To Have; --and Never Have Had (a dramatic-romance, short story)

To Have; --and Never Have Had

Part I


((A dramatic- romance) (a story that transcends all generations, which all generations can identify with))



“You have to ask yourself this question, some time in your life,” she told her husband in a letter, in rhyme: “For one crowded season of madness in one wonderful life—is it worth growing old without your loving wife?”’

Georgette Wes




Part One, Chapter One
The Apartment


“Fine,” Gordon Wes said to his wife, Georgette.
“I hear you have been seeing a few women at the American Hotel, NCO Club again,” she said. “And don’t deny it, more than one person told me they saw you with your hands around a young military nurse.”
“So what about it?” he asked.
“What about it, what you think, I should think about it?” she answered.
“And I heard you’ve been seeing that Command Sergeant Major, that fat, ugly drunken slob.”
“You didn’t see it, nobody saw us that you know of.”
“Where have you been, at the club again?”
“Yes,” he said. “So you guessed right, so you know.”
“Stay away from me you reek of booze,” she remarked. “And yes, I was sitting and talking to a friend.”
“Did you kiss him?” he asked.
“No.”
“Did he kiss you?” he asked.
“No, he was that young corporal, Chick Evens, the one I told you about, that I met two months ago at the military commissary and he borrowed me his ration card, and I bought you some booze and cigarettes with it, and some other food items.”
“You bitch!” he called her.
“No need to call me names.” She commented.
“Bitch, bitch…you’re a super bitch!”
“Okay,” she remarked. “Let’s just call it quits, I mean really quits, it’s over between us. I’ve been a good and faithful wife, always taking care of you, but somehow since you’ve come to Germany, left our home and friends in Columbus, Ohio, you’ve become a real jerk; if men have menopause, I think you’re into it.”
“No,” he said, “I’m jut tired to be a husband, you’re selfish and conceited and always complaining. Evidently I made you happy up to now.”
“Well, that may have been true, but you no longer make me happy, and it’s been getting worse these last two months.”
“Whose fault is that, your seeing that CSM, and Corporal.”
“Didn’t I ask you for more of your time, but you just don’t give it to me. You can afford to give it to everybody else, the college classes you teach, the nurses you meet and drink with, and the sergeants at the NCO club.”
“To be honest, I’m sick of you, I’m even to the point, and I dislike you.”
“Oh leave that young corporal out of it. You coming home smelling of perfume and having lipstick stains on your ear and neck is too much.”
“I know you’ve kissed that drunken slop of a—whatever kind of sergeant he is.”
“No, I have not, not yet, but had I known what I know now, I might have. All I do at night is waiting, and wait and wait for you. As you drink and visit your bar friends for hours, and stay for hours, tonight Corporal Evens brought me home from the commissary, to insure I did not get hurt.”
“Oh, Evens, is it?”
“Yes and no, it is Evens who is my friend, and Command Sergeant Major, Mulligan whom I’m attracted to.”
“And what’s his first name?”
“Alfonzo.”
“Spell it?”
“Not sure if I can,” she said, and laughed.
“All right,” he commented.
“All right nothing,” she said, adding, “You don’t understand, it is all over as of tonight—period!”
“So be it!”
“You bet it is!”
“Don’t be so theatrical, dear!”
“No, I am not over-the-top, as you fellows say, I am to the point. And I’m not saying it again.”
“So what’s next, what are you going to do?”
“That’s a good question, I’m not sure yet, it’s all happening so suddenly I suppose, perhaps if Alfonzo asks me to marry him, I will.”
“I doubt that!” said Gordon heatedly.
“That’ll be up to me, not you.” She stated, firmly.
“Marry you, I doubt he’d even come close to asking, he just wants to take you to bed, throw you in the sack and then move on.”
“How wrong you are, he’s already asked me!”
“You women have things all set up, long before you break the news.”
Gordon Wes, had run empty, he didn’t have another word to say, actually somewhat lost for words, it was all too much for him to digest—everything he heard, she said, overheated him, his voice now coming from some empty abyss deep down, “To mar-ry hi…m, haw ww!”
“Why not?” She responded, “He loves me, wants to spend time with me, he makes enough money to support me also.”
“Well, for now you’re married to me!”
“You call this a marriage? The love you offer is the greatest sin and burden a man can place upon a wife. The love you have given me recently is a quick explosion into wonderland—a place you have never taken me, nor could and a humorous smile as you walk away conceited with thinking you did a charitable thing.” Then she thought about what she said, Gordon silent, “I shouldn’t have said that, I guess I really do not know what is and is not good love making, you could be great for all I know, I’m just angry, and mad because you call Alfonzo a zero, a drunk and he maybe all those things, but he is loving and kind, something you are not. You should teach ethics, it would do you better.”
“No.” that was all he could say.
“Go be with all your women, I don’t care anymore. Let them think you are wonderful.”
They both looked sad, angry faces, her pretty still, and him, handsome still, both swollen flesh.
“I can see you don’t love me anymore,” commented Georgette.
“It’s over used word for too many things, too many emotions, pretenses, I’m starting to hate, to love.”
“Hell with it,” he said, then punched her in the ribs, and she fell to the floor, she was crying, not out of anger, but pain, real pain, her face, facedown on the floor.
“By god, why did you think you had to do that?”
“It’s been settling deep inside me for a long time, I just had to, needed to you might say.”

