Haunted by Harold

OK, then. I've told you all about Lloyd synchronicity, and in case you don't remember what it is, it's examples of the name Lloyd coming up over and over and over again through the course of a single day.

It happens and happens, and has been happening for months and maybe even years. I've had as many as five a day, and once I had four in a single movie (a little British comedy called The Wrong Box), but the ones that really make my scalp prickle aren't just things like seeing the name Lloyd on the side of a train or on a street sign or a realtor's sign or TV credits or a dog's ID tag. . . they're examples of actually SEEING Harold Lloyd, usually when I least expect it.

It happens fairly frequently on Turner Classic Movies, and this isn't so very unusual because they have championed the re-release of many of his magnificent silent comedies. But tonight. Oh God. I was minding my own business watching William Shatner's Weird or What? (one of my favorite educational programs) when an ad break came on, and. . .

And there was this woman dangling from the hands of a huge clock.

A Safety Last! clock. An ICONIC clock. WTF? Have I fallen into the freaking Fourth Dimension or something?

Not only was the ad in black and white, it had little lines running down it to make it look like an old movie. She wasn't dressed like Harold Lloyd, but still, the derivation was obvious.

A Harold Lloydian, Safety-Lastian, clock-dangling, cliff-hanging, danger-defying, "high and dizzy" thrill-picture scene in a goddamn Cover Girl cosmetics ad!

Listen, ever since I started researching my novel The Glass Character, and all through the writing of it, and even now, long post-Lloyd, this has been happening. It seems to come in waves, and now I'm in some sort of a bizarre tidal wave.

When I fell in with Harold Lloyd and his legend, I fell into enchantment. A state not so easy to enter, or, for that matter, to escape. I wish somebody would tell me what it all means.

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You keep me hangin' on

I think if I showed this picture to you and said nothing about it, you probably wouldn't know who it is.

An old picture, for sure, very old, from early in the last century. It'd be around 100 years ago. And how old would this young man be - maybe 20?

Does he look like a young man who's going places, someone unstoppable, or do we only deduce that in retrospect? I can deduce one thing for sure - I know he wasn't short of girl friends.

The fierce eyes looking off into the middle distance also have a dreamy quality, even a kindness. I don't think this man was mean, for all his drive and occasional explosiveness. Could he help it if the child in him never really grew up? Was that, in fact, the source of his compelling charm and endless creativity?

The only thing I know for sure is that I will never root him out of my heart. He has been part of my life for some five years now, and for the most part the journey has been wonderful. I still keep making discoveries, like this magnificent old photo, just when I think I've come to the bottom of the barrel.

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The day I saw Harold's shorts

I want to tell you about a really bizarre dream I had last night. Let’s see if I can make the weird pieces of it fit together. Someone, maybe my mother when she was younger, was holding up a baby, swinging it like a prize turkey from the straps of a front-carrier. She said something like, “Do you want this?” I was a bit embarrassed because I wasn’t sure. Then I saw Suzanne Lloyd, Harold Lloyd's granddaughter, and it appeared that she was giving the baby to me. She was sort of bequeathing it to me in a way that was actually very tender. So I said yes. Then I realized the “baby” was a reborn doll, one of those silicone things that looks so real it’s creepy. Nevertheless, I began to take care of the doll exactly as if it were real.

This dream didn’t lead to anything, but, like most dreams,  just trickled away. In spite of how it sounds, it wasn't clear who the baby was supposed to be (though it was a boy with black hair). I was once told that baby dreams represent the rebirth of self. Hooey, really, unless rubber dolls express the soul. 

So what IS a doll, anyway: a representation, a symbol? We still seem to need them. Right now as I write this, a Harold Lloyd doll sits on my desk, perpetually smiling. I designed him a couple of years ago, stitched him together and made him saddle shoes and a little straw hat. A juju, no doubt, emanating a spooky black-and-white power. 

Which brings me to my central point:  yesterday, for the first time in my life,  I saw Harold Lloyd’s shorts.

Shorts. Yes. Specifically, these were his first popular films, made between 1917 and 1919. He had just latched on to his Glass Character (the eccentric name Lloyd used to describe the “glasses character” that made him famous), and was testing it out in one-reel comedies that raced along at a terrific pace.

