El Paso

Months back when I started this little project I sat down to write the story of “Lorrie,” missed signals and realizations and I immediately ran into a wall trying to figure out how to frame the tale and make it matter. I went round and round with it, typing out thousands upon thousands of words that no one will ever see just to end up with a piece that I both love and don’t think does the subject justice. I can still see the moment so vividly in my mind, the cool evening, the breeze, the stars, the sound of the water lapping, the lights on the stereo, Lorrie’s ugly yellow dress, and yet I didn’t and still don’t think I got it "right."

Dunno why I would expect different when I decided to sit down and try to tell the story of “Cathy,” “El Paso” and the dumbest room mate I ever had and yet…here I am again… In the past two weeks I’ve written roughly 7,000 words. I’ve talked about the Marty Robbins album “Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs” and “El Paso’s” chart position when it was released. I’ve talked about how I first found that album buried in a collection of hymns and sermons on vinyl at my great-grandmothers house. I even mentioned how “Big Iron” made a bit of a resurgence in popularity when it was included in the soundtrack of “Fallout: New Vegas” but I never could find the right way to tell you about Cathy and that song. I just couldn’t make it work.

But the trying unlocked something in my head. The effort of banging out all those words, over and over and over again for the past two weeks made me have a realization, about Lorrie and Cathy and about myself. It was the kind of realization that I wish someone had told me when I was nineteen and desperately in love with a brunette Army medic. It’s the kind of thing I hope my kid listens to when I tell them. But to get there I have to tell the story of Cathy and “El Paso” and if I’ve learned nothing else writing for this blog it’s that the only way to tell a story is to start telling it.

So here goes.

I don’t know why I didn’t fall in love with Cathy.

She was petite and blond, with sparkling blue eyes, a dazzling smile, and a personality I can only describe as bubbly. She had the kind of soft, southern accent that makes me just a tiny bit weak in the knees and size zero jeans. I don’t remember her ever getting too drunk. I don’t remember her ever being too mean. In my memory she is very nearly the stereotypical girl next door, cheerful and polite. Aside from one little secret my mom would have loved her.

I couldn’t say the same for Lorrie. Lorrie was just as slim but easily a head taller. She had dark hair and dark eyes and cussed almost as much as I did. I don’t remember where she was from, the midwest, or Ohio, one of the non-accent flyover states. She wore men’s jeans she’d stolen from some skinny sailor. She drank too much and lit one cigarette off the other and was rowdy and loud and I loved her for it because I was rowdy and loud too. My mom would’ve had to bite her tongue when introduced to Lorrie and for a nineteen year old boy living thousands of miles from home that gets written down in the “Pro” column.

I told you before about how for a brief, shining, moment in December of 1997 I had Cathy and Lorrie completely to myself. Our friends all left Oahu for Christmas block leave, but we stayed. I was working half days and house sitting for a buddy and had a truck and they basically moved in with me on the weekends, sleeping in the master bedroom while I crashed on the couch. We went shopping, which is how I know Cathy’s jean size, I was standing right there when she bought them quietly wondering to myself “How the fuck do girl’s have a size zero?” We watched movies and had dinner and on Friday and Saturday nights we’d go dancing. There’s a picture somewhere from this time. Lorrie and Cathy in a shitty Army apartment, arm in arm, smiling for the camera. An ironing board is in the foreground with a new black Stetson they talked me into buying and a half empty bottle of Jack Daniels sitting on it.

It’d make a hell of an album cover.

But I digress.

Friday and Saturday nights we would go dancing at our favorite bar on Pearl Harbor. We’d sit in the back corner, in the shadows of a green and orange neon palm tree. I’d hide a bottle under the front seat of my truck so Lorrie and I could sneak out to the parking lot and keep our buzz going and Cathy would inevitably drive, first to breakfast, and then “home.” In between I’d sit leaned against the dance floor railing and watch as they line danced, or as they cha-cha’d together to some early Maverick’s tune and I’d dance with each of them in turn when they had no other offers, holding Lorrie as tightly as I thought I could get away with while for some reason keeping enough space for the Holy Spirit between myself and Cathy.

