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Mark Schweickart
Linda -- Thanks for the nice comments about my book (ahem, The Hat Fluffers of Buckingham Palace, available on Amazon ahem), and to answer your question about its truthfulness-hmmm? I guess I would say, everything is true--sort of. By that I mean I obviously had to dream up all of the dialogue. I certainly do not have a memory that would recall verbatim what was said. And of course both the opening scene that happened before I was born, and the second scene when I was only one-year old, are hardly in my memory bank. But the opening trial scene did happen in some form or other, and the second scene is based on family lore. Otherwise, I think everything in the book is pretty factual. I chose to write it in the third person to give me the freedom to create dialogue that I couldn't possibly remember, and maybe shift things around a bit to more easily get to the emotional truth, if not the factual truth, of an event.
As to a sequel? Actually, last year, I did write one, but did not publish it (as in self-publish on Amazon, that is. I hardly have hit the big time to actuallly have a publisher). Hat Fluffers covered my years up to age 18. The sequel, called The Jennie Years, covers the next ten. Since this centered not only on myself as the protaganist, but equally, if not moreso, on my first wife, Jennie, I wanted to make sure she would be okay with it. We had been out of contact for many years, but I was able to track her down and sent her a copy. She sounded good on the phone and I was looking forward to getting her reaction to what I had written. However, she went dark, not answering emails or phone calls so I took that to mean either she really hated it, or had not gotten around to reading it, or something happened to her, or ... actually I didn't know what to think. Unfortunately, as it turned out, something had happened to her. I just learned a few days ago that Jennie died this past December from lung cancer. I certainly would not have guessed that she was struggling with that from the way she talked on the phone a few months earlier.
Now, it sort of makes me want to put this story I wrote out there because I view it as a loving tribute to her funny, wild ways, even though those ways also carried with them severe trials to our relationship. It also, I think, is a nice call back to the crazy way the world was, and the way we as a generation were, in those late 60's and 70's. So I don't know. Now that she is gone, maybe it would be a nice tip of the hat to her.
For those of you who may remember her, here's a sample paragraph (also written in the third person) from the opening that describes our first meeting:
Ah, but who was this one? She was a dark haired eighteen year old cutie, a busty high school senior with a slim five foot-two frame, “skinny legs and all,” as Tom Robbins would say. She had the combination of a thirteen year old’s freckle-faced innocence and an eighteen year old’s ripe sexuality bursting at the seams, and a tongue of wit and wisdom, and a few too many demons ready to spin her out of control. She was a force to be encountered. A force he had encountered. Yes, with this one there would always be others competing for her attention and affection, anyone passing near her bold orbit. And she had boldness in spades.
Consider how Mark and she had met. In Ohio in 1967, one could drink 3.2 beer at age eighteen, so there were bars everywhere catering to the younger crowd. One night at a campus hangout, The Thirsty I (as in, boy am I thirsty), Mark caught up with his friend Bob McGivern, who had also bailed on life in the St. Louis University dorms, and puttered back to Columbus in his trusty Checker Cab—the car he had used to take Mark and Rasputin to the edge of St. Louis the previous year when he dropped them off to begin their sojourn, hitch-hiking across the country. Bob was sitting with Jennie at a table when Mark approached. Small talk ensued, and after a short while Bob got up to put money in the juke box. She shouted to him, “Play Blue Rhondo a la Turk. You know, Brubeck.” Then turning to Mark, she said:
“He’s hopeless, you know. Clueless. The most unobservant guy I know.”
“Is he supposed to be observing something? Paying more attention to you, perhaps?”
“I’ll bet you a nickel that if I suddenly whipped my panties off, he would not even notice.”
She was wearing a mini-skirt, and before Mark could answer, she shoved a nickel towards him, leaned forward and up slightly in her chair, wriggled a bit doing something unobservable below the table, and then straightened up proffering her panties to Mark with a sly smile. As Bob returned, Mark quickly put the panties in his lap so Bob would not see them. Small talk re-ensued. After a minute or two, Mark drew from his pocket a nickel and slid it across the table to Jennie. “You win,” he said. Jennie then proceeded to explain the bet to Bob, letting loose with an oversized hoot of a laugh as Mark produced the panties as evidence. Of course, the bet made absolutely no sense. How could Bob have possibly been aware that the girl sitting next to him was now without panties? But of course Bob’s cluelessness had never been the point of Jennie’s bet. The point had been boldness. Boldness dripping with sexual provocation towards this new guy, Mark. How would he react? Intrigued? You bet. Who cares about the logic of a bet, when a sexy woman is handing you her panties? Virgin Mark was lassoed.
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