Tuesday, December 09, 2008

The Saga of Vinny and Heather

Ode to Vinny Alleva, formerly of Yates Avenue, Morris Park, the Bronx.

**This is a really long post. I don't expect people to read it and I didn't write it for any purpose other than so I could have it. I'm trying to go back to when this blog was just for me and I didn't think about who might read it and think what from it. So casual reader, please excuse the really long walk into yesterday but I needed to have this somewhere.

I was 13 when I fell in love for the first time. I didn't know at the time it would be something that would play out over 18+ years and end without ending but it did and it was. No one has ever loved me as completely as he did, maybe it set the bar for all the relationships I've had since then and it's a pretty high bar. But I was only 12 when he first came into my life.

Different areas had their own channels on the CB. It was nothing official, just a group of locals would pick a channel and that's where they would all hang out. Where I lived in Westchester County was channel 20. South Mt. Vernon had channel 6 and Morris Park in the Bronx had channel 31.

I would wander the channels when no one was on and I found the Morris Park crew very entertaining. Morris Park back then was the Sopranos before there were Sopranos. Everyone said 'how ya doin?' and it was a very old Italian area. They were fun to listen to and I slowly made my way into their channel. It's hard when you're not right there, people close step on you signal and talk over you but I stuck it out.

The king of the channel and pretty much the whole Morris Park area was a guy named Vinny. Vinny was something of a celebrity in that he was odd. These days he would be quickly spotted as bi-polar but this was the early 80's, they didn't diagnose bi-polar back then.
Vinny was brilliant. He was amazingly sharp and hysterically funny. People gravitated towards him and everyone wanted to be Vinny's goombah. Only problem was, Vinny wouldn't meet people. Vinny was terrified of people and Vinny would get crazy mad when people would go park in front of his house and try to draw him out.

He had a few people he did hang around with, he wasn't a total hermit. There was Mike the Macy's model, he was cocky and confident and everything Vinny wasn't but there were tight and Mike looked after Vinny. Mike and Vinny would go out cruising in Vinny's Stingray and people would go nuts trying to catch them. Vinny was known for his insane driving antics when being chased by CBers.

I spent a year or so talking on channel 31 and getting to know them all and I was fascinated with Vinny. I thought he was 16 and I spent a year or so getting to know him. I looked forward to finishing my homework at night so I could talk to Vinny until it was time to go to bed or until one of the locals stepped over me trying to lure him out. We got close but it was pure. I was too young to push him to come out of the house so I wasn't a threat.

His mind fascinated me, even as young as I was. He was the first complicated and damaged guy I got to know, again I suppose this is where it stems from for me. I credit Riverdale for maturing me at a young age so I was able to keep up with him and he never failed to make me laugh like no one else ever has. He did amazing impressions of people and the things he said were just always on the spot. Even in his manic moments I was able to hang in there, when he was riding the down I listened and when he was riding the up I rode it with him.

When I turned 14 he started coming up around my house. At first he said it was so we could talk without the Vinny hunters talking over me and I was fine with that. He would come up at night and sit on the block behind ours, my bedroom window looked out on that street and I could see his car while I talked to him.
Finally one night I wanted to go outside and meet him but he protested and when I got outside he took off like a bat out of Hell. This became a regular event, Vinny could come up and as soon as I poked my head out, Vinny would take off. I had to explain to my mother who this person was speeding by the house in the blue stingray. It didn't go over well at first but she eventually came to know and even like Vinny.

Somewhere in between the nightly visits things started to get intense. I had my own phone line by then and Vinny would call. I couldn't get him to call often enough but he would call and we would talk all night, sometimes I would talk and talk and go straight to school without sleeping at all. Even John Harper stopped looking so appealing and soon Vinny was everything my 14 year old heart could think about.

When I was 15 I experienced one of his down moments in a pretty messed up way. We were on the phone and I was pestering him pretty hard to stop running and meet me. I even confessed my feelings for him hoping it would sway him. He got real quiet and told me to go away, to hang up the phone and never talk to him again. Not in a mean way, it was more a hopeless way. I got all upset and asked why and first came the confession that he wasn't the 3 years older than me I thought he was, he was in fact 21. I didn't care. He cared, he got even more morose sounding and then he put the phone down for a minute and when he came back he told me in a dead calm monotone voice that if I wouldn't hang up on him and walk away he would take care of the problem for me. He then cut his own neck with a Ginsu knife. Not bad, not even bad enough to go to the hospital but Mike later verified for me that he did in fact have a cut on his neck and he told Mike he did it with a Ginsu knife but didn't tell him why.

He hung up on me after that and it was chilly for a while. He was embarrassed at what had happened and he kept away from me for almost a year. I was still on channel 31 but he wasn't coming around and I was turning 16 and had discovered Rocky Horror so as it goes with 16 year olds, it faded. I wasn't about to sit around pining away for someone who wasn't there, it was just how it was.

