From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin-With The Rolling Stones’ “Back Street Girl” In Mind

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Rolling Stones performing Back Street Girl.

Backstreet Girl Lyrics-The Rolling Stones

I don't want you to be high
I don't want you to be down
Don't want to tell you no lie
Just want you to be around

Please come right up to my ears
You will be able to hear what I say

Don't want you out in my world
Just you be my backstreet girl

Please don't be part of my life
Please keep yourself to yourself
Please don't you bother my wife
That way you won't get no hell

Don't try to ride on my horse
You're rather common and coarse anyway

Don't want you out in my world
Just you be my backstreet girl

Please don't you call me at home
Please don't come knocking at night
Please never ring on the phone
Your manners are never quite right

Please take the favors I grant
Curtsy and look nonchalant, just for me

Don't want you part of my world
Just you be my backstreet girl

*********
He, well, he was just starting to gate crash the world. He, see, he had just “discovered,” if that is the right word, a way to connect all the dots and cross all the T’s in the internet world and place that savory information in one location with one click and so the dweebs and nerds of Silicon Valley were all a-flutter, and delighted to welcome him into their bright new cyberspace world. After years of work he had finally found backing back East, back in Boston, from a couple of goof ball (their designation of themselves but he learned, learned the hard way that term fit) venture capitalists and a trust fund baby who had listen to what he presented and bought into his ideas enough to leave him freed-up with some dough to bring the damn thing (his expression on certain days) to fruition.

Strange he had not started with any intention, inclination or desire to work in the meta-technological field. Hell, he had barely finished high school, North Adamsville High School in one of those old-time inner suburban working class towns just outside of Boston, and had worked as a night janitor in more locations than he wanted to admit to have the time to work on his gismo ideas and be at peace with himself. A couple of time he had wanted to throw in the towel figuring that even if he did succeed in connecting dots and crossing T’s that someone else would have jump-started him and that would be that. Another loser in the hard-pressed world of self-invention.

But then Verna came along, Verna of the seven veils he called her jokingly. One night he had been down on his invention luck and decided to accept an invitation from a friend to date a friend of his date. And that turned out to be Verna. Verna who worked at Thelma’s Beauty Parlor over in East Adamsville along with that friend’s date as a hair stylist, coloring a specialty, she proudly proclaimed when he met her that first night. However, as she also told him that first date to make sure things were straight between them, she had previously before the place was raided and she was taken into custody for some foolish solicitation charge, been a bump and grind dancer at Happy Hour Harry’s over in Centerville. Her act has involved various combinations of veils and no veils as the spirit moved her and hence the joke between them.

He, despite her apparent attempts to throw him off the track with her candor, or at least throw some cold water on his intentions toward her, was kind of smitten with her from the first. What sealed that emotion was an unintended result of that first date; a trip to the Poorboy’s Bowling over n North Adamsville near the beach, when she proved to be the better bowler of the pair. See he loved bowling and had since those early days when his parents first took him to Poorboy’s so she was aces when she proved to be an above average bowler. Yes, he was, and he told her that while they were both being more candid that first night than most married couples after five or ten years, just a simple guy, a guy who knew his roots, and knew his simple pleasures when he was knee-deep, heck, neck-deep in some gismo ides to connect things. And that is where the problems between he and Verna came in.

He was never sure of Verna’s intentions, or her smitten-ness with him (his word), as she was pretty closed mouth about that kind of stuff, despite her personal history candor, so they just drifted along together. Going bowling, eating at Jimmy Jack’s Diner in downtown Adamsville once in a while, having a few drinks and some laughs at Happy Hour Harry’s now that she was a paying customer. Maybe sneaking in a show, complete with popcorn. All the stuff that was probably hard-wired into them both at birth.

Then a couple of years into their drifting along together he gate -crashed the
world for real. Microchip, the big semi-conductor company, bought his patent for seven figures and hired him on as a consultant at six to bring the thing to the world. Of course that required suits and ties, required cocktail hours, required power point presentations in outer California, required, well, just required him to change his whole world basically.

And aiding and abetting that change was one trust fund baby, Lorna, Lorna Sweeney, the heir to the Sweeney chemical fortune, who not only put some dough in his lap to bring in his project but had “decided” (that is the way she put it to her girlfriends at lunch one day) to take dead aim at him as a “colorful” (her term) guy, a real guy in a world of dweebs and con artists. Truth be told he was more than a little willing to be that colorful guy once he and Lorna started to be in the same place more often.

But only a little, as he related to Verna later. Verna refused, and she would have done so categorically if she has thought of the term, to enter into the met-technological world with him. She hated beyond words the one party that she went to with him out in California and could care less about going to such affairs in Boston and New York. So he and Lorna had a million chances get close with Verna’s unknown blessing. Here is the strange part though one night, one night when the weather was too bad to go out bowling and they were stuck in his apartment, they reached an understanding. Or rather Verna laid it out for him, take it or leave it. In Boston she was the queen bee (her term). Elsewhere he was on his own as long as she didn’t hear about it. A lot of guys (hell, a lot of gals) would give their right arms, their first born, their entire fortune for such a deal. Last I heard he and Verna were still drifting along under that sign, that back street sign