I am reading several books related to my past. One was a book about the work of my old friend, the civil rights lawyer, Mark Satter, written by his daughter, Beryl, a Guggenheim fellow and history teacher at Rutgers. It is Family Properties: How the Struggle Over Race and Real Estate Transformed Chicago and Urban America. And the other was written by Felicia Trujillo, the half sister of Steve Newberry, a close friend to Jay and me in the early years of our marriage.

The book Felicia wrote was about her family, in specific, their mother, Claire Turlay Newberry, honored writer and illustrator of cats, and several books which were best sellers. Steve, unfortunately, felt abandoned by his mother when she left him with relatives to pursue her work and new domestic arrangements.. That pain followed him to the end of his life. You can Google Claire’s cat drawings. They are truly wonderful.

One day, overwhelmed with a moribund social life (I lived in a bad neighborhood – I loved it, but there weren’t any possibles) and knowing that my unrequited crush on Mark would never go anywhere, I made the giant leap and moved from Chicago to New York City, where I had several friends, gained through involvement in the sci fi community. I rented an apartment in the Village, in the Italian section, a 6th fl. walk-up, but couldn’t yet move in and was staying at a hotel for women in the East 60s, so remote, you had to take lunch when you walked to the bus stop. Very 1890s that place was. They locked the street door at 11 p.m. and ringing the doorbell woke up the whole building, you slut.

Marty Greenberg, Publisher of Gnome Press, whom I had met at a small convention near Chicago, invited me to a Hydra meeting, the legendary Hydra Club, that met monthly at various apartments. And there I met Jay. All the greats, when they were in New York, would come to Hydra if it was meeting. With the death recently of Harlan Ellison, I appear to be the last survivor of Hydra, unless you include, Fruma, the widow of Phil Klass (William Tenn). But she was not accepting of Phil’s sci fi friends, so that inclusion is iffy. Incidentally, Fruma so resented his sci fi social life, that she whisked him away to a professorship in another state, and never responded when I sent her my condolences when he died. She considered herself too special to relate. I consider her a porky intellectual who probably never, ever went down on anybody. I hope she Googles her name and this blog comes up: Fruma Klass, world class elitist, very full of herself indeed, because, you know, “I AM AN ACADEMIC.” Vomit.

At the Hydra when Jay and I met, I sat on the floor. It was a small apartment. Jay was sitting on the sofa, I grabbed a space next to his legs. He reached down and cupped my cheek and I fell in love. He asked me out. We met the next day. He took me on a round trip on the Staten Island Ferry. We shopped for dinner, he broiled a steak, cooked lima beans, served red wine. I spent the night, I spent the week, I picked up my things from the hotel, I gave up the apartment. Jay and I were married two months later on New Year’s Eve, 1956.

We traveled to Chicago so he could meet my parents. I took him to meet Mark. In the years that followed, I would phone Mark and bring him up to date. One day I phoned and the person who answered was clearing out his office. Mark had a heart condition, had had open heart surgery at the Mayo Clinic, had died of complications. He was in his early 40s. I lost Jay 36 years later, a memory destroying illness that was never strong enough to break our connection. He didn’t forget because I was always there.

One night, having helped Jay reclaim his cluttered apartment from unrelenting hoarding, we hosted a Hydra meeting. Everyone came, agog to see the apartment no one had ever been allowed to see. Mary Sillers, a tall, beautiful Texan, living in New York, teaching 1st grade, hoping for a career as a singer, was dating a blonde something (she confided, their relationship was awkward because he considered himself more attractive and was always preening in front of a mirror), who had been invited to Hydra and he brought Mary. We introduced her to Steve. They began to see each other. Mary and I had formed a connection. She told me she knew Steve was serious when he pounded a nail into her kitchen wall and hung his dental floss on it.

She and I remained close until her untimely death, at 30 (we were the same age) from a late diagnosis of a melanoma. I used to dream that I was trying to save her. Her photo is on my piano. I have never forgotten her, my beautiful, very special Mary. The night she died, I briefly lost touch with the world. Nothing seemed real. I couldn’t listen to classical music, because it was too emotional. So I put the radio on to the most awful pop crap I could fine. This, I told myself, was reality. And I needed reality. Steve came over, crashed at our place overnight. Said he had to get away, so he decided to go to Sweden to study math. Steve, not ever one to take an easy path, chose a difficult subject in a country where he did not know the language. Being a guy, I think he was also looking for a tall, blonde lovely to distract him from grief.

When Steve got back to the U.S., he settled in California. He became close to a right-wing activist, who, somehow managed to turn him into a conservative and abandon his liberal youth. I never figured that one out. But we corresponded through e mail. Then he developed Alzheimers and our connection gradually waned and then he died.

Now in my sere and violet, I look back on life and realize it has been an interesting ride, and I have been lucky or serenditpity has been lurking in my karma. Definition, serendipity: the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way. This is my word. I claim it. Go get your own word.

xx, Teal