Category Archives: Julie Showalter

Thirteen Years After Julie Died, It’s Still The Same Old Song – Along With A Few New Ones

Posted on December 3, 2012 by | 2 Comments

At 7:00 on the morning of December 3, 1999,
in the bed we shared, Julie Showalter,
my beloved, fiercely smart, wickedly sexy wife,
died from cancer diagnosed the week
of our wedding nearly 20 years earlier.

I miss her every day.

Emotional Arithmetic

Things have changed since Julie died thirteen years ago.1

December 3, 2012 finds me still in love with Julie, and, indeed, I still miss her every day.  I am also, however, profoundly, unabashedly, recklessly in love with Penny, who became my wife just over a year ago.

And, while my schedule for December 3rd begins, as it has every year since I began blogging, with this commemorative post, obsessing over Julie’s death won’t be my sole occupation today. I will also set up our Christmas tree, pay a few bills, read a novel that is turning out to be better than I expected, respond to the emails that piled up over the weekend, … . I may even post something about Leonard Cohen because, for now, that seems to be what I do.  I’ll spend time with Penny, we’ll plan our holiday activities, we’ll commiserate over the latest crisis caused and consequent grief suffered by my son, and we’ll generally perform whatever daily tasks husbands and wives in our cohort perform around here this time of year.

In addition, we’ll be thinking of Penny’s husband Don, who died in 2009, and Julie.  Having been privileged to have been married to individuals who both happened to be gracious, enchanting, affectionate, talented, lusty, and caring, we tenaciously guard our memories of them, confident that the  joyfulness thus gained far exceeds the pain, however poignant, suffered in the process.

Neither of us, you see, was then – or is now – willing to forsake the treasures we accumulated from years of cherishing and being cherished for the numbing anesthesia of an obliterated memory.

That’s the way the emotional arithmetic works.  Our experiences with Julie and Don are additions to, not losses from our lives as individuals and our life together.

In My Not So Secret Life

There is a certain cognitive dissonance implicit in posting a video called “And We’re Still Making Love In My Secret Life – A Video For Julie” as a public video on YouTube – and then writing blog entries about it.2 Nonetheless, the underlying theme – my passion for Julie since the moment I met her – remains valid. Beside, “In My Intrapsychic Life” doesn’t scan as well.

The following excerpt is from And We’re Still Making Love In My Secret Life – A Video For Julie, a post about the making of this video:

In fact, Julie was a vital  part of the core of  my interior reality from the day I met her, although she was, during the first eight years of that time, a singularly chaste component of my  private universe, as I pointed out in the first part of Julie’s Story, This Is How A Love Story Began:

And, starting then, we spent time together, at first studying together, sharing lunch, and, most often, just talking. It was all quite innocent, because, as I would glibly but accurately note when retelling our story to friends — at that point, Julie was still married, and I was still Christian.

But all that was to change.

That change included not only the two of us living together for almost 20 years in an outrageously happy marriage but also her continued presence in my thoughts in the years since her death.

Julie and Da Boyz

In My Secret Life
by Leonard Cohen and Sharon Robinson

I saw you this morning.
You were moving so fast.
Can’t seem to loosen my grip
On the past.
And I miss you so much.
There’s no one in sight.
And we’re still making love
In My Secret Life.

I smile when I’m angry.
I cheat and I lie.
I do what I have to do
To get by.
But I know what is wrong,
And I know what is right.
And I’d die for the truth
In My Secret Life.

Hold on, hold on, my brother.
My sister, hold on tight.
I finally got my orders.
I’ll be marching through the morning,
Marching through the night,
Moving cross the borders
Of My Secret Life.

Looked through the paper.
Makes you want to cry.
Nobody cares if the people
Live or die.
And the dealer wants you thinking
That it’s either black or white.
Thank G-d it’s not that simple
In My Secret Life.

I bite my lip.
I buy what I’m told:
From the latest hit,
To the wisdom of old.
But I’m always alone.
And my heart is like ice.
And it’s crowded and cold
In My Secret Life.

I’ve Missed Julie For For A Long, Long Time

Twitt

_____________________
  1. Julie Showalter was a spectacular woman and, for far too brief a time, the center of my life.  The strange and wondrous story of how Julie and I met, fell in love, and – 9 years, 2 husbands, 1 wife, and 2 careers later – got together to spend a magnficient20 years together before her death, her prize-winning writing, and  the life we shared are featured in many posts at this site. See Julie Showalter FAQ. [↩]
  2. Of course, the same notion of cognitive dissonance applies to writing and then performing “In My Secret Life” all over the world to thousands of people, but Mr Cohen and Ms Robinson would, I suppose, claim artistic license. [↩]

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Now, We Both Miss Julie

Posted on December 3, 2011 by | Comments Off

At 7:00 on the morning of December 3, 1999,
in the bed we shared, Julie Showalter,
my beloved, fiercely smart, wickedly sexy wife,
died from cancer diagnosed the week
of our wedding nearly 20 years earlier.

