ACHY BREAKY HEART
Don’t tell my heart, my achy breaky heart, I just don’t think he’ll understand. —Billy Ray Cyrus
About three months before my enlistment expired, I met Sylvia. To be honest, she was actually the deciding factor in my decision to leave the navy.
She was from Switzerland, working as a nanny for a wealthy San Francisco family. She was basically a plain Jane, as far as looks, but she had a nice figure, an attractive smile, a bubbly personality, and a charming European accent. She had me the first time she smiled and said “hello, is it me you are looking for?”
It didn’t take long before she had me wrapped around her little finger.
She was six years older than I, a very independent woman, and much more mature than anyone I had met. She became my first real girlfriend and, of course, I fell for her like a child.
I had always thought I would return to Missouri after my enlistment. I found myself seeking a job in the Bay area in order to be with her. She was a dream that had come true, someone with whom I could envision spending the rest of my life with. Unfortunately for me, however, she saw our relationship totally different.
Six months into our relationship, she informed me that her visa had expired and she had to return to Switzerland. Now, here's the kicker. She wouldn’t be coming back. It was sayounara and I won’t be seeing you anymore. I was devastated, to say the least.
She had been gone only a few weeks before I realized that I couldn’t live without her. It had to be true love. Surely she was missing me too. I quit my job, sold everything but my clothes, packed my bags, and took off after my heart's desire. It was a one-way ticket through the love tunnel.
Stupid is as stupid does.
Hey, give me a break. I was in love.
When I arrived in Zurich, Switzerland, I called and told her I had come to fulfill our (my) dream. She was surprised and shocked that I had traveled there to proclaim such a thing. However, she agreed to meet with me, once I arrived in her hometown of Lucerne. This was in September and it was starting to get cold, but the weather wasn't nearly as cold as she would be toward me when I finally arrived.
In the nicest and most polite way possible, she basically told me that my dream was her nightmare and I should head on back home.
Now how could that be?
She told me it would be in my best interest to forget her and hightail it back to the States. She confessed to be in love with a married man and to be his mistress. She had taken the nanny job in the States to reevaluate her feelings toward him, but discovered she couldn’t shake the love she felt for him. He was the real reason she had returned to Switzerland.
Now she tells me?
Man, rejection by my heart’s desire and one true love was a hard pill to swallow.
My heart ached so much that I got sick to my stomach and puked all over her floor. That made the situation even more painful and embarrassing. I had a hard time keeping anything down for the next few days. Sometimes love don’t feel like it should. My only option was to swallow my pride, tuck my tail between my legs, and start the long, lonely, and sad journey home.
You can tell the world you never was my girl. You can burn my clothes when I’m gone or you can tell your friends just what a fool I’ve been and laugh and joke about me on the phone. But don’t tell my heart, my achy breaky heart. I just don’t think he’ll understand...
I travelled to Luxemburg by train, then caught a plane to Greenland, and flew on to New York City. I had just enough money left in my pocket for a bus ticket to the heartland.
The Comeback Kid would be needing a remedy for his achy breaky heart.
Little did I know that the abductors had a cure in store for me.
KANSAS CITY
I'm going to Kansas City, Kansas City here I come. They got a crazy way of loving there and I'm gonna get me some. —Wilbert Harrison
When I arrived in Kansas City, brokenhearted and with no coins to speak of, it was my birth mom who would come to my aid. She and I had been exchanging letters during my navy stint. It turned out to be a great opportunity to get to know her and my half brother Mike, from whom Dad had so adamantly shielded me in my youth. I found out that she was not such a bad witch after all. But my brother was another story.
I stayed with birth mom and her husband until she arranged a job for me with TWA. Through a friend, she had also arranged a job for Mike a few months earlier.
After talking with Mom and doing the math, I discovered that Mike had been born one month before my oldest sister Sandy. Dear ole Dad had one in the hangar at the same time as evil ole Mom. What was good for the goose, wasn’t good for the gander.
