How All My Attempts to Impress A Girl Went In Vain

Never listen to rock and roll lyrics

I did everything to impress women — except to speak to them. Between the ages of 3 and 24, I was a disaster with women. Why should such disasters still haunt me at 54?

One lass lived around the corner. Let’s call her Juliet. What was it about her? As an immature, pimply adolescent, was it more “Jordache” than Inner Light?

Her long curly brown reminded me of Yeats’ I am looped in the loops of her hair. Back then, Irish poets eluded me. Juliet was at my bus stop. She appeared just moments before the bus materialized. Even if I wanted to speak, there wasn’t time.

How could she notice me? How about wearing a different Led Zeppelin shirt every day?

Whole Lotta Love

One day, I was jamming to “Whole Lotta Love.” My younger brother and sister had barricaded themselves in their room, studying, of course, but I rocked. Because I could die at any moment, rocking was always the best option.

Even though I would eventually love reading and writing, studying still has to be the worst. I ruled with the Hammer of the Gods, spreading the Gospel of Zeppelin. Through the blinds, I would catch Juliet walking her football of a dog. I opened the windows and crooned: “Way down inside, honey, you and me. I’m gonna give you my love. I’m gonna give you my love.”

Did such words work with women? Have women studied these lyrics? I can’t even imagine this working with Mary Jane — my wife. Okay — she’s brushing her teeth or stirring the sauce, and here I come, singing The Doors,” “Come on, come one, come on, come one and touch me, babe!”

And yet, there I was: singing the sickness of uncontrollable male urges to a woman I didn’t even know.

Oh, Youth! Oh, Pre#MeToo

I soon realized Juliet walked her dog at the same time every day. Would she hear The Good News? I plugged in my amp and practiced the Jimmy Page riff over and over. The windows vibrated. The walls vibrated. I vibrated. I was my own electrified dildo.

My sister, irritated, said it was too loud. “I’m going to tell Mommy on you when she gets home!” Time and again, she threatened this. But every time I sang, Juliet — not my sister — didn’t even turn her head to hear the music.

A dude who possessed skills in romance, say Lord Byron, would have called out the dog’s name and offered doggy treats. “What music do you fancy, Juliet?” Such tips never dawn on me! I too self-obsessed! Did I lack empathy? Did I have no guide besides Robert Plant and Roger Daltrey? Crazy. Aye, mates.

Her Jordache could have launched a thousand riffs, but it didn’t matter. Everything would have required speaking to a woman. What else could be done?

Can I Stand Next to Your Fire?

Since Juliet was a cheerleader, she probably fancied the athletic type. So I started jogging, at least past her house. Then I’d walk around the block. Two houses away, I would race past her house and then slow down to catch my breath. I’d then stroll around the block, recovering. Ten times I did this. It took an hour — impressive use of time — and a splendid way to avoid study.

I promised myself if she was outside, I would stop, take a breath, and ask her for some water. One day she did see me, but I ran even faster. Would she ever consider for such a freak of fitness I was rather chubby?

I soon gave up “jogging” and tried out for basketball. During my freshman year, I could become a real jock. But my sneakers (bobos from Two Guys) were coming apart. The rubber sole ripped from the canvas — like my soul. My foot slipped out constantly — like my heart, mates.

When I would pivot, essential word, pivot, in basketball, half my foot slid onto the court. I ran, but the slap slap slap slap on the court made the coach take notice. “What’s the noise?”

“Oh, that’s just Bowne,” my friend told him.

“Bobos, they make your feet feel fine. Bobos, they cost a dollar ninety-nine.”

I didn’t make the team. I wasn’t a bad shot. It was just an unfair competition. All the rich Voorhees studs had fully attached sneakers. A kid named Joe teased me for wearing bobos. My mom finally consented to buy canvas Nikes. I felt like a god! Oh, what a day that was! Glorious!

Did I mention we didn’t really have a lot of money? The divorce was tough. Who was there to teach me about women and dating? No one. Just my Toxic Male Rock Gods and my imagination of Jimi Hendrix making love to his smoking guitar while imploring, “Can I stand next to your fire?”