Julie, Don, Penny, and Me

Penny and I were each privileged to have previously been married to individuals who were gracious, joyful, affectionate, talented, passionate, and caring. Consequently, when the two of us took our wedding vows earlier this year, we were not only willing to bring into our union the love, veneration, and, not least, the longings that Penny maintained for her husband Don, who died in 2009, and that I held for my wife Julie, who died in 1999,1  but were, in fact, resolute about doing so.

Neither of us, you see, was then – or is now – willing to forsake the treasures we accumulated from years of cherishing and being cherished for the numbing anesthesia of an obliterated memory.

So, while Penny and I occasionally find it awkward to realize we miss someone we never met, that seems a small price to pay for a home resonant with feelings from our past liaisons as well as our own  present relationship.

And more than ever, our song of songs for who we are now and who we have been in the past has become Leonard Cohen’s Dance Me To The End Of Love.

 

Twitt

_____________________
  1. I’ve written about the strange story of how Julie and I came together – see Julie Showalter FAQ [↩]

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New Video: It’s Not The Heat – Written & Read By Julie Showalter

Posted on February 9, 2011 by | 3 Comments

In keeping with the Valentine’s Day theme of the past two days, this video is based on a recording of Julie Showalter1 reading her sultry short story about her parents’ romance, It’s Not The Heat, for the 7 February 1997 edition of NPR’s This American Life Valentine’s Day Special.2

The first version of the short story itself, which was somewhat adapted for the performance,  is posted under its original title, “Parents’ Love,” below the video.

end3

Parents’ Love by Julie Showalter

For a long time, when asked if my parents loved each other, I would arch my eyebrow and say, “Love? Well, I guess by their standards,” thereby implying that I knew more about love, neurotic dependency, and the difference between the two than they ever did.

Here are the facts: They married in 1944 – high school sweethearts from Dimmitt, Texas. He was a dashing oh-so-young sailor, she a college beauty queen. When he died, 41 years later, they were still married. In the interim, they had three daughters, and they divorced each other twice.

He got cold feet before their first wedding. Just didn’t show up before he was shipped off to the Great Lakes Naval Training Center. Or at least that’s her story. Other relatives, when pressed, allow as how maybe he wasn’t as sure they were getting married as she was. Whichever way it was, she considered herself jilted. Out of spite she married the next man she met – a flyer. Like a character in a novel who’s only needed to move the story along, this husband disappeared – shot down by the Germans a month after she married him.

She tracked my father to San Diego where he was about to ship out. She was ready to forgive, and he was ready to be forgiven. Never mind that she’d been a widow for about six weeks. They were married less than three months after the alleged jilting. When my sisters and I learned about the flyer after we were grown, she said, “I never loved that man. I loved your father.”

Because she was beautiful, he wanted her to be glamorous. When we were the poorest we ever were, living on a turkey farm in a four-room house with linoleum floors, he bought her a silver tea and coffee service for Christmas. We’d just gotten television then, and I think he saw her as Bess Meyerson floating in mink on “The Big Payoff,” or Arlene Dahl pouring coffee for her guests on “The Home Show.” Another year he did buy her mink – a cape from Sears. She exchanged it for a new gas range.

They were hot, an embarrassment to growing daughters. She’d put her hand flat against his cheek after he’d shaved and just hold it there while he moved his lips against her thumb. When guiding her into a room, he put his hand on the small of her back and you could see his fingers flex, see him feeling her back under her dress, see her responding. Sometimes in the evening they’d have a drink, put on an old record and dance to Glen Miller. My sisters and I would watch them – handsome, graceful, sex-charged. Then they’d go to bed early leaving us trying to concentrate on TV and popcorn.

When I was eleven, I saw her reach up from where she was sitting and zip his trousers. Then she patted him just below the belt. This is marriage, I thought. This is sex. This is knowing another body. They were hot.

But he would drink and she would bitch. Or maybe she would bitch and then he’d drink. Drinking was his weakness, and sometimes when he was drinking, there’d be a woman – “a certain kind of woman finds your father very attractive,” Mother told us.

Their second divorce may have been the shortest in Missouri history. The day after it was final, a week after she’d sent her diamond rings out to be reset – rings, by the way, that she was still paying for, another one of his flamboyant gifts – the next day, she took him back. Literally took him.

