The Closet door

Some things are easiest revisited years after time has softened the blow. And with some holidays, it makes sense not to review them during the season. So right now is a great time to revisit a Christmas time from the 1960s because it is a long time ago, and because I am at the antipode of the year.

It wasn’t really living together. It was living adjacent.

I had been kicked out of the group home, for wayward Folkies we called the Folkie Palace. There had been an argument about Dylan going electric. I said it was no biggie because half of Greenwich Village had been messing around with what was developing into Folk Rock. The purists in the household determined that I was an incorrigible heretic. So I wound up in one of the most disepitomable rooming houses on Boston’s Beacon Hill. It was cheap, no bugs, and it was cheap.

Strangely enough, the room had a closet that was almost large enough to be another small room. Some of these rooming houses had been small mansions in their day, and when, later, they were cut up for rooming, they had bizarre features. In my room, it was the closet.

Everything seemed normal until one evening, a young woman stepped through my closet door. Her closet and mine had a door between them, and in exploring, she had wound up in my room. We also shared a common kitchen. We decided that it was fate, and soon embarked on a romantic and domestic relationship that was as strange as our closets and the connecting door.

Justine had long, flowing red hair and pale skin. She preferred to dress in greens and blues. With her tall, long lines, she made a visual statement wherever she went. Of course, as a pius itinerant folksinger, and being poor, the only place I could afford to take her was the bar.

The Harvard Gardens was the bar we frequented. And the ancient waitress, Evie took one look at Justine, glanced at me, and said, “Good luck.” She was not the only one to suggest that I was aiming high. I had repaired my friendships with the denizens of the Folkie Palace, and everytime we visited there was blatant amazement that a girl like Justine was with me.

But here was the thing: Justine had selected, pursued, and chosen me. In a lot of ways I was along for Justine’s ride.

Christmas was coming, and I took a regular job to afford presents for Justine. I knew she wanted a green shawl, which I got, but also an assortment of other things I knew she’d like. I went to her favorite jewelry store in Cambridge for earrings, and stopped at Cardullo’s for specialty food items.

Yes, Christmas was special.

The days right after Christmas were pretty normal, but then New Year’s Eve, there was no sign of Justine. After searching all of Beacon Hill, I joined my friends at the Folkie Palace for drinks. At about 12:30 the phone rang. It was Justine looking for me. Before I could ask her where she was, she told me: San Francisco. Would I please tell the landlord she wasn’t returning, and the stuff she had left was trash?

“But what about me?” I asked. She told me that she’d hoped that she would find happiness in a relationship with an ordinary guy, but it was just too boring. she’d gone back to the “Coast”, and I should look her up sometime when I got out there.

It turned out that Justine moved in some high-powered circles, had gotten burnt out, and went looking for a quiet and peaceful life, only to find it boring.

I reacted as I normally did in those days, packed my pack, grabbed my guitar and went off on a frolicking detour of monumental proportions. It was a crusade of a trip, forgetting Justine, getting lost, finding myself again, and getting some new directions.

Justine had been a calamity, but strangely enough, not one that permanently marked or scarred me. Luckily, it had been of short duration, and I soon found other entertainment.

But every time I think about that room, the closet with the door, and that lovely redhead walking through. I sigh, just a bit, mind you.*

• This is a fictionalized composition of things that happened. I’ve compressed, and expanded on some stuff. There was someone very much like Justine, but I fudged things a bit for the story’s convenience.