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WINONA AND ME [1]
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Date: 2022-10-16
Well, we all know who this Winona is, but she is NOT the Winona I had the unrelieved crush on. I don't have a picture of that Winona, she had a different name, and I don't want to embarrass her. However, I'm required to put in a photograph here, so I wasn't sure what to put in...it was either this or a nice Pumpkin Pie, since Halloween is coming, but that's kind of irrelevant, so here we go with the star of "Mermaids" and "Stranger Things," and Spock's mother who gets killed in the reboot movie.
(I have changed the names and some of the details to avoid embarrassing real people. Besides, they don’t deserve to be embarrassed.)
Okay, try to imagine an 18-year-old version of Dana Delaney, down to the face and long, brown, hair flowing down to her shoulders, but with a little less insouciant spunk. That was the girl I will call Winona Ryder. For those of you following along, the real Winona’s real last name is Horowitz.
Our Winona was tightly focused on academic excellence and Zionism, not necessarily in that order. She was NOT a flirt. But she could easily have been. In addition to the hair, she also had ripe breasts snubbing under a buttoned shirt, and a twitchy tail that was made even twitchier by her designer jeans. Guys watched her advance down a hall, plotting an Arcanum of moves to separate her from both her Jordache jeans and the panties beneath.
They all failed, though – Winona was very picky about the boys she’d go out with. That was on top of being a fairly observant Jew.
When I tried to ask her out, she stared at me in bafflement.
Probably because, being an Aspergian idiot, my theory was that she would be interested in what I was interested in, so why shouldn’t she want to join me in an Electric Railroaders’ Association fantrip to Brooklyn in a restored 1925-built New York Low-V subway train? It took me only two decades of therapy to realize that just because I was fascinated with a subject, that didn’t mean everybody else was.
After that, I was just a nut to her. She didn’t look at me like I was a bug that needed squashing, but just a weirdo who needed to be avoided…and not a very smart one at that. I couldn’t give the right answer to a chemistry question even on an open-book test. Fair enough.
It turned out that she only went out with very Jewish guys – also fair enough, as she was an ardent Zionist. They had to be reasonably handsome, planning a career in a science-related field, and kosher. Otherwise, it was a cold “no,” with the hair shaking to prove the point.
Her uncle came along to chaperone the date, which pretty much meant that the “date” consisted of Uncle Ed grilling the poor guy about how his Torah and Talmud studies were going while Winona sat there and tried to smile, look attentive and interested in the guy. From what I was told, she didn’t say much. I guess she and Uncle Ed were assessing the kid’s potential as a husband-to-be. This was in 1979, mind you. This was after Al Bean, Owen Garriott, and Joe Lousma spent 90 orbiting the planet in Skylab 2, to pick a random scientific achievement of the period. I only say that to point out that people should be allowed to marry who they want nowadays.
Anyway, then they’d go home, and Uncle Ed would say, “Now just ignore me, shake hands firmly, and say goodnight.” The Ryders, who lived in one of the better postwar housing projects on Houston Street by the East River, were very protective of their star.
They had good reason to be: aside from her good looks, she was head of “Arista,” the Honor Society of super-smarties, who could stare at a math problem that the teacher had just written on the blackboard and solve it, complete with “Q.E.D.” in 30 seconds flat, to an A grade and applause from the other math students. Don’t ask me what “Arista” meant. I believe it is a Greek word, meaning “I’m getting a full ride to Harvard on a biochemistry scholarship…are you?”
She was also head of the Jewish Club, which fought hard against the Arab Culture Club, over Mid-East politics, of course. The Arab Culture Club was headed by a future nurse named Jameela Jalil, who I would have also pursued if her father hadn’t been the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s Observer to the United Nations, and my family had helped found Israel.
Because of that political issue, we had very little to talk about, being overheated teenagers. Besides, my idea of a hot date was taking the girl on a fantrip to Brooklyn on a vintage Low-V, remember? Jameela didn’t even know where Brooklyn was.