I was nineteen, the oldest, so she made me drive. “We’re going to get your father,” she said.
We knew where he was, he was with Lorna, one of those women. When we pulled up, Mother shook her head at the degradation. Lorna’s house had no grass in the yard, just hard-packed dirt. An old wringer washer that someone had tried to make into a planter sat on the sagging front porch. Mother sent me ahead, “Make sure he’s in there.”
Through the screen door, I could see half a dozen men playing cards. My eyes adjusted enough to pick out Daddy. He looked loose, happy. Drinking, but not drunk. Lorna came in from the kitchen carrying a bowl of potato chips. “Julie,” she said, “come on in. Look, Bill,” she turned to Daddy, “Julie’s come to see us.”

He started to get up, but his attention was drawn to the front porch. Mother stood in the open screen door with the sunlight behind her. She was wearing a white summer dress, cut straight and close to her body, and high heels that showed her long slim calves. The sun made her red hair seem almost to vibrate. She looked cool, beautiful, elegant — like Suzy Parker, the model in the ads for Revlon’s Fire and Ice. All the men in the room stared at her without talking. I looked from her to Lorna, a blowzy woman with ink black hair and mascara smeared under her eyes. Mother walked over and put her hand on Daddy’s arm. “Come on, Sweetie,” she said, “we’re taking you home.”

And just like he had been waiting for her to come, he got up and walked out with us. Not a word to Lorna, nothing. I thought of Mother’s brief engagement during their first divorce, when I was six: “I didn’t love that man,” she said. “I just did it to get your father back.” He had known she wouldn’t let him live with another woman.

They got married again on April Fool’s Day, 1967. They didn’t have a wedding or engagement ring because hers were still at the jewelers being made into cocktail rings. The next week she would have to have them re-reset. She wore a red skirt and jacket. He wore a tweed sport coat. He bought a gardenia corsage for her and a carnation for himself. They drove to Miami, Oklahoma, where there was no waiting period for a marriage license.
My sisters and I were invited, but we all found reasons not to go. We were fed up with both of them by that time. “They’ll be divorced again in a year,” we thought. But they weren’t. This time they stuck. For eighteen years.

The last time I saw them together, he was in the hospital, dying. She came in, still beautiful. “They haven’t taken care of you today,” she said. She shaved him herself. She wet and combed his hair. Then she put her hand on his cheek and said, “Now. There’s my good-looking man.” This is marriage. This is love.

Twitt

_____________________
  1. Julie Showalter was the fiercely intelligent, sexy, and loving woman and prize-winning author 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 nearly 20 years earlier. 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. [↩]
  2. This reading was first posted as an audio file at Not The Heat; A Reading By Julie Showalter on May 6, 2006. [↩]

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Posted in Julie Showalter, Julie's Writings

That Valentine Time Of Year

Posted on February 7, 2011 by | 1 Comment

It is indeed the season when Heck Of A Guy posts pertaining to Valentine’s Day or romance in general become especially popular.  According to the web stats, these are among the current favorites:

1. The Leverage Of Love – 10 Things That Are 10 Times More Fun With A Sweetheart

This list has only one inclusion criteria, that the gratification produced by performing the activity with a sweetheart is (at least) ten times greater than if done alone or with a non-sweetheart sort of individual, and one exclusion criterion, that the activities are not ephemeral or conceptual (so, no fair listing “falling in love”). In addition, this list does not include exclusively romantic activities (so, there are no items such as “holding hands,” “gazing into one another’s eyes,” “having wild monkey sex on a picnic table at a roadside park,” even though those activities are indeed 10 times more fun with a sweetheart) because that would be way too easy.

These two examples are illustrative:

#1. Reading the Sunday papers in bed1

#8. Attending weddings, especially weddings of people to whom the social  connection is just close enough to obligate attendance

2. This Is How A Love Story Began

wedgroups

This is the first chapter in a series of posts that tells the unlikely story of how Julie, my much-beloved, fiercely smart, extraordinarily sexy wife, and I fell in love and – two husbands, one wife, and two or three careers later – spent an outrageously wonderful 20 years together until she died in 1999 from cancer diagnosed the week of our wedding.2

3. Anti-Valentine’s Day – 1st Commercial Holiday Based On Opposition To A Commercial Holiday

antivalentine2

Yep, my cynical take on a cynical response to Valentine’s Day has proven surprisingly popular throughout this pre-Valentine’s Day period.

