I had a great time helping Maria yesterday. We had fun. She picked me up exactly on time and the ride there was enjoyable and fast. Her sweet dog was there to greet us. I sat down in chair in computer room, and Maria brought in from the car the plastic bag containing the items she had just bought herself at Value Village that morning.
First she tried on the jacket, it was champagne silk and fitted her perfectly. Either it was brand new or had just been dry cleaned, it was exquisite. It was 3 dollars but today is half price day. “$1.50!” she exclaimed with huge glee.
The blue cotton blouse was also lovely. It was the shade of blue of the sky and a very nice cotton. Like what you'd wear on a yacht. This had been two dollars but at half price was one dollar. Maria was ecstatic about the blouse and the price.
The two white tops were lovely too. One was simple but elegant white cotton pullover sweater. The other was elegant white sweatshirt for walking Seema on winter mornings when it is cold. “50 cents each” Maria announced with joy. “I will take you to Value Village” she said. “I don't have very much money to live on” Maria said, “I like Value Village.”
We had talked about money in the car on way over. She said she appreciated me helping her because she doesn't have the $35 or $40 to pay someone to do what I do. When we sat down at the computer Maria said she has a perfect life but she doesn't have enough money, all she wants is more money. “Me too” I said, “I want more money. I am playing the lottery.” Maria got very excited. “It is 17 million now, I will buy 5 tickets.” I said “I buy 4 tickets each week.” She said “if either of us wins let's split it, half for you half for me.” And I said “Great! Maria, we double our chances.”
This time Maria was in charge of the whole lesson which went so well, she knew exactly what she wanted. First we went to email and she said “I will write an email, I will write to Bal.”
This is the guy she is in love with. She remembered perfectly how to do it. She got out her pad and paper and wrote “I was happy to hear your voice this morning, it brought me big joy, I would love to see you now.” Something along these lines, more mushy. It was a love letter. “Love, Maria.”
After Bal she did not know who to write to. First she said “I will write to Jerry,” that is her son, then she changed her mind. Then she said “I know who I will write to” and she looked all over the kitchen for the address and could not find it.
We tried spell-check on her letter to Bal so she could learn spell-check. I was totally shocked at AOL spell-check. This letter only had 18 words in it. But they picked up every time she had left two spaces between a word and also there were a lot of punctuation errors. The only spelling they picked up was the spelling of his name and her name, which of course she spelled right.
So then Maria decided I should teach her internet. She had used the word internet interchangeably before for everything, which had thrown me off. She used the word internet when she meant computer. “Teach me internet” she had originally said, when she meant teach me the computer. Then “teach me internet” she said when she meant email. But I think this time she actually meant internet.
I couldn't figure out on the AOL browser how to get into internet, so I just had her type google on top of the page we were in, and google showed up. So then I knew my way around. I said “ok Maria let's pretend we wanted to find out about the Racquet Club.” The Racquet Club is the club Maria and I both belong to and where we met.
“You type in 'Tucson Racquet Club' and we will see it.” Neither of us knew how to spell racquet. Maria wrote it down on her pad, and I said “I think there is a 'c' in there, let's try it.”
In the course of doing this Maria learned how to go forward to next page and back to previous page. We found Racquet Club and she read off all about our club.
Then I said “let's look up the guy I was friends with before I met Bill, he was Italian from Rome who was a film director, if we can find his email on google I can write an email to him asking if he will read your screenplay.”
Maria was totally into this and so was I. So I wrote down his name on her pad for her type in, Alfredo Leonardi, and we googled it. There seemed to be a lot of movies directed by Alfredo Leonardi and starring Marco Leonardi, who I figured was the little boy, his son, when his wife came at the end of his visit to NYC and they went back to Rome together. Finally one of the entries was for a film collective in SoHo in Manhattan which lists Alfred Leonardo movies to buy and the film collective had an email.
So I said “OK finally an email address, I will write to them and ask them to forward it to Alfredo Leonardo.” “Great” Maria said. So she got up and I sat down in her computer chair. And I composed my email outloud as I was writing it. At the top I wrote “will you kindly forward this email to Alfredo Leonardi since we were old friends.”
Then I wrote, “Dear Alfredo, do you remember me” and I wrote my maiden name. And I said how I had stayed in the same apartment in the East Village in Manhattan where he had visited me for very long time till I moved to Tucson Arizona. That I met my husband a year after he returned to Rome. That I remembered the nice times we had, going to the beach together, and when I jumped out of the canoe.
I said how my friend Maria wrote a screenplay and is he willing to read it. Would he send it to another director if it is not for him. And I gave my own email address cause I said I am on Maria's computer. And would he write back and say hi to me because it would be fun for us to say hi again. And I sent my love to his wife and son.