Before these came on, I was having another attack of “Lloyd synchronicity”. I’ve written about this before: strange coincidences, encounters with the name Lloyd or even images of Harold himself. The other day, I could tell it was starting again: I watched a quirky show called William Shatner’s Weird or What?, an episode in which the name Lloyd appeared three times (two different scientists, and a producer). I thought to myself: OK, I’ve had the trifecta, so what if I had a fourth? You don’t need a fourth, a little voice in my head warned me.

Only a moment later I changed channels, and . . . there was my fourth. My hair nearly stood on end, just like Harold’s: it was a stylish little animated segment, only a few seconds long, of a cartoon Harold Lloyd swinging from a huge clock, the image that made him famous all over the world.

So my trifecta had somehow evolved into a quadrifecta. But this was before the shorts, which I encountered quite by accident the next evening when I flipped to Turner Classics, my default channel. (This is my sanctuary when “reality” TV and other mediocre programming becomes too much, or not enough.) There was Suzanne Lloyd, yes, the same Suzanne Lloyd as in my dream, talking to Ben Mankiewicz about the restoration of Harold’s early one-reel comedies.

The early comedies! I hadn’t seen them, because for the most part they weren’t available, or existed only in muddy unrestored versions. I had that pulled-back-and-forth feeling I always get when faced with a new Lloyd treasure. I wanted to see it, and I didn't want to see it.

I saw it.

The only reason I wouldn’t want to see it is the fact that a few years ago, I wrote a novel with Harold Lloyd at its core. At this point, editors and publishers are kind of looking at it and not seeing it. I even had one tell me, “I don’t think the public is interested in silent movies” (and this was right around the time The Artist, a silent movie about silent movies, was winning the Best Picture and Best Actor Oscars). What I`m getting now is, “The 1920s is too out of date, no one wants to read about it.” So the Jazz Age is boring?  I want to say to them: does the name Jay Gatsby mean anything to you?

Harold, Harold! If only you hadn’t smiled that way. I don’t know, he's contagious or something, and somehow (after all these years) he finds his way into your heart. This is why he got so famous to begin with (along with certain other things, like charisma, inventiveness, great stories, dramatic acting skills – and, to top all that – being damn funny!).

So what started all this? Why Harold Lloyd? I was initially led into this exploration by seeing his back. Not many actors can act with their back, but he could.  I had Turner Classics on and was half-asleep, when a “figure” appeared walking in a certain jaunty manner, walking away from the camera I mean. All we saw was his back. I found myself saying out loud, “That’s Harold Lloyd.”

I don’t know how I knew.

Of course I remember seeing the iconic photo of Harold dangling from the hands of a huge clock 20 stories up. It was in some big coffee-table book of my childhood, a book I loved – I think it was called The Movies or some-such thing. I don’t know if I ever saw a film clip of that scene – perhaps, in one of those awful compilations that used to appear in movie theatres in the 1960s. Awful because shown at the wrong speed, horribly edited, and scored with clangy ridiculous music, not to mention embarrassing narration which was completely unnecessary in an age when story was conveyed visually and didn’t need idiotic explanations.

Anyway, the hunt was on for YouTube snippets, and I quickly found them and became addicted. I didn’t even think of writing about him at that point because the task seemed too huge. I was digging around the internet and finding things, putting scraps together into a meaningful whole. I had ordered the Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection on DVD, but I hadn’t seen it yet.

It was a Sunday afternoon, I was sitting in my office not thinking of anything, in a sort of twilight state, when – something landed on me, “fell” on me like those big anvils in cartoons. BONGGGG. My next thought was, “Oh, noooooo.”

No, because an idea had fallen on me that I knew I couldn’t say no to. An idea that would probably kill me, or at least break my heart.

Then it was: you have to. No, no! You must have the wrong person.

Reluctantly, I rolled up to my computer. Surely it wouldn’t hurt to sketch a little, to get some ideas down.

Three hours later I looked up, and I realized I had the nucleus of my novel. Cells had begun to split and multiply like mad. I was powerless in the hands of Harold.

In spite of my early trepidations, this was the most enjoyable writing project I had ever undertaken. I couldn’t wait to get to the computer every morning, couldn’t wait to solve another mystery. The story evolved and evolved.  I became, I suppose, wildly overconfident, just certain that this novel would be snapped up somewhere, that someone else would feel the same way I did.