4. More Of Giles Brindley

Las Vegas, 1983

More Of Giles Brindley is an introduction for and gateway to Giles Brindley – Extreme Show & Tell, a post which is the internet’s most comprehensive exposition on Professor Giles Brindley and Dr Brindley’s presentation at the 1983 Las Vegas meeting of the American Urological Association.

This was not your usual soporific PowerPoint lecture.

The central vignette of the post, which, remember, takes place in Las Vegas during an international medical society annual meeting, features (1) a farcical episode in which physicians and their spouses, dressed in formal attire, are beset with shock and awe by the sight of an exposed penis, (2) an important advance in basic physiology and the treatment of erectile dysfunction, and (3) a contribution to a major cultural shift.

Credit Due Department: The valentine atop this post is from Valentine’s Cards

Twitt

_____________________
  1. Among the always-read and always-savored sections of the Sunday papers were horoscopes (in which we didn’t believe), Dear Abby (whose advice we never heeded), Goren on Bridge ( a game I have never played), the column on coin collecting (a hobby of mine as recently as the three weeks following my tenth birthday), and all the comics (including those such as Funky Winkerbean,  Gil Thorp, and Family Circus, for which there exists mathematical proof of incompatibility with humor, drama, or human interest beyond a macabre curiosity about why they were allowed to exist) [↩]
  2. Julie was also a prize-winning writer. This blog includes many other posts about her and the unlikely but true story of our romance (See Julie FAQ) as well as several of her short stories and other pieces. Most of Julie’s fully edited and buffed literary efforts are already available under the category, Julie’s Published. Julie’s Unpublished comprises a group of pieces I’ve found on her computer or in her office that range from workshop exercises to story fragments to projects set aside to finish at a later day to work that appears, at least to me, to be fully as polished and effective as her published stories. [↩]

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Same Date, Same Song, Same Memories Of Julie

Posted on December 3, 2010 by | 10 Comments

At 7:00 on the morning of December 3, 1999,
in the bed we shared, Julie Showalter,
my beloved, fiercely smart, wickedly sexy wife,
died from cancer diagnosed the week
of our wedding nearly 20 years earlier.

I miss her every day.

In My Secret Life

I thought this year I could forgo a post commemorating the day Julie died.

Turns out I can’t.

The story behind this video can be found at And We’re Still Making Love In My Secret Life – A Video For Julie

In My Secret Life
by Leonard Cohen and Sharon Robinson

I saw you this morning.
You were moving so fast.
Can’t seem to loosen my grip
On the past.
And I miss you so much.
There’s no one in sight.
And we’re still making love
In My Secret Life.

I smile when I’m angry.
I cheat and I lie.
I do what I have to do
To get by.
But I know what is wrong,
And I know what is right.
And I’d die for the truth
In My Secret Life.

Hold on, hold on, my brother.
My sister, hold on tight.
I finally got my orders.
I’ll be marching through the morning,
Marching through the night,
Moving cross the borders
Of My Secret Life.

Looked through the paper.
Makes you want to cry.
Nobody cares if the people
Live or die.
And the dealer wants you thinking
That it’s either black or white.
Thank G-d it’s not that simple
In My Secret Life.

I bite my lip.
I buy what I’m told:
From the latest hit,
To the wisdom of old.
But I’m always alone.
And my heart is like ice.
And it’s crowded and cold
In My Secret Life.

I’ve Missed Julie For For A Long, Long Time

Twitt

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Thankful For This Thanksgiving Memory

Posted on November 25, 2010 by | 1 Comment

Note: This is a republication of a Heck Of A Guy entry titled “Thanksgiving Memory – Man Triumphs Over Industrial Might To Assure Family Will Be Overfed” originally posted on this site November 23, 2006. Viewers who read it then are excused from this assignment but should be aware this content will be covered on the final.

Turkey Fixé À L’intérieur Du Four À Cuire: The Turkey Story Julie Didn’t Write

That this episode qualifies as a Thanksgiving Memory signifies how uneventful most DrHGuy family Thanksgivings have been and how few of my recollections don’t fit the “Apotheosis of St. Julie” theme.

It Was A Thanksgiving Like Any Other, Until …

After Julie1 and I have been together for a few years but before Da Boyz are even a gleam in parental eyes, we decide that, while we don’t have time to make it to our homes in the Ozarks for Thanksgiving, we will take the day off (I have previously spent at least a half-day making hospital rounds on Thanksgiving) and invite one of my medical school buddies, who also lives in Chicago, and her friend to share our holiday dinner.

Consequently, our opening scene is populated with four adults, enjoying a relatively sophisticated (i.e., alcohol is present; children are not) Thanksgiving celebration.