Both Maria and I were delighted with my email. I changed the font to make it prettier and then I did spell-check which picked up one mistake. I had said “I am no longer wild but I am not conventional.” And I had put two “i's” in wild. So spell-check corrected that. I showed Maria how spell-check takes out the misspelled word and replaces it with the rightly spelled word, she was impressed.
We were both satisfied with my letter. “I hope the gallery sends it to him” Maria said. “I hope so too” I said. And Maria was lost in awe at what internet could do. She saw with her own two eyes here was someone I knew in the '60s and because of internet I was able to write an email to him. I even think we might have found his own real email if Maria had had the patience to press all the different entries for him. But this was a start, even if the email doesn't get to him, Maria got an idea of what internet can do, which was the point of the lesson.
And of course it was tremendous fun for me to be writing to my old friend Alfredo Leonardi. We had been best friends, I have total warmth for him, and I never would have emailed him except for Maria wanting someone in the film industry to read her screenplay.
I am curious if Alfredo will write back. I have never kept track of the boys who walked in and out of my life before I met Bill. At the time of course I was involved with the boys I had crushes on, and the boys who were just my best friends I didn't think so much about. But now I don't remember so well the boys I had crushes on and I remember perfectly the ones who were just my best friends, because those are the ones I shared my life with.
Alfredo and I hit it off right from the start because we were so relaxed with each other. He wasn't at all what I expected when Anna from Rome, who I had met the week before in the laundromat and who invited me to a party at her apartment that evening, said she had given my phone number to her friend Alfredo, who was film director from Rome.
This was the time of Marcello Mastroianni, Michelangelo Antonioni, etc. I thought I was being fixed up on a blind date with Marcello Mastroianni. I guess he must have met me at school where I taught and then we walked over to a luncheonette near by for our date. And he was not one bit like an Italian movie star. He was very diminutive to start off, and he strikes me now as looking English somehow with his rolled-up black umbrella as he waited for me. I guess he wore dapper clothes too.
But since he didn't look like a movie star and I was not attracted to him I relaxed instantly. And for some odd reason that I can't explain we totally hit if off in the luncheonette on Grand Street. It was an orthodox Jewish neighborhood, the neighborhood was like my Jewish neighborhood back in Queens except they were all orthodox. I guess it was a good setting for me to relax in.
And all I can say is from that moment till he left for Rome, or to be more exact when his wife and little boy arrived at the end of his NYC sojourn, Alfredo and I were inseparable.
What I did was take Alfredo with me to everything I did in my life, except go to work. He couldn't come to women's liberation meetings with me because those were all women, but I took him to everything else, and I guess we had our meals together in the restaurant on Avenue A too.
When I went to the beach on long Island on weekends with my girlfriends I took Alfredo. His bathing suit totally embarrassed me. He wore a teeny weenie white bikini men’s bathing suit. I didn't say a word but Alfredo looked around Jones Beach and said “I see I am the only one wearing a bathing suit like this.” “Yes!” I said pointedly.
When Marilyn called up me and Helen to invite us to the week-end conference for socialist Jews at a bungalow colony in the Catskills, I invited Alfredo. I have no idea what Marilyn's group was all about. We went to the meetings and there were big fights. But I had only wanted to spend a weekend in the country. That is when Helen and me and Alfredo paddled in the canoe and smoked pot and I got stoned, took off my clothes, and swam naked to shore.
I alluded to this in the email I wrote him from Maria's computer yesterday, since he had told me next morning it had made a big impression on him. I thought what made a big impression on him was my adventurous act of jumping out of canoe and swimming to shore. But when he detailed the big impression, it wasn't about what I had done, it was about me naked. Because we were just best friends and not boyfriend and girlfriend, I had not let him finish telling me how much he had enjoyed that.
But when I was writing a “remember-me” email all those years later, I figured that would reawaken his memory if he forgot me.
The last time I saw Alfredo was at Lynn's party. His wife and little son were there, and his wife was blond and pretty and wore wrap-around skirt and was very interested in women's liberation. She was a very nice girl. Alfredo and I really were two ships which pass in the night. It was easy come, easy go. He waltzed into my life so easily, he waltzed out of it so easily. It never occurred to me to try to hold on to the friendship.
In fact I never gave him a thought after he left till I was writing a story about my days with Helen in women's liberation, and I remembered how Alfredo, me, and Helen had gone to that conference at the bungalow colony, and that brought back my time with Alfredo to my mind.
And I remembered him again when Maria said she is looking for someone in the film industry. And I thought I know an Italian film director....
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