Gordon’s wife, Georgette, now, sat silent at the kitchen table, her hands hanging down along her sides; she had been drained, weakened to the point of exhaustion, Gordon Wes, looked at the clock, felt his heart, both ticking away, everything was too quiet, his wife just staring at the wall, not looking at him, or talking to him, then after a long while, her husband said without looking at her, pacing in circles in the living room, “I’m sorry it happened. But perhaps you’re right, it’s really over.”
“It hasn’t always been like this, but for some odd reason, it has ever since we came to Augsburg, Germany; ever since you started teaching these three locations and you and I being separated as often as we have been.”
“Yes, I suppose it has been like that.” Gordon concurred. “I’m really sorry I hit you!”
“Oh, that’s no big thing,” Georgette replied in a very tired and worn-out voice, adding, “I just want to leave as soon as I can, and I’ll need the two big suitcases if you don’t mind, and half of what is in the bank?”
“Listen, stay the night, leave tomorrow sometime.”
“No, I got to do it now, right now, I have a place to go, don’t worry about me, you never do anyhow, anymore!”
“Hell with it, do whatever you want!”
“Gosh Almighty, I wish it had never come to this, I wish you had never hit me, but you did. It’s all unfixable now. And I wish I hadn’t said all I said, but I did, and that also is unfixable.”
“No, nothing is over like that, it started long ago, we are just now reaping the effects.”
“Oh hell with it all, and the hell with you,” said Gordon vehemently. And his wife started to cry.
“Well, let’s just say our goodbyes, no sense in being sour about it all, oh, I know you don’t want it to be over, and I don’t want it to be over, but it is over, no matter what we want or say, it is over, you have your rummy girlfriends, and I have my rummy Command Sergeant Major. Tomorrow, or next week or in a year we’ll say to ourselves: I don’t remember what the reasons were for our separated, but we’ll both know we hurt each other beyond repair. You do understand that don’t you?” She said all that with a tearful voice.
“Yes I suppose I do underhand…and now what?”
“Someday you really will understand.”
“I suppose, now what?”
“I can sleep on the couch tonight,” she said.
“No need to you can have the bed.”
“No, I don’t want the bed, it’s yours!”
“I need to go out and have a drink, I’ll be back in a little while,” he said. And he started to leave.
“Goodbye,” she said in a soft tearful voice…he stopped, heard it, never turned about, and then walked out the door to go to the car, and onto the bar. And he thought about her figure and her face as he walked down to his car, and he thought about her dark eyes and her long black hair and how her breasts were so firm and round for her age, and how he liked making love to her, but perhaps she didn’t enjoy it as much as him, so it would seem after this evening. And as he opened the car door, she was looking out the apartment window at him from the third floor, and her elbows were on the window sill, her chin in her hand, and he pulled out of his parking space, and she started crying again.