Growing up devout Southern Baptist I was no dancer. I’d only learned a few months previously, and then from a Japanese girl that my room mate Daryl was dating and her Australian friend. I never quite learned the steps to line dance, choosing instead to adopt the mantra “line dancing is a spectator sport” and mocking anyone, or at least any dude, who did as a “fucking sailor.” I never quite mastered the cha-cha; it’s too much like a line dance. I could fake my way through a fast two step and anyone can fake their way through a slow one. I was no Fred Astair.

But there was something about three quarter time. Maybe it’s the little hint of Cajun blood on my mother’s side. Maybe it’s being born in Louisiana with “La Jolie Blond.” Maybe it’s growing up with my Granny playing me Ernest Tubb’s “Waltz Across Texas” or my Pawpaw turning me on to Waylon Jennings. Whatever the cause there is something in a sad, cowboy, waltz that has always and will always speak to my soul. I didn’t line dance. I could barely cha-cha and trying to swing was genuinely dangerous for everyone involved. I was a mediocre two-stepper but I took to a waltz the second that Japanese girl showed me the basic steps. She and the Australian girl taught me the basics but I mastered it with Lorrie and Cathy, spinning them both around the floor twelve times a night when the DJ played something in three quarter time, taking a break only when they pointed out some other cute girl that they thought I should ask.

I thought I loved Lorrie, but Cathy was the better dancer. Lorrie swung her hips too much. She looked at her feet, lost the rhythm and didn’t like to be lead. Cathy was effortlessly graceful and we worked well together as partners, so much so that for months we’d find each other when longer, uptempo songs like Alabama’s “Dixieland Delight” played. Cathy could handle the tempo change at the end. Lorrie couldn’t. Cathy and I were so compatible as dance partners she once tried and almost succeeded in teaching me a basic swing. If we’d only had a few more weeks….

Each night around midnight the DJ would play a set of rock and roll, pop, and hip-hop tracks and Lorrie and Cathy both would join the crowd of “cowboys” and “cowgirls” grinding on the dance floor. I’d pretend to be disgusted. I’d sneak off to the parking lot for a cigarette and another illicit drink, but when I came back I’d secretly watch them dancing with each other, or I’d tried to hide the jealousy when they danced with some other “cowboy.” I’d watch and force a smile and wait because I knew when that set of pop music was over the DJ would play a set of waltzes.

Every night that set opened with “El Paso” and the dance floor would empty quickly because waltzes just weren't that popular and “El Paso” is a long, fast, song. Most amateur dancers can’t keep up. Lorrie tried occasionally, but she couldn't. Cathy could more than keep up. She made it look easy and made me look graceful and over time "El Paso" became “our” song. Every Saturday and Sunday morning she would meet me on the dance floor. I’d put my right arm around her size zero waist and take her small, soft, right hand in my left and we’d dance to a song about an evil woman, a love struck cowboy, and a murder. One, two, three, one, two, three. Left, right, left. Big step, small, small. At the corners I’d plant one foot and we’d spin around and I’ve never in my life felt more graceful. Sometimes we’d talk. Sometimes we’d sing. Sometimes we’d just dance but even almost thirty years later it is such a shining, comfortable, perfect, five minutes in my memory.

Cathy was so pretty, soft and graceful in those moment that looking back I can’t understand why I didn’t fall for her just a little. I don’t know what chemical compound in my brain made it where I could hold such an angel for four minutes and nineteen seconds and yet be thinking about another girl, but I did. At the end I’d spin Cathy one last time, smile and tip my hat and she’d laugh as she let go of my hand and if I was lucky Lorrie would be waiting. The next song was slower. I could hold her closer. She swung her hips too much. She tried to lead. She stepped on my feet, but she’d lay her head on my shoulder and sometimes she let me sing “Let's Fall to Pieces Together” softly and off key.

After thirty years how it all ended doesn’t matter. Those missed signals, my idiot roommate, Lorrie’s unrequited crush, a strange new soldier, and the United States Army don’t mean a fucking thing because I have this soft, faded, neon lit memory of a near perfect seven and a half minutes.