He resurfaced in a strong way when I was 17. We had been talking the night before and laughing like the old days and it was good. I remember the next day I was sitting outside at school for lunch with some friends and I saw the Stingray and I knew right away who it was. I didn't go over to it, I pretended I didn't even see it. This went on my whole senior year, he was there almost every day at lunch.

Until the day I DID make the move to go over to the car and in his mad rush to escape me, he hit one of the parked cars. Smash. I could have ended the mystery right there and then as he had to wait for the cops to come and couldn't go flying off had I gone over but I didn't want to win that way. I didn't know he was bi-polar but I knew he was fragile and I wasn't going to take advantage when I knew he had to be already freaked all the way. I also knew it was going around the school that 'that weird dude who watches Heather every day just hit a parked car!' and I didn't want to feed into that so I went to class.

By now it had crossed way over the intense line. He would spend hours on the phone talking about how much he loved me but immediately following it up with 'go away, Heather. Run away and never look back.' He would play 'go away, little girl' on the CB and sing it to me. I could hear the agony in his voice, I knew he wasn't giving me crap and I knew he loved me and I was willing to fight to make it happen.

One Christmas I had Darkstar draw this amazing card for Vinny. It had 'Vinny & Heather' in big fancy letters and the entire card was filled with Christmas stuff. It was the best thing I've ever seen him draw and it was gorgeous. He drew it and inked it and I spent two weeks painstakingly colouring it with pencil. I wrote a long note inside telling him how very much I loved him and how he was in my eyes, my guy. He called me the night he got it and he cried. I cried. It was one of the most bittersweet moments of my life. So close but so impossibly far.

I never wanted anything as much in my entire life as I wanted Vinny. To this day.

18 I got my car and the hunter became the hunted. How many nights Darkstar, Faith Anne and I would go down to the Bronx and spend the night Vinny hunting. If he was home we would sit outside his house and try to cajole him into coming out and then we'd go hang out with the rest of the Morris Park crew. If he was out he would toy with us, it was cat and mouse. He knew there was no way I could catch him in his Firebird and me in my LeSabre Limited. He was really good at it too, many times he would stop right in front of my car. His windows were tinted dark so I could never see in but it was electrifying standing there knowing Vinny was 10 feet away from me. But every time I would make the move he'd be off like lightning.

Michael came into my life then and while Vinny was always there, Michael was Michael and there weren't many who could have kept me from Michael. Michael was Robert Chambers with a Fiat and Michael was equally as difficult and challenging as Vinny in a lot of ways minus the bi-polar factor.
We would still go down to the Bronx to hang out though and chase Vinny at every chance. I was the only one Vinny cried to when the downs hit and I made it a point to always be there when he needed me no matter what I was doing. He would still come up and sit outside the house and one day he actually stayed still and talked to my mother. My mother.

That blew a large hole in my reality and lit the whole Vinny fire with a passion. He wouldn't meet me but he would stand there and talk to my MOTHER? I didn't even quiz her on what he looked like, it didn't matter. I was deeply in love with Vinny and he could have looked like Quasimodo and I wouldn't have cared.
I would spend hours picking out the most seductive outfits I had with the highest heels I could walk in just so Faith Anne and I could go down to Morris Park and Vinny hunt. Yah, I made a lot of really good friends in the process down there but it's funny to remember the nights where the high point of the night was standing outside Vinny's window in his driveway talking to him and trying to lure him out with tits and ass. Never worked but I loved trying.

This went on and on through my early and mid 20's, in between Michael and Jerry and too many drunken sucky face nights with too many different men there was always Vinny. I think somewhere along the way I accepted I would never meet Vinny, would never be able to hug Vinny. The Vinny and Heather saga became something akin to a tragic romance, the perfect couple meant to be together but kept apart by one person's tragic flaw. It was romantic and sad and the stuff romance novels are made of and I was okay with that. As long as I could have Vinny in my life I was fine, even if it was on his terms.

Vinny disappeared for a while and no one had heard from him and Mike wasn't talking. I found out months later when he called me out of the blue that he had had a breakdown and had been put in the hospital and kept there for a short bit. They had him on some sort of pills and while he sounded humiliated and beat down, he was Vinny. Hearing his voice made me realise how much I missed him and finding out where he had been upset me.

We started talking regularly again and soon he was back up at the house, parked outside and willing to talk to my mother but still not me.

One night after closing the bar at 4AM I had 3 people with me and no one was ready to go home. I had Darkstar, Randi and Marie with me so we decided to take a cruise to Morris Park and see what Vinny was up to. It was Summer, someone would be out still. So down we went down and his car was gone from the driveway. I talked them into agreeing to park for a little while and see if he came home. I figured I would stand there in the middle of the street and maybe he wouldn't run right away.