Part Two, Chapter Two
The American Hotel


He took his car and drove down the street. It was twilight, and the moon was out, and the buildings were dark against it, he looked out his window at the German made, cobblestone, narrow streets, and lights coming from the buildings, apartments, and the military base nearby, and down a few unpaved alleys, with old brick houses, on each side of the street, an old lady sweeping the dirt away from her doorway, a stone church, and a building with a tower steeple, a sharp cross on the top of it, it was all let up all the roofs and their shadows against the moon’s light. Even a pizzeria (or parlor), one that served beer and pizzas, that was also open he noticed, he had met Chris Steward in there the manager, a twenty-four year old German Jew, he had an eye for her. The main highway between the apartment building the one he lived in and the American Hotel across was busy, he waited at the stop sign, between here and there, the crossed the highway, there were several guesthouses, and one other good restaurant he ate at and drank (one of which also made pizzas) nearby. As he drove down the street, on one side of the street was the Military Base—Reese, it was an old World War Two base for artillery and many buildings to the compound; on the other side of the street were old buildings, dark brick, that had several offices in, one that sold cloths, and had a doctor and dentist in them, on the second level—the second floor, was the medical area. Behind that was the American Hotel, on the corner, behind the hotel the street lead into a more residential area, both small and large framed houses, cozy like, in-between more guesthouses and smaller buildings. There was a German whitewashed jail building you could see it by the reflection of the moonlight, Gordon often drove by it, could barley see the top of the three story building now.
Augsburg was a quaint, medium size city—in 1969, charming with lightly bright smiling and festive people. At the American Hotel they even had a gambling room, always crowed with GI’s playing the slots. Those handles clicking brittle against the metal partitions set inside the tomb like boxes, with all those silver looking coins, jumping and falling until they settled, with all the wheels abruptly stopping the inside rotating wheels.
Tonight was the night to get drunk, and play those one arm bandits he thought, get your mind separated from reality.
“What youall goin’ to have?” said the southern bartender, Sergeant Manes, from Ozark, Alabama.
“I don’t know,” said Gordon Wes, deliberating. “Something strong thought.”
“Youall dont look very well this evenin’ Professor Wes, whatsa matter with youall? if-en you dont mind me askin’?”
“No, I dont mind.” Said the professor.
“Eyes goin’ to fix youall up with somthin’ fine,” said the big burley black bartender, with his rustic hoarse voice. “You ever try southern moonshine, sir?”
“Go ahead; I know you got some, your own private stock I hear.” And the sergeant laughs, “You bet your life I do!” he comments.
“You drink this Professor and you are goin’ to feel good all over. Matter-of-fact, youall’s goin’ to want to fight everyone in the damn hotel here,” said Sergeant Manes. And he started to pour Professor Gordon Wes, his special moonshine, from a bottle hidden under the counter.

Sitting on a stood at the bar, Gordon Wes drank down four shots of that so called white lightening, or moonshine, it didn’t seem to affect him much, he didn’t feel any better or worse for that matter, and the big burley bartender looked surprised at the professor waiting for it to hit him.
“Mamma Mia,” Sergeant Manes said as if in surprise he didn’t fall off the stool—to Wes, “You have one iron stomach, if-en I ever did see one!”
“Give me something else, something that just don’t burn all the way from your lips to your feet, and don’t do a single thing to boot!”
“Youall gots to be careful, cuz once that moonshine hits home, you is a goner,” said the bartender.
“Just give me a beer with a shot of whiskey on the side.”
He drank the whiskey down, and the beer as a chaser, and it warmed his insides up, and thought: Georgette was right; he was no more than a well off bum, drunk. It didn’t do all that much for him. Drinking was not the overall cure, it only pushed aside issues, troubles, problems, and he knew tonight if he kept drinking he’d drink himself unconscious, and wake up, and Georgette would be gone, but he continued to drink nonetheless.
“Oh yes,” he murmured at the bar. “I’m Professor Gordon Wes, and I teach psychology here in Augsburg, and Munich, along with Darmstadt and Frankfurt, for the ‘University of Maryland, Extension Program, courses for the Military…!” then he noticed Manes was looking at him strange, and then he figure it out, he was acting strange, his head was getting dizzy and his eyelids wanted to go to sleep, and he nearly had to pull them up with his fingers, and Manes noticed this. But he was a good paying customer and they like him at the American Hotel Bar, and so Manes smiled, as if he knew the moonshine was starting to take effect, and said not a word.

A shorter man than he, built well, with red hair came in with two other soldiers. He sat down at the bar, on a barstool, with both his friends, as if waiting and looking for an empty table to sit at. The red headed soldier’s friend were called Bruce, he was taller than all three, the other one was called Sergeant, and he was the shorter one, more silent, both of them from the south, the red head from the Midwest.
“I’m Professor Wes. Have we ever met before, perhaps in Jackson, New York, or Manhattan?” he said to the red head.
“I’m just a soldier sir,” said the red head, “a corporal in the Army, stationed over there at Reese Compound. I doubt we ever met, I’ve mean I’ve been in New Jersey, but not in New York.”
“I’m glad,” said the professor. “Do you want some moonshine? I’ll buy you one!”
“No, I’m a beer drinker,” said the corporal. “You look kind of near to the ground tonight professor, if you know what I mean, what’s the matter?”
“I’m really happy to meet you,” said the professor, “needed someone to talk to, some wife problems but I’ll get over it.”
“I guess so,” said the corporal. “Meet my friends, Bruce and Sergeant…” and the sergeant said quickly, “No first or last names please—not here anyway…” and thus, the corporal smiled and simple repeated himself, “and here is Sergeant, sergeant,” with a chuckle.
“Yes, I understand” said the professor, “lot’s of commies around here I hear.”
“Yes,” said the corporal, “the communists have infiltrated the hotel here, and so has the media. Everyone trying to get all the worthless information they can out of us GI’s.”
“Yes,” said the professor, contentedly. “That is were we are at. This is the most penetrated bar and hotel in this part of West Germany, with the most communists and media seeking hounds I’ve ever been around.” Then the professor asked “What you boys going to do now?”
“Not much, just drink, maybe gamble a little, and get a table to sit at, and drink some more, why?”
“Well, I’m about half crocked now; let me buy you boys a drink.” And he did, he ordered three beers for the three soldiers.
“That’s grand,” said Bruce, thanking him, the corporal shaking his hand, for a thank you.
“That’s splendid,” said the Sergeant thanking him also. And they all hit each other’s glasses as in a toast, “To better days, and long life,” said the professor.




To Have; --and Never Have Had

Part II



Part Two: Chapter Three
Pie-eyed at the Hotel


“I loved her,” said Professor Wes, “more than anything else, above anything else. She is by far the best of the lot of women I’ve met, I’ve married I mean, she’s just recently an agitator in all I do.”
“Why?” asked Corporal Evens.
“It’s part of being her, Georgette, that’s her name. Do you want to see her picture?” he said now pie-eyed, the drinks had hit him.
Corporal Evens was somewhat stunned, but did not let on he knew his wife, not yet.
“It’s crazy,” he said aloud, and Bruce and the Sergeant looked at him and so did the professor.
“Gee,” Evens said with a smile, “I know your wife.”
Professor Wes edged away with his stood a little. Then he saw Alfonso Mulligan sitting at a table with three friends, way in the back of the bar.
“You must be that Corporal she’s talking about then?” said the professor.
“I’m happy I met you sir.” Said Evens near tongue-tied, but loosed up by the alcohol, adding, “Yes I am he.”
“Well, at least you’re not sleeping with her like that Command Sergeant Major over there is,” and he pointed towards him with his finger.
Evens seemed hesitate to say a word, but wanted to stick up for Georgette, but felt it was not to take sides, not in a bar half drunk anyhow, he’d look the worse for it, so he simple hurried onto taking a drink with his friends.
The Professor fixed a glaring stare at the CSM, detached himself room the group for the moment, “You okay?” asked Evens to the professor.
His lips were trembling, and his head was circling, in an ongoing motion, as if he was dizzy, and going to fall off the stool.
“Come on sir,” said the bartender, “its best youall catch a cab back home before the little wife hangs you out to dry.” And he and the Evens group laughed. “No offence,” added Sergeant Manes.
With the large arm of Manes over the shoulder of the Professor’s he walked him out of the bar, and hotel, and to a taxi, “You’re a nice fella,” said the professor, slurring his words, separating the syllables unintentionally, “but I don’t wa nt a ta xi, I can wa lk ho me by myself, it’s on ly four or five blocks a way.”