At the same time, that weird “Lloyd synchronicity” began, coming thick and fast. At the peak of it, it was averaging three or four times a day: a street sign, a name on the side of a train, an actor on TV, a  realtor, a bull terrier. One tiny movie, The Wrong Box with Michael Caine, had three (or maybe four) Lloyds in it. It was spooky, but I never figured out what it meant.

One day, driving towards North Vancouver on a busy highway, we crossed an ordinary residential street that intersected the road, leading to what looked like a pastoral small town. I was almost annoyed when I saw that it was called Lloyd Avenue. The town was like Brigadoon, weird and highly unlikely. I glanced to the right and said, “Oh, NO.” There was a huge church just sitting there as if it had popped up out of the ground. GLORIA PENTECOSTAL TABERNACLE. I saw two street signs intersecting: the church was at the corner of Gloria and Lloyd.

I guess I’d better tell you that Gloria was the name of Lloyd’s daughter.

And oh, there was more! Watching old Twilight Zone episodes, I always had an eerie feeling when the end credits came on. Well might I have felt strange: one night the name Suzanne Lloyd flashed on the screen. Not the same one, of course, but an actress with the same name. Not "close" but bang-on.

I won't count all those other strange things, such as pictures jumping off the walls or setting a knife down on the edge of a plate and hearing it buzz for about ten seconds (only to have it stop, then start again), or losing things and finding them in a different part of the house. No doubt it was seismic activity, or the weird energy that turned the TV on and off by itself when my daughter hit puberty (not a ghost, my medium friend assured me, but concentrated energy manifesting in all sorts of weird ways). I also can't explain why none of this scared me, though at times it could get annoying.

But publishers don't care about psychic phenomena, real or imagined. They want to make money, and one can't blame them. Though quite a few houses wanted to see the work, I wondered if they were actually reading it. I kept hearing that things were tough all over, that lots of writers were being affected by the economic downturn and the fact that “people don’t read any more” (a blatant untruth).

Battlescarred, I retreated. I retreated for a long time. About eleven months. I did not want to see Lloyd movies or read Lloyd material, and I certainly did not want to look at my manuscript. I assumed it was over.

A couple of weeks ago, there was a strange sort of thaw. It wasn’t a conscious decision. I woke up and found myself back in Lloyd territory again, maybe looking at pictures at first. Throwing out a crumb about the novel. I posted something on Facebook, when my Facebook account had been dormant for a year. The Lloyd synchronicity that had come so thick and fast, then vanished just as quickly, started up again. Was I imagining the whole thing?

When I saw Harold's shorts, he came racing frenetically back into my life.

I don’t regret all of this, or maybe I do, or else I am just powerless. Whenever I am about to walk away, the path doubles back.  I am reminded of one of Harold's title cards: "Now then, everybody hold on tight, we're going around a curve." As the song says, there is always something there to remind me.

It’s kind of like a marriage that didn’t work out. Yet you can’t quite quit the person, still want to see him, DO see him and then sort of regret it. I saw Harold's shorts yesterday because I couldn’t get enough of him, this dazzlingly charming, rascally young man who probably had no idea how famous he was going to be (and for how long).  Along with everything else that was extraordinary about him, he was absolutely gorgeous.

At the same time, I felt like my heart was caving in.

Well, can’t I just enjoy his films and forget about the novel? Does the word “no” mean anything to you? The novel is my love letter, not just to Harold but to his times. Most silent comedies got buried: they rotted from neglect, burst into flames or were just thrown away. Was that OK, had they had their few minutes on-screen and in history? Were they even relevant any more, did anybody care?  

Why should we care? Those little flickers of captured magic will never happen again.  They cannot happen again because those times are gone, that style of comedy, that style of living and breathing and being, is long gone, and this is the only moving record we will ever have. And we will never have Harold again, because that kind of genius does not happen twice.

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Blogger's Post-post. Though I decided not to change or update this piece, written several years ago, there WAS a development about a year later: Harold got published, or I did, or, at least, The Glass Character did. Though it was a thrill for me to be in print again (I do have two other novels, dear readers, that you can still snag on Amazon if you really want them), I was to find out the hard way that publishing had changed in the few years I had been away: it got harder, a LOT harder to make a go of it. Sales weren't great, and unfortunately, in this age of likes and views and clickbait, the numbers are everything.

