He saw Marsha Mason one evening

on TCM in “The Goodbye Girl,”

and while he watched was transported

to another place and time and then

just this immediate time knowing that

the past and the present and the future

are all one

 

and he glanced at her in the room

feeling at one with all as he watched

Marsha’s Paula and her short brown

hair and really cute butt, and it occurred

to him that the year he fell in love with

Marsha Mason was eleven years after

he had seen the

 

really cute (Dreyfuss’ Elliot line was “cute,

really cute….”), really cute kid in the shoe

department of J. C. Penney’s on Eighth Street

and in that  moment so many, many moments

ago but now, ever now, the “Goodbye Girl,”

eventually, providentially would become,

became and will be his

 

“Hello Girl” twenty-seven years after he first

saw her and seventeen years after he married her.

They both had had to say goodbye to their “Good-

bye Lovers and Mates” in premature death and pro-

found suffering and grief of love won and love lost

so soon, too, too soon, so horribly soon, then and

now and in the future.

 

But to this day, which in a sense was yesterday

and tomorrow, the “Goodbye Girl” is still his ever

“Hello Girl” with the short, thick, curly, brown hair

and really, really cute butt.  And like Elliot and

Dreyfuss and Neil Simon, he’s Jewish, too, on

his mother’s side – the short, dark-haired Dutch

side or maybe

 

that’s just  wishful thinking for a half Swedish,

half Dutch formerly dark-haired kid who had

dreamed of stand-up comedy ever since his

Speech 101 class when he brought down the

house with a skit about a first date and a first

kiss with a broomstick prop and found it in a

pulpit and timidly, bashfully with a guitar, like

Elliot’s, a guitar

 

with which he would only, could only serenade

his “Hello Girl” good night – a guy lucky enough

to be married to the dark, thick, curly-haired,

green-eyed Irish girl with the really, really cute

butt – his now and ever and always “Hello Girl.”

Hello, girl.  Hello, girl, then, now and

forever.