Yet there was always something that gnawed at me about that time. There was always something that bothered me at the time and later when I thought back to Cathy and Lorrie. I don’t know if it was something in my personality, or a confidence killing bad first girlfriend, or just the nature of being nineteen and horny and away from home but I didn’t think I “deserved” them. Even as an outwardly cocky, swaggering, Infantryman I secretly thought I was beneath Lorrie and Cathy. I wasn’t handsome enough. I wasn’t charming enough. I wasn’t experienced enough. I pined for Lorrie for months but I missed my shot because I couldn’t believe she would want me. I thought of Cathy like a sister, I cherished her friendship, and yet I never said it out loud because I thought for sure she would laugh at me.

And it gnawed at me for a long, long time wondering if they truly ever liked me, even as a friend. I had such a good time and such warm feelings and yet they were always tainted by not knowing. My memories of that time were always clouded by the insecure thought that they couldn’t, wouldn’t have felt the same way about me as I did about them. They had to be taking advantage. They had to be hanging around because I had a car, because I bought drinks, because I had access to an apartment. Why else would they voluntarily spend time with me of all people?

It’s easy, especially in the chaotic and openly misogynist environment of an Infantry barracks to let those insecure thoughts curdle into something foul and mean. There’s always someone, some fucking dude, whispering in your ear about how “they’re just using you bro. Bitches be like that.” It’s as simple as breathing to let that insecurity turn you suspicious and mean. I know I did sometimes. I hope not with Lorrie and Cathy. I feel like I managed to (mostly) dodge that bullet with them but I let it get to me before and after. More than once I let that insecurity snowball into jealous anger that destroyed something that might have been good.

I recognized that insecurity years ago. I learned to keep it under control. I learned to (sometimes) be brave and say what needed to be said. Now I’m middle aged, happily married for longer than I was alive when I knew Lorrie and Cathy. Now they’re just a warm and softly lit memory I have when I think about Hawaii or hear Marty Robbins singing about Rosa, wicked Felina, and a wild young cowboy. But there was always a faint heaviness to the memory, this wondering “what did they really think of me?” Was it all unrequited? Did I read all of this so wrong? Were they playing me like the guys in F Quad would have surely said? That unanswered question tarnished the memory of Lorrie, Cathy, and “El Paso.”

It was only this week as I was trying once again to untangle this wadded mass of nostalgia, longing, long faded memory and unrequited love that I realized the answer was staring me in the eye the entire time and if I’d only been a little bit smarter, if I’d only thought, I would have known. I slept on Cathy’s couch and Lorrie’s floor. I slept on Lorrie’s room mate’s bed while slept just feet away. We were alone in that borrowed apartment. We were alone in my truck. I can name a dozen moments when either Cathy or Lorrie were voluntarily alone with me for hours on end, and sure, we were nineteen and dumb, but neither of the ladies were that fucking dumb. Cathy wasn’t attracted to me I know. Lorrie may have been, that’ll I’ll never know. But neither thought I was a bad guy. They both had to like me. They both had to have a little trust in me. They were comfortable with me. Why else would they voluntarily be alone?

That comfort and trust is little consolation for a horny young man, but looking back with an old man’s eyes it’s flattering. Maybe Cathy didn’t think of me as fondly as I did her. Maybe Lorrie wasn’t attracted to me at all, but they were willing to be alone with me, and I think…I hope…that says a lot about what they thought of me as a person.

And it’s not lost on me, looking back with almost thirty years distance, that when I was at my lowest, when I was hurt, scared, and alone, it was Cathy and our platonic friendship I first thought of.

I wish I knew where that old fucking picture was. I hope both of them, Cathy and Lorrie, have had a good life and are happy. Cathy is still the best dance partner I’ve ever had and I think of her every time I hear “El Paso” and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t hope she did the same.

Trying something different this time because it makes me happy. Instead of one song, how 'bout a playlist of every song mentioned in this piece?