, and our favorite sites, from the Chrysler Building to the buildings in which the publishing houses reside.

I was, consequently, feeling my losses more poignantly than usual that night.

And, while I wouldn’t suggest that my Half-Sister Of Mercy, should she apply for canonization, offer it as evidence of a miracle, there was something in our connection that hastened my recovery from that desolation.

I’m not convinced that the unsentimental affection between us would have taken place in other settings. I don’t, for example, see the same kind of feelings being generated against the background of an Arcade Fire concert – or shows by Bruce Springsteen, U2, or Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

I write about this episode without any illusions that some kind of mystic connection took place, that anyone fell in love, or that a persistent and profound relationship was formed. I think it entirely likely that the  woman beside me that night was doing no more than being polite to a generous, seemingly benign guy.  All that matters is that she was there that night, I was there that night, and I was the better for it.

As for  Leonard Cohen, that’s why he gets billing.

As for my one time companion, the Half-Sister Of Mercy deserves the same kind of musical memorialization Leonard Cohen afforded Barbara and Lorraine, the original Sisters Of Mercy. She will, unfortunately, have to settle for these two inadequate posts I’ve composed.

As for anyone else immersed in feelings of loss, I can’t do better than leave you with the blessing that ends Leonard Cohen’s Sisters Of Mercy:

_____________________

1. This post about my experience attending the February 19, 2009 Leonard Cohen New York Beacon Theatre Conference is also part of the same series as The Leonard Cohen New York Beacon Theatre Concert Stories No Other Source Dares Print and The Girl With The Leonard Cohen Tattoo [↩]
2. Like Groucho Marx, who famously refused to belong to any club that will have him as a member, I would be loathe to date any woman who couldn’t do better than me. [↩]
3. It was only much later that I realized that Half-Sister Of Mercy #1, faced with the choice of sitting with her Goldfinger-clone father and the rest of her  family (none of whom, disappointingly, resembled any of the James Bond villains) for the rest of the evening or joining the throng of increasingly raucous  med students, would no doubt have responded in identical fashion to any number of four word combinations, including “Please come join us,” “You’re gorgeous; let’s dance,” “Is he really Goldfinger?” and “Boogety, Boogety,  Boogety,  Boogety.” [↩]
4. Once you’ve got a winning opening, why change? [↩]
5. Hey, it worked when Leonard Cohen used it on Janis Joplin. As Cohen tells it

   And I  looked into her [Janis Joplin's] eyes. She avoided my eyes and it became clear to me that she wasn’t looking for me. She was looking for Kris Kristofferson. I said, “I am Kris Kristofferson.” She said, “I thought you were a lot taller.” I said, “I am a lot taller but it’s just photography.” [↩]

6. I am informed that others may have attended the Beacon Theatre Concert, which would explain why it took us so long to leave the building after the final song. [↩]
7. Perhaps spending the past nine years as the single parent of perpetually adolescent sons has adjusted my expectations. I do find myself reveling in certain social interactions, the chief feature of which is an absence of upward rolling eyeballs and exaggerated sighs of disgust. [↩]
8. Her dedication to her craft can be measured by her willingness, in anther situation, to perform Janis Joplin songs, transforming her clear, rounded tones into a Joplinesque growl by bathing her vocal cords in whiskey. [↩]
9. Julie Showalter was my fiercely intelligent, wickedly sexy, and much beloved wife with whom I had a outrageously wonderful 20 year marriage that ended with her death in late 1999 from cancer diagnosed the week of our wedding. She was also a prize-winning author. Many posts on this blog are about her, our unlikely romance, and our life together, and still others consist of her writings. Information can be found at Julie Showalter FAQ. [↩]