Sharon and myself? We happily began what would become a 19 month relationship. That's all it lasted. From January 1974 through September 1975. We screwed a lot and almost got caught a few times. We shared few interests and to be honest, the entire time with her is a bit unmemorable. Sure, I could go down a list of things we did and the stupid stuff with which we involved ourselves, but that would stretch this meaningless drivel into meaningless drivel. By the summer of 1975 we both kind of knew that our time together was up. By that October I was seeing a gal in Bricktown, New Jersey as I had gotten a management position in a movie theatre down there. Who was the girl? The boxoffice cashier. That shows you utterly freakin' dumb I can be. If there's one thing you DO NOT do, its get too cozy with the person who collects the CASH at the door. As a result, I was fired. I hated the damn job because it was a 45 minute drive each way, but I continued dating my new lass. Just three months after we'd met and a few days after I'd given her a Christmas gift, my cashier girlfriend told me she would be spending New Year's Eve with her old boyfriend. Ouch! Yes sir, ol' glamour boy was getting some serious payback from the accountants at the Office of Bad Karma. And deservedly so.

Even though we had parted, Sharon was still lurking in the background. There were four significant times after our breakup when I heard from her. The first was in January 1977. She called me after speaking with a mutual friend who must have told her I wasn't seeing anyone. Actually, I was working on a girl who attracted me so deeply that I chased after her for months before she went out with me. Sharon's 1977 reappearance was lousy timing. Still, it didn't stop me from agreeing to see her! We got together early one Saturday evening. I say early because I was scheduled to pickup the girl I had been after from her workplace at 11:30pm. It was my first real date with her! How messed up was that? There was Sharon sitting across from me at the Shamrock Diner in Middletown, New Jersey, happy to see me and chattering away while I was clock-watching. I knew I had to dump her by 11pm latest. I brought her to a friend's house where he'd run movies every Saturday night for whoever showed up. This was long before video cassettes became commonplace, he ran 16mm feature films and short subjects. No smut, real movies! I brought Sharon over there and she being very easy to look at, my friend couldn't keep his eyes off her. Within an hour, Sharon and myself were locked in the bathroom and going at it. The beer-swilling movie audience out in the living room were wandering outside and pissing on bushes all night.

I was pushing my time limit to the max and we made a very quick (albeit embarrassing) exit. I think Sharon was a bit shocked when I cavalierly dropped her off and made no plans to see her again. I genuinely believe we could have rekindled our relationship had I wanted. I did make the pickup appointment with my latest conquest. What had just happened a couple of hours earlier in a bathroom with Sharon would repeat itself with the new gal. It was the first and (sadly) last time in my life when I had sex with two different women in the same night.

Well, I married that girl who gave herself to me on the first date, another bright move on my part. We separated a year later and divorced 18 months beyond that. What a total mess. But! My second encounter with Sharon was during my married year. It was sometime during the first few months of 1978 when she resurfaced. My marriage was the world's largest sinkhole. I knew my wife was cheating on me with an on-again off-again boyfriend she had been seeing before me. That boyfriend, by the way, was married with a child. Sharon didn't hang around long. We dabbled with having sex, some heavy petting and such, but we both realized it would be better if we not pursue anything beyond that. She was living with someone at the time so my whole environment was totally upside down and in a moral shambles. I wouldn't see her again until...

...she came over to the new house I was living in, somewhere in late 1979 or early 1980. She brought along some weed and wanted to get high with me. Classy gal. She stayed the afternoon as I remember and by nightfall I was getting pretty horny. Now here's the crazy part. I made my move and started kissing her. She backed away and said she didn't want to go there with me. I didn't have garlic breath or anything so she must have really been serious. I respected that and then she asked me if I wanted her to leave. I said no. We sat, had some snacks and talked. It was really getting late and all I wanted to do was go to bed and sleep. I stated such and left her in the living room. I went into the bedroom alone, all the while hoping she had a change of heart and would eventually follow me. The next thing I knew it was early the next morning and she was waking up on the couch. She left pretty quickly and I would hear from her one more time a year or so later.

In the interim, I was hired by ABC-TV in April 1980. I had hit the big time, working for a television network in Manhattan! I worked in the corporate office screening facilities at 1330 Ave of the Americas. It was a union job, running film and video for whoever needed to see something at the corporate level. In September, the company wanted me to train for a couple of weeks in the production and broadcast area on 66th Street off of Central Park West. One afternoon, and I swear this is true, I was in Central Film Control threading a :10 second commercial spot for TV Guide when the phone rang. Here I am, in this broadcast area of a basement at ABC for only two weeks, and a phone call comes in for me. It was Sharon! We're live on the air to the local station (New York's WABC-TV, Channel 7) with The 4:30 Movie, I'm threading a commercial spot that will air just minutes from the time its loaded and Sharon tracks me down at that precise moment. What the hell could this girl possibly want? More to the point, how did she find me?? Even I didn't know where I was. She remembered from her most recent visit that I had a lot of empty storage area in my house. She was breaking up with the guy she'd been living with and needed a temporary place to stash her furniture and belongings. I couldn't believe I was hearing all this. While I'm stuttering some lame answer as to why she couldn't use my house, the TV Guide spot rolls and starts clattering in my ear and into the phone. I used this moment to escape and politely declined the request and said that I'd try calling her when I got home. That would be the last time I would hear from Sharon to this very day. I never called her and she simply disappeared. Oh! She had tracked me down by calling my parents who told her where I was working. She reached a friend at my regular location who forwarded the call through. Someday I'll have to return that friend's kindness.

As for Barry? It would take him until August 28, 2002 to grow some balls before he contacted me. I received an email that day clear out of the blue. The nitwit made some arcane reference to a high school era "company" I made up called Science Fiction Cinema. We exchanged a few emails, spoke on the phone and slowly began to rebuild a friendship that had no business of ending in the first place. So many wasted years.

The irony of it was that when Barry contacted me, I had just put the paperwork in motion to have a house built in Florida. I was moving out of New Jersey! Barry still lived close by, but my life at that very moment was on a high speed track to pack and relocate myself and my business. The house was completed in December 2002 with the move organized to happen the middle of March 2003. By April 2006 I'd sold my business, sold the Florida digs and returned to NJ.

Barry is still the guy I knew. So much of him is unchanged and that's a nice thing. He's so painfully bright in so many areas that I'm awestruck with his numerous abilities. I'm not flashing sunshine up his ass; he really is a multi-talented individual who can accomplish any damn thing he wants once he's decided to do so. In other words, a scary bastard. There is an incredible Barry and Tim "six degrees of separation" story that will soon follow. It's a textbook example of how deliciously convenient life can be.

And so ends the tale of Barry & Tim & Sharon. It's not really the end though. Barry is back and for that I am grateful. Who knows what the future holds for us. Perhaps a reunion with Sharon someday? I'd enjoy that.

On second thought, "let sleeping dogs lie" sounds like a more prudent way to go.

The beginning--at long last.