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.
bobdahl 