Jameela, like Winona, was a Princess, down to the Louis Vuitton purses, and they confronted each other over the burning issue of control of the Golan Heights in the third-floor mini-auditorium, where the Arabs were having a lecture and film about the difficult life of a Palestinian refugee. Winona and her Jewish Princesses stormed into the lecture room and tried to punch a hole in the film screen with a window pole. Brilliant diplomacy. Almost as good as Kissinger himself in Vietnam.
Unable to punch the hole or bomb Hanoi, Winona and Jameela started hitting each other in the face with their Vuitton purses, calling each other “baby-killer” and “murderer.”
How two 16-year-old princesses were committing such horrific crimes escaped me. So I tried some adolescent humor, yelling, “Winona, tell Jameela you have a better credit card than she does!”
Both ignored me, as they were busy mussing each other’s hair.
An Assistant Principal arrived to end this Mid-East war and impose a cease-fire in his office.
Even so, Winona Ryder was pretty invincible. When you’re the smartest girl in school, head of the most numerous ethnic club, look like a young Dana Delaney, and have a chaperone uncle to protect your “reputation,” the only thing you have to worry about is picking the right university now and the right husband later. Nothing could stop her…or make her flinch…or embarrass her.
Or convince her that the nutball she disliked had anything going for him. To put it in terms that I prefer to use, I was the 1962 Mets and she was the 1939 Yankees. The only thing I was good for was her getting some whacks on me on her way to winning the pennant.
In the fall of 1980, nothing was going right for me or America – the hostages were still in Teheran, Ronald Reagan was about to become president, John Lennon got shot, the Yankees lost the American League Championship Series to Kansas City in three straight, and I still had to take the math classes I hated, this time as a freshman at New York University.
I didn’t get in on my grades – I got in because my father was Class of 1949. I was a “legacy.” NYU had the strange idea that Dad had enough money to endow them with a new building. When they asked me for endowments later, I was very caustic: I told them I’d donate rolls of toilet paper, the most necessary supply for NYU students and faculty. They left me alone.
Anyway, I also had to take “Expository Writing,” where I was supposed to learn how to write. I did need to learn a number of things about writing, as I hadn’t codified my theory in accordance with the Gospel According to Roger Clemens yet, which determines that “WRITING IS PITCHING.”
But I certainly did not need to take a class on basic writing. I already knew how to do that. I was relying on pure velocity and some control. Not good enough to be Steve Carlton or Ron Guidry, but enough to dominate Double-A and Triple-A hitters fresh up from the minors.
The vast freshman Expository Writing class was divided into 12-student grids, and lo and behold, my class included the eminent Winona Ryder. Our teacher was the usual graduate student, who looked like a young Annie Potts.
I remembered Annie running through the class rules, which included that teachers and students could not get “intimate,” and thinking, “Too freaking bad.” I had only gone on one date since hitting puberty, which ended with a peck on the beak. I wouldn’t have minded going to bed with Annie.
Annie had us write three-page essays, and we would divide into groups of four to read and asses them. One day, she neglected to tell us that the essay was supposed to be only three pages in length. The essay was “Description of an incident.” It didn’t way “what kind” of incident.
To me, that was like saying, “The next hitter is a sucker for a breaking pitch. He can’t lay off of them, but be sure to set him up with inside heat.”
I went home and wrote (typed) a seven-page first-person short story about a fictional New York Subway train operator who takes his train out of 241st Street on the White Plains Road line in the Bronx one evening, to find that three of the stations on his elevated route in the South Bronx are burning at the hands of arsonists, complete with blazing firelighters on the platforms. He has to gun his train through the fires until he hits a red signal and a station where the cops are waiting, to unload his passengers. He emerges severely shaken and distressed from this nightmare. This was at the time when arsonists were burning down the Bronx nightly.
Next class, we were divided into the usual groups of four, and Winona was in my group. Like every class since Socrates, no student wanted to go first. Always being in love with the sound of my own voice, I did want to go first, and read my story.