Back at the hotel, Corporal evens asks Sergeant Manes, “Does he come in her much?”
“He started to a few months ago, why you asking? I really should say a word to you guys, it’s his businesses.”
“I know his wife, that’s way,” said Evens.
“Nice fella all right, he keeps to himself, plenty of money. But he gets stone drunk, and seems a bit strange, fools around with the gals somewhat, but I never seen him kiss them or hug them, or pat them on the ass, he likes whiskey, lots of whiskey I think he likes to drink more than womanize, that’s his lover, but he likes female attention…” said the barkeep.
“My god, what a drunk,” said Evens.
“You don’t know who is and who isn’t until they come here, and as far as I can see Corporal, you’ll be like him if you don’t slow down on your drinking!”
“Perhaps, but I don’t have the money he got,” and he laughed.
“Say,” said Evens to his friends, “we’re not doing anything but drinking come on let’s see where the old professor is, maybe we can walk him across the highway to his apartment, he’s going to get killed out there.”
“By gosh,” said the barkeep, “I didn’t think of that.”
“We’ll go out and look,” said Evens to Manes, “we’ll keep him out of harms way, if we can find him.”
“Thanks guys,” said the Sergeant.
Then the three went out of the hotel, all three of them and as they got to the highway, Bruce said in an agonizing voice, his ulcers were acting up, “What do you think happened to the professor?” he asked, he was nowhere to be seen.
They had been on the edge of the highway looking across it, down it, on both sides—right and left, and into the bushes along side the road leading to the highway, everything dimly lit up, cars hurtling by. Then abruptly, Bruce fell to the ground, curled up like an embryo, his ulcers were torturing him. Sweat trickling down off his forehead. His breathing oozing out slowly, as the other two simple stood by him to insure no one interfered as Bruce usually instructed them to do, if indeed an episode such as this one occurred.
After Bruce recovered from the ulcer event, they edged back toward the hotel and to the bar area.



Part Three, Chapter Four
The Highway and the Bushes


He was a needy person to say the least, but with passion, fated to need, to find something, anything to caress, something strong enough –that is, stronger than him! Something deeper than flesh and bone, deeper than love, because this wasn’t durable enough for him: what he had to give, was willing to give, was heart and soul, it had nothing to do with her in particular—she didn’t fail him, he was already doomed, had he found someone to read his palms, or perhaps his horoscope. She had already proved she was a mere mortal, perchance he was looking for something immortal—whose to say, but there he was, standing in the middle—between two highways, on grass, an isle (land mass), he even saw with a glimpse, a shadow in the window of his apartment, it was a silhouette of his wife.
He knew if he’d not stop his drinking, his immortal lover, his devotee who understood his needs more than anyone on earth, who could creep deep down into his soul, he knew if he did not give her up, his attitude would worsen toward humanity, his wife, he’d be a Frankenstein, a Stalin, something of that sort. But there was nothing better—than alcohol.
At one time he was a quite and neat, positive and charming man, matter-of-fact, he still had some of that recipe, and he accepted responsibility with rights, now it was to the contrary, no responsibility, but he wanted his rights—nonetheless.

