A Good Man Is Hard To Find-With Blues Singer Alberta Hunter In Mind   

 

 

 

From The Pen Of Bart Webber 

Josie Davis had to admit, had to finally admit, that she never had much luck with men, never had much luck at all as she sat there in her bedroom cleaning out the stuff he had left behind, the stuff that would have tied him down as he fled the scene. It was not as though she had started out life with man trouble, certainly in high school and a little in big amorphous college at Wisconsin she had had her pick of good guys, guys who brought gifts, guys who didn’t mind picking up the check although that trend was going out of fashion a few years back in the 1960s before women were expected as part of their liberation to pick up previously male dinner bills. Guys who made her laugh, guys who provided her with dope for a good time, guys who knew more than her in the sex department and she a quick learner that way caught on fast.

But it seemed that once she left Madison the male hunters always turned out to be less than they looked like, a lot less when it came right down to it. She knew she had never been a great beauty although guys who wanted to get next to her would flower her with such praise, knew though that what one guy, Max, sweet old Max from Sociology 101 class she wondered where he was now having dropped out of school to go “find himself,” called her, fetching, meant that her prettiness, smarts and pleasing personality meant that she would not have to spent too many lonely nights by some midnight telephone. But her run of luck seemed to sour out of the friendly confines of some campus, soured when she came to Boston to make her mark in the world, the world of sociology where she would begin her advanced degree programs, including a nice stipend as an intern (along with the inevitable family treasury back in Manhattan supplementing that nice stipend, nice as far as academic stipends went, which would not pay for extras like clothes, trips home and away, and that car that she just absolutely needed to get to her clinical sites.

Take Jack Donovan, an Irishman who had only been in the country for a few years when she, curious about the night life in Boston ran into him at the Plough and Stars in Cambridge a favorite watering hole for the ex-pat Irish fleeing the turmoils in the old country. She, a Jewish girl from Manhattan via Hunter College High School, had fled that overwhelmingly sad city for Madison and now Boston, had been intrigued by his accent and by his winsome manner and although she knew nothing about his Irish heritage having been immersed in finding her own Jewish identity of late she had decided to take the ride, decided to see where things would lead. And for a while they were great, a few months of going out several nights a week to the Plough or some other Cambridge bar, lots of laughs and lots of singing, good times and pretty good sex.

 

Then the other shoe kind of dropped which Josie, the queen of sociology and so supposed to know something of human nature in the raw should have seen it coming, he lost his job down at the docks where he had been an alternate (a B-man he called it) but there had been plenty of work which suddenly dried up and he began to drink more heavily, lost his room on Beacon Hill and moved in with her. Got more morose as he could not find work, working class job work since he had left Cork without a diploma. Then the beatings started, at first just a belt to the shoulder or someplace soft and hidden but it hurt and she thought it was just his frustrations a not having a job and basically living off a woman although he never articulated that way. Then he belted her in the eye and she had had to stay in the house for a few days while the swelling went down and she was embarrassed when she went back to work and her girlfriends quizzed her about the residue black and blue around her eye and of course she lied, lied and said she had hit her eye on the eternal door. Said to herself that he hadn’t meant it, hadn’t been himself and for that one forlorn minute asked herself what would she do without him, how before he had loved her so. One night in a rage, loaded to the gills, smelling of vomit and whiskey he pummeled her which required her to go the hospital where she had to make a report, a police report, and while she did not want to be the reason Jack went to jail (and would later be deported after building a criminal record) she had no choice, she did not want to go on that way, for love or not.             

 

Josie was shy around men for a while, didn’t want to get involved, hell, afraid to get involved after the Jack incidents but she like a lot of people needed intimate relations with a man and so one day her friend Susie (one of the voices she listened to when deciding that Jack would wind up a bum and who knows what would have happened to her) introduced her to a guy whom she had known back in college at New York University, Jeff Goldman, whom she hit it off with right away since they had cultural, ethnic and musical interests in common. Jeff had told her from the beginning that he lived on Long Island and so would only be able to see her when he came to town on business, or when he decided to take her on some whirlwind weekend in some secluded resort where they would have a great time. She really did think that she was onto a guy who would treat her right, 100% right. Then the other shoe dropped, again. Jeff started making excuses for why he couldn’t see her, said he had business in Chicago, was making deals that required his serious time just then. When he called from Chicago or Los Angeles Josie would hear muted voices in the background and at first did not think anything of it but after three consecutive brush-off weekends she started to think he was having an affair with another woman and that she had better head for cover. She did not know how right she was when Jeff did finally come by to see her and after they had made love she and he had fallen asleep she fished through his wallet and found a photograph of his wife and two children smiling in front of their large Long Island home. Adieu, Jeff.            

 

During Josie’s studies she had worked as an intern at Harvard University for the famous Doctor Samuel Potter, academically famous anyway, who was the king hell king of the latest trends in sociology. He had never paid much attention to her since he was bedding Susie, another intern, Josie’s closest friend in Boston and was preoccupied with that hellion (Susie’s term about herself) until either he broke it off or Susie sensing that he was smoking way to much dope, doing too many lines of cocaine the new drug of choice among hipsters around Cambridge saw the writing on the wall but he then honed in on Josie. (Later Susie confided in Josie that it was because the dope was making him a lousy lover and she began seeing an old boyfriend again who could deal with her urges.) Josie was betwixt and between about Sam because she really was ready to be off men for a while, wanted to get that dissertation she was about half way through done but he began to make it clear that she had better pay attention to him if she wanted any kind of career in the profession. This in the days before such behavior against female subordinates would have had said professor in front of a very big carpet complete with rack, and maybe a noose. So she dabbled with the good professor, took his threats seriously until one day after she had not seen him for a week Susie called and told her on the QT that Professor Potter had flipped out on some hell-bent mixture of dope and hubris and  had been checked into posh McClean’s Hospital in Belmont until further notice. Josie’s reaction, after all that had happened to her, was that felt sorry for him, hoped things worked out. (They didn’t as the family held him in seclusion for a number of years afterward and Josie was not quite sure what had become of him except that he was no longer the king hell king of the latest trends in sociology.)           

 

A half a dozen years later now safely in the profession, now with the name doctor in front of her name and after having at most had a few dates with men, nothing substantial, nothing that would have led anywhere she met the human dynamo, Peter Grogan, a financier he called himself when she had met him at Jack’s where she occasionally stopped for a solo bar stool drink before heading home. That dynamo part was right since he swept her off of her feet with the force of his personality. Maybe it was just her time to get back in the ring but she fell hard for him like some drunken sailor. Here’s where things went awry though Peter kept insisting that he could set her up with a nice institute, a place where she could do all the research she wanted. He just needed some dough to tide him over on a deal and could she lend him some thousands to close the deal. She, the fool, took his words as good coin and lent the bum the dough. And lent more money a couple more times until her account and stocks were almost depleted. Then she was away at a conference in San Francisco and let Peter use her place while she was gone, for a business deal he said which couldn’t be concluded at his office, or his home. When she came back from Frisco the whole place had been denuded of every saleable item, and too boot Peter had tried to sell the condo she owned to some poor snook who gave him a $5000 down payment. When they caught up with Peter in Rhode Island it turned out the only financing he was doing was financing various losing horses at local race tracks with whoever’s money he could grab (well over a quarter million dollars at least from those who were not too embarrassed to keep quiet about their loses).      

 

Yeah, Josie sighed as she bundled up Peter’s debris to be thrown away in the garbage with her love, a good man is hard to find, very hard to find.