When Dad discovered that I was seeing my birth mother, he refused to speak to me, a stipulation that lasted until his first grandchild was born, two years later.
It didn’t take long for me to call my birth mother Mom, even though I wasn't really comfortable saying it. I soon got to know her side of my family, a part of my family that I had never known existed before.
Mike and I were soon able to share an apartment together. He was thrilled to death to have a brother too, as he had been raised an only child.
At our age, the only thing on our minds was the pursuit of the opposite sex. We were at the age where a man's private part replaced and took over his brain. Mike and I were no different, so we spent a lot of time beating the bushes and chasing tail. But he did most of the scoring, as I was still hurting from Sylvia's rejection.
My brother was a bona fide Casanova. Girls were attracted to him like flies to honey. He had that Hollywood look and charm. All he ever had to do was smile and say “Hi, I’m Mike,” and the girls would follow him anywhere. However, his main goal was not romance. It was adding another notch to his bedpost. I would witness a few heartbreaks. I never really understood why women would be attached to a guy who would treat them in such a way. I may have been a little jealous because I didn't seem to possess his looks and charm. I had to work it. I usually ended up with his leftovers and provided a shoulder to cry on.
On September 8, 1966, “Star Trek,” a new science fiction series, debuted on television. It lasted only three seasons, but later became a cult classic. I would become a Trekie and boldly go where no man had dared to go. But not by choice. The abductors would see to that.
PRETTY WOMAN
Pretty woman, walking down the street. Pretty woman, the kind I’d like to meet. —Roy Orbison
“You take the brunette, I’ll take the blonde,” I told my brother. After all, blonde’s have more fun. Right?
This was one of those life changing decisions, which may have been planned, that would disturb, perplex, haunt, and taunt me for the rest of my life.
Mike and I were attending a dance at the Wyandotte County Center in November 1966. I didn’t really want to go that evening, but he talked me into it. I was still smarting from Sylvia’s rejection, so I wasn’t really in a good mood. But when I laid eyes on the green-eyed blonde, all my past heartaches suddenly disappeared. In a blink of an eye, my mood changed.
I looked into her eyes, melted, smiled, and somehow uttered a ‘hello’. If I'd known my world was about to be turned upside down, I would have chosen differently that evening. Or, more appropriately, I would have turned around and ran as fast and as far away as I could.
Claudia seemed to be the perfect girl for a man ready to get hitched, as I was a prime candidate. She was pretty, a talented artist, and a virgin. She expressed a desire to spread her wings and fly the parental nest. I had traveled half the globe, sown my wild oats, and was ready to settle down and start a family. She was just what a doctor—or maybe an abductor—would prescribe for our situation.
Claudia made it clear, right from the start, that she was saving her virginity for marriage. We, or I should say I, found it difficult to be in a platonic relationship. So, after dating for only three months, I was hot to trot. I convinced her to elope to Oklahoma to get married. Nowata, Oklahoma, was the place for quickie marriages. Things are about to get very interesting.
While searching for the courthouse, I was directed by an invisible and taunted force to keep driving around. We ended up on an abandoned country road. I could sense something in the air, as I started having that tingling and hair-raising sensation again, just like I had experienced twice before.
Come on, man, what gives? I just wanted to get to the courthouse on time.
I know I should have turned around immediately and gotten the hell out of there, but for some reason I couldn't initiate the turn. It wasn’t in their plan.
We soon came upon a herd of cattle grazing in a field. As we approached, they suddenly stopped grazing and all stared in the same direction.
Claudia shouted, “Stop the car; we have to find out what the cows are looking at!”
“Okay,” I said, “but you stay in the car.”
All I could see was an enormous cornfield. It was close to dusk, and the glare from the sun made it hard to see anything in that direction. I put my hand over my eyes and squinted.
