11-03-1980
Three Ralphs
(from Suburban Misfits)
Three Ralphs haunt my life, each wearing a different part of me from a different part of my life.
I grew up with a boy named Ralph, a classmate through grammar school, to whom I clung later after we got ready to plunge into the real world. He and I hung out together, often setting up board games in my basement or games in his mother’s house on East. 1st Street in Clifton.
His mother hated me, and used to warn Ralph about seeing him – she claiming I was a bad influence that would steer him in the wrong direction, and admittedly, I tried my best, but he would not be moved.
My second Ralph overlapped my first a little.
People claimed we looked a lot alike, and this often led to some serious confrontations as he left a trail of heart ache and unsettled feuds his victims and enemies looked to me to settle.
Pauly’s father even tried to throw me out of his house once making the same mistake.
This Ralph wanted to be Pauly, but couldn’t get the subtle parts right.
Pauly has an air of indifference about him, and often seems crueler than he is, especially with women.
Ralph was cruel, leaving broken hearts behind him as he charged through the China shop of their lives.
Thanks to Hank, I managed to rescue one such victim after she attempted suicide over the loss of Ralph. I even spent a night with her, a tale Ralph soon learned about, and intended to get even for.
I met him earlier this year in the Suburban Tavern in Montclair where he taunted me I suppose with the intention of egging me into a fight.
Not until this fall did he nearly succeed, when Susan and I showed up at the Red Baron Tavern in Cedar Grove to see Pauly and the band, where a drunken Ralph leaned over to me and whispered in my hear about how Susan might even mistake the two of us, if he were to take her go bed.
Garrick grabbed me before I could grab Ralph’s throat.
Over the last months or so, Susan and I have become strangers, and yet another Ralph has come into our lives, making less gross overtures to Susan she is tempted to accept.
On one occasion, this character from her college graduating class asked her to take a ride with him on his motorcycle, and I saw the pain in her eyes when she told him, “I can’t.”
Yesterday, I intended to spend the day with Susan in an attempt to rebuild some of the bridges the last month seems to have cast down.
She refused, saying she had things to do, and then as an afterthought, asked me to come over to her parent’s house for super at five.
I showed up at four, lonely and cold after having waiting out even more time in the park.
Her book sat on the porch open but abandoned. I presumed she was upstairs checking on something and would soon return.
Then I saw her father and he said she had taken off with Ralph.
Pain and jealousy erupted in me though I tried my best to keep her father from seeing it, and hurried away to seek the protection of my own apartment in Passaic.
I know things are over between us – even though I’m not yet sure of when we will actually call it over.
Susan called later and said she had had dinner with Ralph – though I thought I heard more than dinner in his voice.
I yelled; Susan cried. I wanted to end it all then and there, but foolishly did not.
Even empty gestures are better than feeling utterly hollow, I thought.
But I know going on will be like walking on hot coals, each step drawing up more and more intense pain, and leaving scars inside both of us neither of us will be able to hide in the future.
And I blame Ralph; only, I’m not sure which Ralph I’m blaming.