I get depressed about this sometimes, yes I do, but I have no regrets about my Harold journey. After much discouragement, I decided to keep up my Harold Facebook page, in part due to the sheer volume of material I collected about him over five years or so. It would be nice to share it with people who love Harold. So it ain't over yet. I still harbour this dream. . . every novelist has it, so please don't look at me that way! I want some Hollywood producer to see the light on this thing, and make it into a big-box movie.

What frustrates me is that I know such a thing is possible, in that I believe the potential is there - the quality is there. What would I be doing wasting my time writing junk? But it's a million light years away because I have no "connections". I'm a good writer, but a lousy hustler. So the book kind of went the way of my other two novels. 

Nobody warns incipient writers about this - that the writing is the easy part - and even getting a publisher, relative to the rest of it, is easy too. What's hard, and absolutely indispensible in the industry, is "making it", and that is ALL about numbers and nothing else.

But you know, people, you can still buy my novel! Just click on the link (above) to my Amazon Author Page. It's all there - all three of my novels, in fact. The flip side of the Darwinian ruthlessness of the internet is that nothing ever quite goes away. It just goes on sale. On Amazon.com.

 

The Glass Character: An Excerpt (Dance of the Comedian)

(This is an excerpt from my third novel, The Glass Character, a fictionalized account of the life and times of silent movie comedian Harold Lloyd. Sixteen-year-old Muriel Ashford has come to Hollywood in 1921 in hopes of meeting her screen idol. Thrilled by landing extra work in one of Harold Lloyd's comedies, Muriel finds her joy is somewhat dimmed by the realization that Harold is far from the godlike figure she imagined. Forced to work as a waitress at a speakeasy to make ends meet, Muriel encounters Harold out on the town with his former co-star, Bebe Daniels.)

After Bea’s horrified letter, I was beginning to wish this interminable shoot would end. We were only called in on certain days, often for very short periods of time, so there was no loitering about, no time for gossip. I was convinced my immortal seven seconds of screen time would end up on the cutting room floor.

I was always seeing things I shouldn’t, and this time it was Harold and Mildred necking behind a wobbly flat. His hand was on her breast, but she didn’t seem to mind. The wall was crumbling. No ring on her finger yet, so he would likely stop short.

Our brief sexual spark had fizzled. Just as well, for my cousin was right on all counts: I should never have let him touch me. Then during yet another back-aching, dreary, smoke-choked night serving illicit drinks at Frankie’s (password: chinchilla), my heart dropped into my shoes. There he was in the doorway in that spotlight stars seem to carry around inside them, elegantly dressed in a gleaming, expensive suit.

Panic-stricken, I ducked into the kitchen.

“Muriel,” Susan whispered in my ear, her eyes huge with excitement.

“Yes, I know.”

“He is an absolute doll! Even cuter than in his pictures. Who’s that he’s with?”

I wasn’t sure: a petite brunette who somewhat resembled Clara Bow, with bobbed hair, a silvery dress fringed all over, and long strands of artificial pearls. A real flapper. We all knew about the reputation of flappers, which ensured that Harold would have a good old time tonight.

I prayed he wouldn’t notice me, but my shift didn’t end until midnight, so I had to go on working. The studio paid me a pittance, and Frankie not much better, so I badly needed the tips to survive. This required a lot of smiling and leaning over.

I tried to avoid his table, but it was awkward. Then he and his girl got up to dance. I had never seen this particular step before, but it was complex and lively, and the music was simply wild. Some years later I saw a dancer named Kelly, and Harold had that same effortless, athletic grace. At one point he literally threw his girl up in the air and caught her, airplaning her around as the glitter-ball cast firefly rainbows all over the room. The other dancers slowly moved back to watch.

They finished with their version of the infamous tango from Valentino’s Four Horseman: both tribute and parody, sexy and funny at the same time. Their great comic gifts were evident, as was their physical oneness. The applause went on and on, and Harold casually reached up and caught the cup as it flew through the air.