Then suddenly, a shallow figure materialized right out of the corn stalks. My first thought was that a scarecrow was on the loose. I was in a sleepwalking stupor as an invisible force propelled me toward the figure. A beam of light from the shadowy being, which was holding a gold-colored medallion, hit me in the chest. I was paralyzed but conscious as it walked up to me and measured my cranium. (Years later I would discover that I had been measured for a special type of helmet). The mysterious being then implanted another memory block and vanished with the sunset.
The next I knew I was standing alone in the darkening cornfield, not knowing how or why I had gotten there. The cows all stared at me like I was an alien invader.
When I returned to the car, my fiancé was sound asleep. She didn’t recall or see a thing, since I had gotten out of the car. Several years later she would reveal to me what had happened to her that day:
I fell asleep in the car and had a most peculiar astral projection. I was out of my body and rising high above the trees. I looked to the sky and from the south approached a churning, rolling, gray wind. From the north came black rolling clouds with a beam of light in the middle. They were coming together over my head with tremendous speed. I assumed my body would be hit by the lightning that was created. The instant I became afraid, my astral spirit started to descend back into the car as I watched the ground and trees grow larger. I then felt warmth in my spinal area.
All of this, however, was unknown to us that evening. I got back in the car, and somehow we found the courthouse, tied the knot, and returned to Kansas City. We made it home, and lived happily ever after.
Dream on, Tom.
Sadly, it would not be a story book happy ending.
Also, unbeknown to us was a news article printed the next day in the local Tulsa newspaper. The paper reported that a farmer had discovered crop circles in his corn field a couple miles south of Nowata.
In June that same year, Claudia and I went on a belated honeymoon. We flew to Los Angeles and rented a car to drive up Highway 1, which ran along the coast towards San Francisco. Claudia was five months pregnant.
We stopped in Carmel and got a motel room close to the monastery grounds. Right away, I began to feel the tingling again. I tried to convince Claudia we should leave. However, she seemed to be in a trance.
The boutique town of Carmel was set on gently rising bluffs above a sculpted rocky coastline. It was known for its neat rows of quaint shops and miniature homes. The place also had a thick air of pretention, and was peppered with tacky middle-brow galleries and mock Tudor tearooms.
There were no street addresses, there was no mail delivery, and there were no franchise businesses in town. Three small museums in the Mission Basilica, built in 1771, traced the history of the area and revealed the darker side of the dainty building with the graves of more than three thousand local Indians buried in the cemetery. It was somewhere in this area that Claudia experienced another encounter.
This is what she told me a few years later: As we walked toward the monastery grounds, along the beach, I became very tired. It was dusk. Somehow we were suddenly on the grounds, while standing outside one of the monastery buildings, where I was attacked by a flock of wild geese. As they flew away over the ocean, our unborn went with them in spirit. I was upset and cried as we returned to the motel.
She continued to say: That night they abducted only me; you were left in the motel room. They took me back to the monastery. I was put on a table in one of the buildings. I couldn’t make out who or what they were. I screamed as they cut open my uterus and our unborn was suspended in the air as they examined her. (At this time we did not know the sex of the child she was carrying). They must have installed another memory block, because my next memory was the next morning. While taking a shower I noticed a brown zipper scar from my navel down. It disappeared in a few days.
The next day we went on a twenty-five-mile drive through an exclusive neighborhood.(I remembered going on the drive, but none of the things she was relating to me). As we approached a gated community guard gate, you became very nervous. Your actions made no sense. (As if any of this does). It was as if you knew something would go wrong in there. You even screamed at me that you didn’t want to go in there. (I didn’t want to go in but something urged me on).
The guard at the gate must have heard you, because he asked if everything was alright. It seemed strange to me that the guard would be wearing a military-type uniform.
Bizarre things started happening as we drove through the community. Flowers sprouted out of nowhere and lined the road as we passed. It was like a fourth-dimension manifestation; no other explanation could suffice. I was in awe, but you, Tom, were still terrified by something.
As we approached the beach area, flowers were still sprouting, almost down to the ocean. We departed the car and walked to a platform, which appeared to be some kind of a lookout. You were then attacked by a small being with blonde hair and wearing a one piece metallic cloth. Somehow, we both became paralyzed. The being probed and poked various instruments into our bodies. Perhaps you remember what was done to you. (I didn’t).
Rolling black clouds started to develop, emitting an intense laser-like light. All the flowers instantly disappeared. The whole area around us was stripped grey and bare. The being installed our memory blocks and sent us on our way. That's all I remember, except that for the rest of the trip and our marriage, you were never the same. I saw them before we were married too.
Years later, even after I discovered how to melt the memory blocks, I had no recollection of anything she had related here.
We returned to Kansas City and settled into a customary married life. In October, we became the proud parents of our first born daughter. Everyone commented how unusually large her eyes were.
A year and a half later, a historical event occurred. Apollo 11 lifted off on July 16, 1969, nine days after our son was born.
THE EAGLE HAS LANDED!
On July 20, 1969, President Richard Nixon and most of the world sat glued to their TV sets. America had beaten the Russians to the moon.
“That’s one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind,” said Neil Armstrong. Ever wonder if he might have seen other footprints?
Lost in the excitement was the fact that the lunar module had landed with only thirty seconds of fuel left.
HOUSTON ... WE HAVE A PROBLEM.
People of Earth were again glued to their TV sets on April 14, 1970, a day before my twenty-seventh birthday. The message came from Apollo 13, NASA's third Apollo mission intended to land on the Moon.
A mid-mission oxygen tank ruptured and severely damaged the spacecraft, forcing the crew to abort the lunar landing. The crew shut down the command module and used the lunar module as a lifeboat to make it safely back to Earth.
HEARTBREAK HOTEL
Well, since my baby left me, I found a new place to dwell. It’s down at the end of lonely street, at Heartbreak Hotel. —Elvis Presley
My life was on cruise control and was what I had dreamed married life was supposed to be. Claudia and I had the perfect family, a girl and a boy, good jobs and many friends.
What could possibly go wrong?
Then suddenly, four years into our marriage, my little paradise hit a bump in the road and I had another crash landing.
“I can’t live like this anymore,” Claudia told me, out of the blue.
“We need to get a divorce.”
Her words felt like someone had punched me in the stomach, as my breath and reality was knocked right out of me.
Claudia explained that she was becoming emotionally distressed and confused. She claimed to have had an out of body experience during which her spirit told her that she could no longer be in a sexual relationship, or in other words, she could no longer be a wife. I suspected that there had to be more to this than she was willing to reveal. Usually in these type of situations, there was a third party involved. Little did I know who that third party would be. Nothing either of us would ever suspect.
Where did all this suddenly come from?
At the time, neither of us had any idea what was happening. Whatever it was, it came on almost overnight. Suddenly, my perfect paradise crumbled and I found myself divorced. Claudia packed up and moved to Virginia Beach with the kids. Her spirit informed her that was where she had to be. Those days the woman always got custody of the children, so I was left with no other choice but to watch them disappear from my life.
A few months after she had moved, she would tell me about the abductions. She had learned how to melt her instilled memory blocks by fasting and abstaining from sexual activity. Ironically, the Bible also states that fasting and abstaining clears the mind and cleanses the soul.
Once these memory blocks were removed, she discovered the abductions, the aliens, and the things that had been done to her. She even told me that I had been abducted, not once but twice.
I had no idea what she was talking about and didn’t believe her. I just assumed she had a fertile imagination, like most alleged UFO abductees. At the time, I was concerned only with putting my life back together again.
Today though, I had to ask myself: how was it that my brother and I attended the dance that night when Claudia and I met? And why, pray tell, did I pick the blonde and not the brunette? Was it fate? Or was it planned?
Would the Kid be able to check out of the Heartbreak Hotel?
He wasn’t aware of it yet, but life was about to get even more complicated.