A VALENTINE'S DAY STORY
True romance comes unscheduled, unruly, "a madness most discreet," quoth Romeo.
• • Happily, my first heart-throb is alive and we are still devoted to each other — — in our fashion.
• • The lavish red satin candy box he brought me for years arrived punctually with his warm hands attached to it. It was easy to tether my naked stem of trust to a dependable individual like this.
• • Back then he was a fireman and told stories about fire-fighting. I loved these true tales featuring strong bodies, cinders, commitment, and rakish with raw adventure. He made courage come alive, depicting the frozen hydrants, and thick hoses that sprayed city water into sputtering frozen hail.
• • I learned about suction hoses: connections that could not reach the life-saving water, nights that became a red Gomorrah vision of a perilous New York. The panic of passersby, the blazing streets, the flaming buildings, and his bravery there in the middle, under a sky that seethed from uncontrollable fire. Men on his truck smelled charred afterwards, cured like huge hams in Satan's smokehouse.
• • Fire raged in my heart for a man who brought salvation to so many terrified New Yorkers.
• • A long-time bachelor who supported his widowed mother and sister (lame, alas, from childhood polio) was he, and I had a piece of his heart to myself for many years — — though I was not usually this quick to redden nor release myself to dangerous times lost in sparks.
• • Eventually, the fire turned against him. One ruby and garnet of an inferno, the jewel bed of a Brooklyn mattress store, overcame him. Smoke inhalation, a hospital stay, a desk job with the Fire Department, the death of his mother, and a late-stage marriage crimsoned his maturity, altered his connections.
• • Valentine's Day will never mean Christian martyrs named "Valentine" to me, nor the exotic pagan rites the Catholic Church usurped. My very first Valentine will always be him — — my steadfast godfather, who held me high over the waters of a baptismal fount, and didn't let me down. And I will phone him on February 14th, renewing this evergreen affection.
Originally Blogged By: MaeWestNY