So I did. Out loud. Winona sat there, staring at me, and listening to my tale of fear and destruction. I think my character was deathly afraid of fire, to make it more dramatic. Her eyes were saucers when I was done. She had no idea that I could do anything besides be a nutball. Who? This guy? The subway nut? He can write? No way. Nobody this dumb can do something this smart.
Looking into her saucepan eyes, I wonder how she would have reacted if I had written an extremely salacious and highly detailed – but loving – sex scene. As far as I’m concerned, if the two participants don’t finish up mutually satisfied, hold each other, promising love, and drift off to the sleep of the satiated…it doesn’t work. Maybe she would said, “Let’s go to dinner…without Uncle Ed.”
Anyway, there wasn’t much commentary or criticism of my story from my group. What the hell could they say? They were Double-A hitters facing a future 354-game winner.
The instructor wondered why we were still talking, when the other groups seemed done. Winona tried to read her three-page (hand-written) “incident,” which was unbelievably dull – I can’t even remember what it was. Breakfast at the Ryders, I think. It was just plain boring. I couldn’t believe the head of Arista could write so dully and poorly. I guess it was because it didn’t end “Q.E.D.”
“Look, Winona,” I said at last, “If you want to write about an incident, it should be interesting and emotional. Write about an occasion when your senses and brain were on fire. When your whole body was tingling. Write about…the loss of your virginity.” Inside heat.
She turned a deep red. Now to get her with the hard breaking pitch. I waited until her face regained its color, and said, waving dismissively, “On second thought, write about something that has actually happened to you.”
Her face turned an even deeper red. She had no answer for that. I’d frozen her in the zone for a called strike three, and all she could do was drag her bat back to the bench, fling it at the batboy, kick the water cooler in disgust, and mutter a few obscenities – like every other hitter who gets overmatched by a pitcher.
After the other two kids read their stuff – don’t ask me what they had, but it wasn’t much – Annie called me over, and asked to see my essay. She pointed out that there was a three-page limit on essays for the class.
I pointed out that she had not mentioned that limit before sending me out there to do the assignment. In other words, I was not pitching with an innings or pitch limit.
Annie sighed. She had forgotten to do so. She took the essay, and said she would read it further. I was kind of hoping we could discuss the essay over a bottle of Chianti and a plate of lasagna at an Italian restaurant, and then back at her place over some Cabernet, after which we could light some candles, pull down the shades, take off our clothes, and see what happens, but there was that pesky rule…
Next class, she handed me the essay back, having read it. She told me it was unacceptable as an essay for the class – but I should flesh it out into a novel. I didn’t know enough about the NYCTA’s operations and culture – then or now – to do so, so I never did, but I was thoroughly amused at the situation in its entirety.
Winona Ryder never looked down on me again. Nor did I get it on with Annie Potts. She was the 1996 Atlanta Braves and I was the 1966 New York Yankees. In other words: I was not going to win a brilliant upset victory: I was not in her league.
However, Winona realized I was not as dumb as she thought I was, and she shouldn’t underestimate me. That was also our last class together.
Around that time, I met up with a friend of mine who I shall call Walter. He had been in our graduating class, who was not Jewish. He had the same crush on Winona that I did. His solution to his unbridled lust was lies and deceit, which is far worse than autistic stupidity.
Despite the warnings of his pals, Walter slapped a yarmulke on his head, and asked Winona out back in our senior year. Walter had good credentials – high grades, plans to be an engineer, and washboard abs. However, he was not Jewish. But if you grow up in New York, you learn how to play the game.
Somehow, Uncle Ed did not make the date, which was lucky for Walter. He got Winona to Katz’s Delicatessen of When Harry Met Sally fame.
The waiter came shuffling over, and said, “What’ll it be, Mac?” in best Lower East Side style.
Trying to sound suave, Walter said, “Oh, the usual.”
The waiter was unimpressed, having never seen Walter before. “What’s that, pal?”
“Ahh…a ham and cheese sandwich,” Walter said casually.