And now, now the lights to her apartment went off. And he found himself lying in some bushes by the cement stairway that lead to the front door of the apartment building.
Oh yes, this was doubtless the last straw. A most important message he was giving to Georgette—perhaps without his even knowing. All he had done tried to do—everything was in the open—per near. He was not hiding a thing, anything, not one iota. He wanted it all public, or didn’t care if it was. And there he was and there you are ((I can tell you in confidence, he loved her, but naturally he loved something else more—the drink) (no computation or imputation of course)).
And then he saw the lights go off in their apartment.
“Yes,” she said, out loud as if speaking to the walls. “What does he want?” For that matter, she even asked, “What does God assume I can or should do?” And she went onto say, “You do understand Lord, I have informed him and you and I tried in earnest to persuade him to walk a different path in life,” so she said in dismay. And there she sat in darkness as if waiting for His answer, if indeed it was a question, more than a statement. And there she sat, waiting, watching the blinking lights reflect in the window, through the window into the wall mirror from the cars on the highway.



Part Three, End Chapter Five
Waiting for the Taxi


Gordon’s wife—restless and sleepless, had kept looking out the window hoping he would come home, perhaps try to put it back together, but he past-out in the grass, hidden in the bushes by his apartment…in the morning she took her last look before she walked out of the apartment, out of the building with her two suitcases, now waiting outside on the sidewalk, near the bushes, the bushes being in back of her, her facing the street, she never noticed it was him in the bushes, his leg showing, and to onlookers, he was just a bum, a drunk bum in the bushes passed out.
There she stood with her suitcases by her sides waiting for the taxi, who couldn’t hear his moaning, and snoring and coughing behind those bushes, her mind was not thinking—or detecting, so all she could do was watch—look at faces, expressions and gestures of the pedestrians walking by, in the cars, buses. And when she thought she saw his face, in one of those cars, or pedestrians, or buses, she got spooked, perhaps distressed, anyway, troubled and almost wanting to cover her face, to be unnoticed.
Misplaced. Gordon had told her he didn’t want to be her husband and she told him the same, and now shortly after they had told each other this, it all was happening. He was absent, not just absent today, or yesterday, but for two months absent, and today of all days, he was absent, and she felt not there
Misplaced. Lost on a sidewalk waiting for a taxi to take her to someplace, maybe a hotel, maybe to see the man that told her he wanted to marry her, maybe to the Frankfurt airport.
His passions, Gordon’s passions, and wants and lack of unawareness and fear of perhaps growing old, of missing out of something, somewhere, somehow, as if all of humanity must stop for a moment and let him catch up—simple as it is, or was—as that is, gentle and tender as God allows age to creep up on a person, to allow him to grow older and wiser in his decision making, and dealings with people, in this case, with his wife per se, it just all wasn’t so simple for him, nor was it working out.
Misplaced. Yes, she felt omitted, and she felt she had to survive him, she hoped he understood, and she knew she could not contradict him without a battle, and she felt she had already been through the war. His bullheadedness was destroying her, and she was crying to maintain her identity, her own identity, not his, and she had no more perseverance. So finally looking at that window, and out that window, all night long, for her husband, for the last time, the expected happened, anticipated by both of them, perhaps only realized by her at the moment. Because of his sudden deafness to her pleas, the isolation, solitude, it was all battles in a war, a war she had already been through, and she felt she survived and stood gunfire, but how fortunate can one person be? So yes, she pushed right ahead with her plan which was to established a new life. Evidently he didn’t hear the over-and under-tones, the alarm, desperation of her. This intellectual man created a tragic face on her. On one hand, what she needed she couldn’t get, and she needed to make her husband need her first, or second, but she wasn’t even third. Thus, it couldn’t last, and as she stood on the corner feeling misplaced, displaced, and discouraged, she knew there was no place for her in his life, her marriage and her life, with him. He had put her on the installment plan, like a car, payment and then repayment, a new episode, a new chapter.
So she had to go make a plan of her own…not him to make one for her, which would be under his heel—she had learned in life one thing, if anything, self-interest is stronger than the whims of the devil himself.