Then I knew. It was Bebe Daniels. Officially they had broken it off, and she had moved on. (I didn’t know whether to believe the darker story doing the rounds.) Apparently they still had feelings for each other, for I was to learn that she’d had the diamonds from their engagement ring set into cufflinks which he constantly wore.

So they were still friends, or at least dance partners. Since this place wasn’t supposed to exist, they would be relatively anonymous here. (People were more inclined to keep their mouths shut in those days.) I studied her: she was dark, sleepy-eyed, and looked a bit dangerous. Not really pretty. I never could get a fix on Harold’s type.

Having effortlessly blown the audience down, they sat down again. Harold wasn’t even breathing hard. Bebe trotted across the room, waving gaily at a table of elegant-looking people.

Harold’s gaze swept the room.

His eyes lit.

If only he hadn’t smiled, ignited that way. I saw him mouth my name. I waved him off, he insisted, then I reluctantly came over to his table.

“Muriel! You look swell.”

“This awful thing? It’s full of smoke. And too short.”

He flicked his eyes up and down.

“Dance with me, Muriel,” he said in that wheedling, little-boy tone he had used with me in the rainstorm.

“I can’t. I’m on shift.”

“When do you get off?”

“At midnight.” I never should have said it. It sounded like a ludicrous fairy tale. “Anyway, I can’t dance like this. I look like a barmaid. And what about - ” I couldn’t say her name.

“Oh, don’t worry about that. Beebs has friends to talk to. We come to the clubs sometimes, just to dance. We’re not dating any more.”

“You’re awfully good. Where did you learn?”

“Didn’t, actually. Just sort of - ”

“I couldn’t keep up with you anyway.”

“I could teach you.” He could be so earnest, so Midwestern. Like he was teaching me the box step at a tea dance.

“C’mon, Muriel.” I thought: a gleaming movie star, one of the most famous people in Hollywood, is just at the tips of my fingers. Here I am, entering the mouth of the wolf again.

“Susan always brings her club clothes for when she’s off shift. Maybe I can change with her.”

“Good! Good!” Harold looked intoxicated with excitement, though I knew he was a good boy and didn’t smoke or drink or dabble in the white powder.

And at the stroke of twelve, I was led to the slaughter. Susan screamed with excitement and insisted she dress me. First I had to put on a strange undergarment that bound my breasts (not that I needed it). The dress was made of a heavy, shiny deep-blue material covered with hand-sewn glass beads, so I glittered when I walked. The neckline was shockingly low, the waistline dropped almost to my hips. The black patent-leather shoes had straps around the ankles, and higher heels than I had ever worn before. This wasn’t an outfit, but a costume.

Susan rouged my mouth, pinched my cheeks, and pulled a few strands of my hair out of the old-fashioned combs I still wore, making soft little tendrils.

I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, and my pupils dilated. I looked nothing like myself. I could have been anyone. An actress. A flapper. A vamp. I’d have Harold in the palm of my hand.

I turned on my high heel, switched on my brightest smile, and flounced over to greet my swain.

He did a very admiring “whew!’, which was pleasantly enthusiastic without implying I looked a mess the rest of the time. Then snaked his arm around my waist.

“Don’t be afraid, it’s only the fox trot.”

“This fox doesn’t know how to trot.”

“Oh Muriel, you’re so funny!” He suddenly dipped me, in fact almost dropped me, then caught me at the last second while my head reeled. Yes, I realized, I am dancing with a comedian.

“Push against my hand a little. That’s it. There needs to be a bit of tension between us. Then with my arm, I’ll. . .”

My awkwardness lessened as he steered me around. The music was lavish: mellow saxophones, high keening clarinets, and a single violin soaring above it all in a melody so tender, it made my eyes sting. And my skin prickled with dizzy joy that I was in the arms of the most beautiful man in the world. 

He was very gradually easing me closer so that our bodies were almost touching, but I knew it was only another tease, proof of his power over me. This close, I could not help but feel his heat. I wondered if Bebe could see us, if it would even matter.

The fox trot escalated into the “toddle”, a sort of hop-step that was much harder to execute. The music grew wild, with razzing trumpets and primitive, thudding percussion. Harold had an almost shocking instinct for the music’s hot, sexy rhythms, and was practically lifting me off the floor so I could keep up.

Then came an announcement that made everybody cheer: “The Black Bottom!” Panicked, I shook my head vigorously: I knew I wasn’t up to this one. Maybe Harold and I could go sit down and talk. But to my shock, he grabbed another girl’s hand, a girl he didn’t even know, and set to, leaping around like an adorable little puppet. He radiated joy and exuberance like no one I had ever seen before. But he was dancing with someone else, as if women to him were practically interchangeable.

I left the dance floor, devastated, collected my things, changed back into my drab street clothes and headed for the door.

“Muriel . . .” I felt like I was being dragged back. 

“I have to go,” I said, trying very hard to keep the tremble out of my voice.

“Oh Muriel, I didn’t mean to abandon you. How about one more dance?”

“Harold, no! Why do you think you can yank me around like this? Go away, come back! Dance with me, but don’t touch me!”

“I thought we were having fun.”

“You know how I feel. And you told me not to. ‘We can’t do this, Muriel.’ Does that mean I can just turn my feelings off?”

“Be quiet, Muriel, you’re making a scene.” It occurred to me that a spat in a speakeasy wouldn’t be good for his career. 

“Go have fun, then.” I turned on my heel again, the dramatic effect ruined by a stumble because I was still wearing Susan’s ridiculous tottering shoes.

“It’s not fun.” He said it very quietly.

I had to turn back.

“It’s not fun to live like this. I feel like I’m not really close to anyone.”

“But what does it matter, so long as there’s a different girl for every night of the week.”

For an unguarded instant, he looked devastated.

“Oh, Harold, I shouldn’t have said that.”

“But you did.”

“Why can’t you just tell me if you like me or not?”

“It’s not a question of liking. You’re so very young, Muriel, not even out of your teens. Sometimes I wonder if you really know what goes on between men and women in this town.” 

“You don’t have to protect me. I can take care of myself.”

“I don’t think so, Muriel. You don’t know how pretty you are, and in five years you’ll be a full-blown beauty with real character, which means your looks will last. And you have talent, I’ve seen it. If you really want to be an actress, you can be. But you’ve got to be very careful.”

He seemed to be offering me stardom on a platter. I knew enough to suspect it. Still, I watched his face for the most minute chance that he would break his own rule and touch me.

“I might be able to help you,” he said.

“So what would I have to do, Harold?”

“What does that mean?” 

“I’ve heard the stories. Don’t you like them young?” My tone was provocative, acid, awful. 

“That’s not fair.”

“What about Bebe? Wasn’t she just a little underage?” 

His face darkened so quickly I had to catch my breath. 

“Leave Bebe out of this. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“I know what other people are saying.”

“Why do you pay attention to such trash?”

“Oh, there’s more. Like the story of how you got your start.”

“Stop it right now. Don’t say another word.” 

“Oh, it’s just hearsay, but . . . who was that man who got you into the theatre? Connor, was it? Maybe it’s just a rumour, but I heard he was a bit of a nancy-boy.”

“What are you implying?”

“Can’t you guess?” 

The anger escalated into fury. “I don’t strike women,” he said in a frighteningly low voice. 

“That’s too bad, Harold, because then I could strike you.”

The air in the room was crackling and ready to explode. And he didn’t move. Stood vibrating with a fury that would soon turn to rage.

“I’ve given you every advantage. I only want the best for you.”

“You know what you want.”

“Show me a man who doesn’t.” The gloves were off, and I saw the hard, calculating man who had come from nothing and was tough enough to survive in a pitiless world.

I realized with a shock that I had no idea how to deal with him. He seemed to be getting bigger as I gradually diminished. I slowly backed up, and he advanced.

I ducked inside the unlit storage room. I grabbed his hand, and he followed. With Susan’s ridiculous wobbly shoe, I kicked the door shut.

For your copy of The Glass Character, click on the link below!

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The Glass Character: an excerpt (the rainstorm)

I would like to introduce you to my third novel, The Glass Character, a story of obsessive love and ruthless ambition set in the heady days of the Jazz Age in the 1920s.  The story  is a fictional account of a young girl’s experiences in Hollywood from approximately 1921 to 1932, during which she develops an obsessive relationship with silent film comedian Harold Lloyd. In this excerpt, Muriel is working as an extra in a Lloyd film and is unexpectedly caught in a torrential rainstorm. Then comes an encounter she has both dreamed of and dreaded.

On a particularly vile day when we were supposed to be doing outside shots, I got caught in a downpour such as I had never seen before: a California monsoon of sorts. As everyone ran blindly for some kind of cover, I heard an unmistakeable voice under the rolling thunder:

”For God’s sake, Muriel, get in here.”

“Mr. Lloyd – “

”Forget that nonsense, call me by my name.”

He held out his hand and pulled me in next to him, in a tiny dry patch under a doorway. “You’re the girl who mussed my hair,” he said, beaming at me. I wondered once again if stars had electric fixtures installed behind their faces, to give off such incandescence.

This was a small space, very small indeed, and I had conflicted feelings about it. I had never been really intimate with a man, so had no knowledge of being this close to a man’s body, clothed or not. It was not just his heat, but the incredible racehorse energy in him which startled me: held back in the starting gate, he was restless and aching to go. I felt dizzy, swoony almost, with a hammering heaviness below, a warm wetness gathering as I felt him tensely breathe.

At one point he turned and smiled at me, and my heart sank, for this was the antic impersonal smile of the Glass Character, jaunty in the face of any pickle. I remembered being allowed to touch his hair, to tousle it like a little boy’s.  I ached to have him touch me, to want to touch me. I felt ashamed of what was happening in my body, but at the same time I felt a sort of awe, caught up in a powerful force that seemed to be lifting me off my feet. Our bodies were literally pressed together, and when I tried to edge out of the tiny dry strip into the hammering downpour, his hand came out, gently but firmly grasped my shoulder, and pulled me back.

“Now Muriel, there’s no need to get soaked. Let’s wait it out.” He talked as if he had all day. He was using a different sort of voice now, the kind you’d use at Frankie’s to get in. He did not look directly at me; that would have killed me. I was close enough that I could not ignore the smell of his dampened, stunt-dusty clothing; the white greasepaint on his face that rendered him magical; the hot scent of his sweat.

I wasn’t aware of the large drop of rain hanging off the end of my nose, but he saw it and smiled – a real smile this time, with marvelous relaxed eyes – reached out with a forefinger and flicked it off.

And I would have died right then and there, his unnervingly lovely gaze sustaining me for the rest of my life, when I noticed something about him, something (even in my naiveté) I could not quite believe.

Virgin though I was, I had kissed and petted with boys before, and knew what happened to their bodies as a result. Without having to look, I realized with shock (and elation, and shame, and despair) that I was not alone in the feelings I had been struggling with.  Whether he willed it or not, he was responding to me powerfully, the blossomy scent of my hair released by the freshness of the rain.

Then, incredibly, instead of dissipating, the downpour increased in intensity, gushing down with frightening force, almost like a monsoon. There was a terrific, bone-shaking clap of thunder.  Harold let out a mad whoop of laughter, then jumped out into the downpour, throwing his head back, opening his mouth, stretching out his arms like some demented forest creature driven mad by the moon.

“Come on out, Muriel, it’s marvelous!” He spun around and around in mad circles, stirring up a tremendous muck under his feet. I would not have been surprised if he had got down and rolled.

“Muriel, Muriel, come on out!” The man was an absolute infant, a case of arrested development, an embarrassment to the acting profession.  And – I did what he said. I came out into the rain, a steamy, mucky, uncomfortable mess, my hair sodden and my skirt weighed down. Harold’s clothes were glued to him, not just caked but clumped with mud. He was jumping up and down like a toddler, a wild smile on his face, and after a while, reluctantly, I joined him. He grabbed my hands and swung me around and around. I prayed that everyone else had run for cover and would not see us cavorting like naughty babies.

“Muriel, Muriel – “ And he did the thing I had dreaded and prayed for, grabbed my shoulders and pulled me almost violently close. I knew he was in a state of high arousal, any fool could see that, but what worried me was my own arousal, the part of me that wanted to toss caution to the wind.

“Let me kiss you,” he said breathlessly.

“Harold, you can’t.”

“Only once, I promise.”

“Harold.”

“Muriel, mmmmmmmmm.” He grazed my mouth with his lips.  For a long time he just stood there, barely making contact. I wondered if this would be a chaste kiss, the kind you would give your sister.