A Toxic Sex Pool of Sludge

If I couldn’t impress with being a jock, how about a scholar? What would make the Juliets realize I could be a decent earner?

I started carrying around a Merck Manual, studying to be a doctor, okay — a gynecologist. That’s God’s honest truth. If I had never seen a woman naked, except for the Playboys I stole from my dad’s bottom drawer under his socks, and that’s what I wanted, what better profession?

A boy’s mind in 9th grade is a toxic sex pool of sludge. Do women even realize the depths of the sludge of these hormones?

And what a terrible thing, really, because what female would respect and desire such a jerk? And after seeing so many naked women all day, wouldn’t anybody after work seem like — just meat not consigned to a soul?

Again, this was all in the past. I did sign up for anatomy and then genetics. I had no aptitude or success in math or science or studying. Again, this involved a lot of studying, and yet the powers that be, allowed me to sign up willy-nilly.

Anatomy & Literature

206 bones. That’s the only thing I recall about anatomy. And that D. How did I pull that off?

But in biology, I discovered I was a good writer. No to sports. No to medicine. But yes to literature? That didn’t require any studying. Just effort and a Muse. Miss Moyer had us write an obituary. In mine, I was known for amazing children, an amazing wife, and a prize for literature for the novel The Devil’s Calling.

Would the girls be impressed with my novel about a dystopian futuristic Soviet Union that used artificial genetic engineering to create a master race?

Hey, it took place on a Soviet space station and it involved the volatile passions of an ethical scientist named John Lennov, ok, John Lennon, who fell in love with the wanton super-sexy Soviet dissident Syria Johansen who was trying to overthrow the corrupt Moscow government. She was a scientist and a rebel and a kickass who liked black knickers and black lace.

Again I was in 9th grade. Not too original as far as the black lace.

Alas, Juliet was no lover of literature. With her as my muse, I turned to composing songs like my Rock Gods. If I couldn’t speak to her, I could sing for her! I was the sexy vocalist in this band with my cousin and brother called Molehill Man in the Two Aces.

Let Me Feel You

If The Who could write a hit called “Squeeze Box” about women’s breasts, I would write one called “Let Me Feel You.” With an open shirt, I pranced around like a juvenile Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin. I would disrobe during the concert, enticing my grandmother, my aunts, and nieces and nephews and uncles and young cousins with my fourteen-year-old bod.

“Let Me Feel You” had to be censored and edited by my mom’s boyfriend Ron, a feminist. What would mortify anyone about dancing half-naked with my mother’s pantyhose over my head, screaming about sleeping with some chick? What was the problem with the lines, “Come on baby we’ll take off our clothes, and kiss kiss kiss to the night is dead”?

Even then, I was fighting the Man. The song had to changed to “Let Me Touch You.”

Now I know how The Doors and The Rolling Stones felt on Ed Sullivan. Why could the Rock Gods get away with so much more? I wanted to spend the night together and touch someone’s fire, but when? When? When?

After so much bad fortune, I wrote my masterpiece, “You Make Me Barf.” It was a fusion of Green Day and Beastie Boys, long before those bands existed.

It was a basic two-chord punk riff —

“You think you’re so good-looking! You think you’re really cooking! You think you’re something else? Well, baby, I got news for you: YOU MAKE ME BARF!”

Alas, my pursuit of Juliet ended, but others began: long, ignoble crusades of other Gatsby-like “Golden Girls,” all with much horror and comedy and tragedy, tears and drama, just the way I wanted it to write about it later.

That was my script until I met Mary Jane at a dance on Boathouse Row in Philly. We met on April 2, 1994. We were married on June 10, 1995.

Now I’ve had the joy of “Spending the Night Together” for twenty-eight years. But Pete Townsend is full of shit: “Squeeze Box” is a lie.

Kids, never listen to rock lyrics.

Thank you for reading. More from Walter Bowne on The Masterpiece: