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At First Sight: A Strange But True Love Story

 

 

 

It was August of 1980. I'd only been in the small city of Poughkeepsie, New York for three weeks. I was on my new job, as a dishwasher and sandwich maker in the Old Coat Cabaret on Market Street. It was a bar and restaurant that featured live bands on weekends, and on Wednesdays they had open mic amateur nights.

 

   It was a Friday night; the band was loud and the crowd was louder. It would be fair to say the place was packed. But the kitchen was slow, as the big drinkers were eating the peanuts laid out on the bar, while the people on the other side of the divider wall, sitting at tables and watching the band, were enjoying chips and breadsticks dipped in fondues set out by the day cook at each table with a lit Sterno can underneath to keep them warm and soft.

 

   With nothing to do in the kitchen, I decided to play one of the video arcade games near the door for a bit. I told the bartender where I would be if a food order came in, then began to thread my way through the bar crowd toward the machines near the front door. I got about halfway down that aisle when I almost bowled over a thin figure that had just come sliding out from one of the booths. I stopped just in time, backed up a step, and said, “Excuse me, I didn't mean to scare you.”

 

   She looked up at me through the thickest glasses I'd ever seen on a young person, then said, “You didn't scare me.”

 

   I introduced myself, and she did likewise. We talked a bit, then I invited her to join me in a game. I noticed she had a slight limp, and asked about it. She said it's nothing, so I dropped it. But the funniest thing happened in that short time. Even though I'd never met her before, I felt like I knew this tiny wisp of a girl from somewhere. In the back of my head, there was this still, small voice telling me, “She's the One!”

 

   At first, I thought, “No way, I just met her!” But that voice was quietly insistent, and rather hypnotic, as I recall. I knew, even before I had to go back to the kitchen to clean up and close down, that I had to see her again. I wasn't aware of it then, but I had already fallen in love with her.

 

   She was a little spitfire, five feet three inches tall (she insisted it was five-two-and-three-quarters), ninety-nine pounds soaking wet fully dressed. She was Puerto Rican, born in New York City and raised by her paternal grandmother in Puerto Rico...

 

   Had I known in advance what was in store over the years, I might have run as fast and as far as I could. Then again, maybe not. I was young, not totally naive, and I thought I was invincible. I knew, in the deepest part of my being, that she was destined for me, even though it took me four years to convince her of that truth. Yes, there were times when she had come around to accept me as hers; but then she would back away, afraid of losing her freedom, or even of losing herself.

 

But I had no idea of all that when, after three weeks, she invited me to her apartment on Noxon Street after the bar closed...

 

~~~~~~~

 

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Clean version (24 pages) : $3.00

Adult version (29 pages) :  $3.00

Both together:  $5.00

 

Don Rice Jr.

 

Thank you for your interest!