But what would wipe out that hurt and emptiness, she was feeling, if indeed there was something that could? What could he do to remedy all this, to bring it back to normal? He could not just say ‘Sorry!’ and return. Oh no, that would not do. He would need to say sorry to her, and want to say sorry to her. Would he tell her that? Would he leave his lover, the bottle? And all those other women, he was thinking about? Whatever, and who’s to say, under the bushes he laid, stone drunk. And what would she say to his sorry? ‘Keep your sorry, your investment is gone.’ Or ‘Keep your sorry, until I ask for it.’ But she wasn’t doing any asking, she was simply waiting for the taxi. If anything, she was only sorry that she was ashamed that she looked out that window all night for him.
So, she got into the taxi and said in a whisper looking back, out of the back window, seeing a foot, only a foot of a bum in the bushes, looked with a squint of her eyes, as if the shoe might be familiar —said in a whisper, “Good day to it all,” and was gone.
So if he had intentions to say ‘Sorry!’ He’d have to have someone else tell her, she wouldn’t any longer listen—no more un-unified solitary for her. Thereafter, she never breathed his name again, not even in thinking, never looked back a second time—it was Sodom and Gomorra back there, and she was out of it. She was no longer his snap-on bow tie.

When it was all over, that is, when the grieving process passed—and grieving does pass with time, the lose and the hurt mended to where it only left a scare, which took somewhere around fifteen-months, it was like a blurred dream to her, all fifteen-years of her marriage, and she was heard to have said, “It was all like to have, and never have had —and then it was gone.”

“You have to ask yourself this question, some time in your life,” she told her husband in a letter, in rhyme: “For one crowded season of madness in one wonderful life—is it worth growing old without your loving wife?” Georgette Wes


End to the Story


(Notes: Incidentally, for those curious minded folks out there, Georgette, is a real person, although her name has been changed, and this story is based somewhat on actual events, I say somewhat, also somewhat on conjecture, meaning, I tried to fill in the gaps when I didn’t have fact. I did meet Georgette (and our friendship did last somewhere around a little over two-months) —, and her intentions—and this is all I can tell you—were to go back to America, and my guess is, she took that taxi she waited so long for, to the airport, although she might not have, but I never saw her after these events around Augsburg, and so that is my best guess. And for clarity sake, I was Chick Evens in this story, and at the time I told her (while living in Augsburg Germany for ten-months, in 1970—yes I changed the date by a year too), I didn’t want to be part of a divorce—or feel in part, I was part of a divorce, and she understood, although I think I hurt her, because I ended up being—really being, her unqualified listener, unbiased friend (or perhaps biased, against him for her), and not a critic in any way of her, she already had one, her husband no need to overdue it I felt at the time: but to be frank, I never knew what to say anyhow, but she was one sport, and fine woman, and I mean that with all due respect. There are two sides to ever story though, and you mostly get hers in this short story you’ve just read, not his, although you got all I know of him, and perhaps a little more that I didn’t know and on her behalf slated this story to make it come out as I feel it should, or under such circumstances would—Ill never really know, but I do hope they ended up back together sometime in this brief life we all have, but my mind tells me, most probably not. Drinking is most deficiently the devils closest companion. By and large, for my money, and for this story, she never did go back to him, nor did he ask to come back, they both found a new life, he with the bottle in West Germany, and she in America, with a sober and down to earth fella, and she lived happily ever after, for him, whose to say—perhaps he waited for this magical moment to drink his life away in oblivion, they often do.)


Notes on the writing of “To Have; --and Never Have Had”: 8-16-2009; Part two 8-17-2009 ((No: 453) (the original name “The Yellow Rat” changed 8-17-2009)) 1378-1966-3372 Part Three (The Taxi), written at the café, Mia Mamma, 8-18-2009, during lunch. On 8-19-2009, the author wrote out the notes to the short story in the morning at his Huancayo, apartment… (Pie-eyed written 8-19-2009; The Highway and Bushes, written out on napkin, 8-19, and reedited and written into the story 8-20-2009 (a five day project) 5942