The waiter stared at him with contempt.
Winona leaped to her feet, treated him to a barrage of angry Yiddish, grabbed her purse, and stormed out of the delicatessen.
All the other patrons stared at Walter. He pulled his napkin over his head. The waiter shuffled off. Walter had learned two things: the first was what kosher dietary tradition was about. The second was the meaning of the Yiddish word “putz.”
I actually found myself admiring Winona for her response. It’s perfectly fine not to want to get into a relationship or a romance with someone who has totally different interests as you. It’s even more important to dump a deceitful liar as soon as possible. Winona was harsh, but Walter had to learn about the proper way to romance a woman.
Too many men, young and old, see a female object of their hormones and have only three thoughts:
What’s under that dress? Can I play with it? If so, when and where?
I’m not sure what women think when they see the male object of their hormones. It may be similar, with the additional rule: will this guy commit to me for an extended period of time…say, 40 years of blissful marriage? But being an Aspergian, I’m not sure.
Anyway, if you try to interest a woman in yourself through intellect – even if it’s the wrong route, it’s honorable. So she doesn’t like subway fantrips. Or baseball. Or New York historical trivia. Maybe she likes opera. Or Bruce Springsteen. Or the Marx Brothers.
It’s better than ghastly pick-up lines like: “If I told you that you had a great body would you hold it against me?” I won’t rehearse the others.
How about this: “You seem to be pretty interesting. What are you doing for dinner this evening?” A question like that sounds like you want hear more about the woman and spend quality time with her.
The only thing Winona did wrong was write me off as a total loser. There are better ways to say to the guy, “Thanks, but no thanks.” That’s one right there.
When my daughter began dating the man of her dreams, who she met online, things worked out quickly, and they are inseparable. When he first came to our place, my daughter warned me about not being a jerk. I told her I would not invite him on a Transit Museum fantrip on their antique trains, nor would I harshly rill him about his plans for their evening together.
In truth, when I met the young man, I was more concerned that he would think me a nutball (like Winona did) than anything. I did ask him what he did for a living and where his ancestors were buried (that’s how I get around the “immigration” question.
He turned out to be a chemical engineer, so we had a good time talking about how those folks built amazing devices like the A-bomb. He was astonished when I told him that “Little Boy” was an 84-kiloton device, but only one kiloton went off. “I guess they needed you on that project,” I said.
As for his ancestors: both his parents were immediate immigrants from small farming towns in Poland, separated by a forest. I sympathized with him about the difficulties his country had suffered for centuries, and told him where Polish jokes really come from – Jewish live theater on the Lower East Side, gags about the “Village of Idiots.” So we got along, and still do.
Meanwhile, Winona and I lost track of each other. The next time I saw her, it was the 20th anniversary of the Class of 1980 reunion. She hadn’t changed much – just a physically older version. Her name tag read “Winona Ryder Levy,” and we talked briefly.
She married a nice Jewish pre-dent named Levy, and together had their own practice, and one or two kids. No, she didn’t remember much about me…oh, wait, yes, yes, she did remember that class at NYU.
By now I had become a disciple of Roger Clemens. I had to get the final out of the inning. Both she and her husband were dentists, earning $200,000 a year, and I was just a municipal drudge compared to them. They vacationed in St. Bart’s, as they were saying to a friend. I vacation in Newark’s glamorous North Ward. Runners on second and third, two outs, top of the ninth, and I had only a one-run lead.
I gave her a triumphal smirk and told her that between my job and my family, I was currently pursuing my Master’s in Creative Writing, getting straight A’s, the only time I ever did so. She was astonished that someone she had completely written off could accomplish that while holding down job and family.
We both knew that once again, I’d frozen her in the zone, caught her looking. She couldn’t hit a run-scoring double to left against me.
Got her with the breaking pitch.
“You’re really a good writer,” she finally admitted. I was no longer a nutball to her. I was worth my weight.
Yes, it mattered that much. If I could never get a date with Winona, at least I could get her approval and respect.
[END]
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