I let the world know we were down there on the CB and we settled in and lit up a joint. Didn't take long before there he was in the black Firebird, idling 10 feet in front of us. I told them 'let's see how fast he goes' and I got out of the car.

And he didn't take off.

It was the slowest 10 feet I ever walked, I would take a step and wait for him to take off but he stayed still. It was finally time. Over a decade later and it was finally time.

I was shaking like a leaf and more nervous than I had ever been when I got to the door of the car. I felt suddenly shy and terrified and the rush of emotions that went through me nearly knocked me dizzy. But I managed to open the door and there he was.

Vinny. In the flesh.

I looked back at my car and saw three shocked faces staring at us and I got in the car and for the first time was able to look Vinny dead in the eyes.
I was butter. Melted instantly.

He wasn't the best looking man I had ever seen but he was Vinny and what I saw in his eyes was all I needed to see (and the sound we make together, is the music to the story in your eyes). I managed to choke out 'hello' and we were off.

It was awkward at first. So much history between us and so much raw emotion put out over the phone and on pen and paper. There was a tense silence for a little bit but I broke it. It hit me that I was sitting in the car with Vinny and I deeply loved him.

Once the conversation started it took off. I witnessed firsthand the manic high and then the drop but I didn't know, I thought it was just Vinny.

There was this thing he used to do that used to amuse everyone to no end. He would take a phrase like 'take it in the ass' and say it all like one word at the end of a normal sentence and people would totally miss it. He was frighteningly good at it, it's hard to explain but it was funny as hell. We stopped for gas and as he was thanking the guy for the gas he threw in 'thank you, have a good night takeitintheass' and the guy give him a big clueless smile and thanked him. I was in awe, he could have asked me to marry him right there and I would have jumped on it.

We parked by the water and sat there talking. He looked terrified and it was hard for him to look me in the eyes. He told me he wanted to play a song for me and I better not laugh because it was kind of a lame song but he wanted me to have it. The song was 'How Can You Mend a Broken Heart" by the Bee Gees and he sang it flawlessly and for those minutes he was able to look me in the eyes.

I could hardly breathe, it was possibly the most intense few moments of my life. I felt the tears come out of my eyes and I reached over and took his hand. He cringed at first, flinched like my hands were made of acid but I didn't let go. I just kept repeating his name and I put his hand to my face and held it there. If there does exist magic in the world, it was there in that Firebird on that night.

We talked for hours. We sat on the hood of the car and watched the sun come up over the water, I had to take his arm and put it around me and he was so terrified he was shaking. I don't think I've ever felt so cared for. I could have sat there all day with him but somewhere around 8 we decided to go rescue the people in my car. I actually thought Darkstar would have just taken the car and gone home but they were still there and had had a rather comical run in with a cop who wanted to know why 3 people were sleeping in a car on the street.

I went home in a fog. It had been everything I had dreamed about and every fantasy I had ever had and I knew in my heart it was meant to be but it would never be. I knew that as up as I felt that morning there would be a shattering down coming soon.

I wish I could say we worked out. I wish I could say we tried and did our best but didn't work out. I wish I could say anything happened after that but it didn't. We spent a few more nights together but the night he gave me "Separate Ways" by Journey I knew he was giving in to his demons and I was losing. I spent a week locked in my room playing "Midnight" by Louise Tucker and crying and scaring my mother. I still can't listen to "Midnight" without thinking of Vinny and getting a little choked up.

I froze him out, I had to. It was the only way I could get past it and get past my feelings. I couldn't talk to him, I couldn't be there for him, I couldn't see him. It was so hard and so painful, I've never hurt like that ever again. It took a long long time and the arrival of Dr. Frank McCluskey in my life to ease the hurt but eventually it lessened.

I lost track of Vinny, a few years back I sent him a Christmas card and it came back with 'he doesn't live here anymore' written across it. I don't know if he's alive or dead, happy or sad and whether he finally let someone love him, let someone completely inside his head. I hope he did, he was truly the most intense and wondrous person I have ever known.

I guess he really did set the bar, it's been a lifelong string of complicated men and complicated relationships and seeking out these complications. I've met some fascinating people and I owe that to Vinny, he was the first one to teach me to look to the inside and work there first. Some people would say I've lost out since I'm not married yet but I'm happy. I could have been married, I opted out of that and I've shied away from quite a few relationships over the years. I love figuring out the complicated and if you can get inside the walls there is usually a wonder waiting for you.

I don't think anyone to this day has ever loved me as completely or as purely as Vinny did.

And that's the saga of Vinny and Heather!

"Do you remember me
On a street of dreams,
Running through my memory
On the street of dreams
You're in every face I see
On the street of dreams"

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