Then I remembered what the girls had said.  Ladies first. The way he carefully prepared his. . . victims.

I knew I should have pulled away, and I didn’t because I was crazy in the head for him.  I understood at last what being drunk must be like. We swayed slightly, almost as if we were dancing. His mouth pressed gently on mine, then just the tip of his tongue parted my lips.

This is what it should be like. Not having some stupid boy stick his tongue down your throat, with beery breath and fumbling, clumsy fingers. Harold lightly caressed my face while he kissed me, soft as roses. The man is an absolute master, I thought.

By the time his tongue grew a little more bold, I was in such a state that I wondered if I could even remain upright. The rain had just about stopped. The ferocious black sky was breaking up, the clouds dissipating. We were two mud statues embracing, our tongues entwining as everything dripped all around us.  The heady freshness in the air mixed with the smell of sex, a smell that was beginning to be familiar to me. And below and beneath that, the rude smell of mud.

Then, oh horrors, the worst thing possible:  “Harold! Jesus!”

What happened next was a scene straight out of one of his movies: he jerked back from me, looked at me in shock, turned around and looked at Hal, then back at me, as if he had no idea who I was.

“Harold, if  I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times. Don’t screw

the extras!”

”I’m not! We were just having a little. . . talk.”

“Jesus, right out in the open. Haven’t  I warned you about that?”

“It was raining out. Everybody went inside.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“Yes, I guess I am.” 

“No more ‘little talks’. He talks with his hands, miss. And other parts.” Hal stalked past us, and shocked me by reaching out and slapping the back of Harold’s head, hard.

Harold ducked, winced, looked truly contrite. His little innocent dalliance had turned bad, and he knew it had embarrassed me.

“I’m sorry,” he said, with his sad little-boy face, his eyes.

I didn’t know what to say. To cry would be disaster. It was plain he’d kiss anything with a pulse. It occurred to me that I would be within my rights to slap his face.

Just as I had the thought, as if he’d heard it, he said, “I deserve to be slapped, Muriel.”

“Oh, Harold, don’t be ridiculous.”

”No, I mean it. I broke the code of honour. Slap me.”

”Harold!”

”Slap me.” He grabbed my wrist and wrestled with me.  I was dealing with a crazy person. I wrenched away from him.

“You deserve to be slapped, you self-important, ignorant little hick! But  I won’t, because you’d probably enjoy it. That’s how hopelessly immature you are.”

All the air seemed to go out of him. He did not look like a movie star, ankle-deep in mud, his rain-streaked makeup ashy and unnatural. He looked awkward, defeated, a small-town boy out of his depth.

“I don’t know what to say. I really am sorry.” He was back to Harold the human being again, shocked at his own outrageous behaviour.

“Stay away from me from now on.”

”Muriel, I really do like you. I mean it.”

“You like a lot of girls, Harold. I see it going on right under my nose.”

“But wouldn’t it be nice if we could be – “

”No, Harold.”

"Muriel, you don't know how lonely. . . I mean, I just don't have time for friends. I think you're special."

Even though my body screamed forgive him, even though another part of me told me to slap him hard, to give him what he (and I) wanted, I had to walk away from him with my head high, and not look back.

After screaming abuse at him, let alone being caught kissing him out in the open, I was sure I would be immediately dismissed. But I was in for yet another surprise. The next morning the wardrobe mistress, the same one with the pins in her mouth, handed me a small folded-up note.

Dear Muriel, I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me for the way I acted last night becaus I know I insulted your dignity and your womanhood and I would not be surprised if you didn't want to speak to me, ever again, But I hope you will stay with us, we  think you have talent and even the chance for a career someday if you keep out of the way the likes of me,  I am most awfuly sorry and I hope we can still be friends, Id like that very much. In my deepest apology, 

Harold

It was as if a small boy were apologizing for stealing an apple. It did not help that his handwriting looked almost like grade school printing, that his writing style was awkward and unsophisticated (the remnants of going to a dozen different schools). I wanted to tear it up, throw it out, burn it, but I folded it in half and secreted it in my diary, along with a photo of Bea, a copy of the Twenty-third Psalm, and a lock of my mother's hair.

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