Julie has, as one might expect, set the table with the good (i.e., never before used) silver and dinnerware, forbidden me to offer (even the really good) potato chips as appetizers, and prepared a traditional turkey dinner.

Our guests arrive early in the day and within minutes are in the kitchen helping. I am elsewhere; I don’t recall my activities at this point, but I am, no doubt, performing some manly task such as taking out the trash, cleaning my guns, tuning up the car, placing wagers on the day’s football games, perusing pornography, … .

We Need A Hero

We have, of course, purchased a turkey large enough to feed not only four adults but the four extended families of those four adults.  The bird will, in fact, barely fit into the oven.

In her determination to assure the oven door is fully closed, Julie instinctively shoves the lever that secures the oven door to the “Locked” position, which indeed pulls the door shut another fraction of an inch.

It also triggers the oven’s self-cleaning mechanism.

For those unfamiliar with the workings of a self-cleaning oven, the first paragraph of the pertinent entry in HowStuffWorks commendably covers the information essential to comprehend the circumstances:

Self-cleaning ovens use an approximately 900 degrees Fahrenheit (482 degrees Celsius) temperature cycle to burn off spills leftover from baking, without the use of any chemicals. A self-cleaning oven is designed with a mechanical interlock (patented in 1982) to keep the oven door locked and closed during and soon after the high-temperature cleaning cycle, which can be approximately three hours. The door stays locked to prevent burn injuries. You can open the oven door after the oven cools to approximately 600 F (315 C).

Panic ensues. All three of the kitchen crew are, however, professionals, used to dealing with crises, and they staunch the emotional flooding to deliberate on the conundrum they face and possible solutions. The implications of the self-cleaning cycle progressing through completion with our dinner locked inside are contemplated. Panic resumes at an impressively escalated level.

I am summoned.

To fully appreciate the level of desperation this turkey terror has precipitated, one has only to know that (1) Julie and my friend are both familiar with the extent of my handyman expertise2 and (2) they ask me to help anyway.

The Manly Challenge

I immediately assess the situation and initiate the testosterone-driven Standard Repair Of Non-automotive Machinery Sequence, Midwestern American Male Version:

  1. Using moderate force, pull the lever toward the unlocked position.
  2. Using more force, pull the lever toward the unlocked position.
  3. Bracing knee against wall, pull the lever toward the unlocked position while making those grunting noises that, as is well-known, magnify ones muscle strength.
  4. Utter mild-moderate scatology in sotto voice.
  5. Search for tool kit.
  6. Whack lever with rubber mallet. Implement tool-incorporative percussive adjustment.
  7. Distinctly announce incredibly vulgar curse.
  8. Note the turkey’s distinctly unpleasant reaction to the still increasing oven heat.
  9. Speculate on possibility of finding a McDonald’s open on Thanksgiving.
  10. Bond with wife and guests by embracing their panic.
  11. Ask ladies to leave room while I pound on ponder the problem.
  12. Use large screwdriver to pry open oven door.
  13. Reflect on the question of why, given the workmanship and stout materials used in constructing Craftsman screwdrivers and Kenmore electric ovens, Sears isn’t doing better financially.
  14. Realize, upon reconsidering my own observations from Step #13, I am indeed an idiot.
  15. Go to basement, find something that looks like it should be a circuit breaker box, locate oven circuit,3 switch that circuit breaker off.
  16. Saunter upstairs, wait 15 minutes for oven to cool, open door.

The Triumphant Finish

After assuring that the turkey isn’t desiccated or otherwise ruined, I reset the circuit breaker, and only then notify Julie and our guests that all is well, implying that I had somehow broken the code, defeating the mechanical integrity of the oven to open the door in an astutely competent, albeit mysterious manner. I acknowledge their accolades with all the modesty I can muster and pass the remainder of the day resting on my well-earned laurels.4

Accolades Rewarded

The turkey, the rest of the dinner, and the fellowship are, in a word, dandy.

And, on Thanksgiving 2006 [and 2010], I’m thankful for this memory.

Twitt

_____________________
  1. Julie Showalter was the fiercely intelligent, sexy, and loving woman and prize-winning author, 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 nearly 20 years earlier. 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. [↩]
  2. My friend’s friend may have known as well; it has, apparently, been in all the papers. [↩]
  3. Sub-step #15a. Issue sigh of relief and gratitude that the oven is on its own circuit so that turning it off will not shut down the power for the entire house [↩]
  4. It is, of course, possible that by the time I finished my various ministrations, the door would have opened on its own. I choose to ignore that explanation and its potential attenuation of the dramatic impact of the story. [↩]

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