I always wanted to sing. I had another singing teacher, She was this weird, horse like looking woman with a very wide jaw. She made me look in the mirror as I sang my songs. Of course, I hated looking in the mirror. I have always hated looking in the mirror. It was like torture for me. I practiced breathing. She was very strange and I don’t think she liked me very much.

So I went back to my lesson and had my last lesson with the teacher. She told me flat out that I couldn’t sing, and should not bother to pursue it ever. She said: I would never be a singer. I was only twelve years old! My heart froze. I was in shock. I left her apartment and rode the subway back home in torrents of tears. Buckets and buckets of tears came down. I went to my friend Anetta’s house and her mother thought I had been raped or something. It was a bad day for me.

Years later, I started working on my own recordings, going to this cheap rehearsal studio I found down in Miami called Sing A Song studios. It was this place in the California Club strip mall that had all these Karaoke tapes. You took the tapes, went into a padded sound booth, and practiced singing to the songs. All my old favorites like Abba’s “Fernando” and Gloria Gaynor’s “I will Survive”. Then I sang Crystal Gayle’s “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue” and so many more. I loved singing in there because no one could hear me and I could make my own recordings and they were bad, oh yes, but I had full instrumental backup.

Then I met Cliff on the internet. I told him I wanted to go to a club and sing Karaoke. He said, no way, if you are going to sing, you have to be the artist and sing live to a live instrument. This was something totally new to me, who had always been backed up by tapes.

I said, okay, and we started. We started at the very bottom. And I mean, the VERY bottom of the barrel. I couldn’t sing a note live and Cliff played guitar. We started going to real dives like LT’S in West Palm Beach and to every open mike night we could go to. My knees would shake and I was barely able to get through the song without practically bursting into tears. They all had their own opinions as to how I should sing a particular song and what I could do to improve, I was that bad. Complete strangers would come up to me after I finished a song and say, “That was great, but you have to sing it with a little more feeling”. Complete strangers. Cliff resented each one that came up to me and made a comment. But I didn’t mind.

My very first love, hers also met in 1965. Our love was deep and real. It survived my time in the USAF. Her twin sister got married May 1969. We fought about marriage. She wanted to marry I did not. Not for fear of commitment but because I felt I could not support her the way she deserved. I dropped her at her home. She worked as a nanny and was a second year college student. She disappeared and I was told she married another. I was heart broken. I would think I saw her on the street. I searched and searched. One time I was driving a truck and thought I had found her walking down the street. It was not her and I cried like a baby knowing I would never see my soul mate again.

I married and married 3 times and drank and drugged. I never forgot her and periodically searched. In 2002 I suffered a near fatal heart attack. My wife left for a woman and left me with two teen aged girls to raise. I had sobered up in 73 so I had lead a healthy productive life. But after 3 failed marriges and nearly dying I lost my will to live. My children were now grown and after 33 years I began to drink. I would pray to die in my sleep. I suffered a stroke and was near death. I wanted one last chance to find the love of my life Phillis to close the circle and say goodbye. I posted notes on Craigslist. I didn’t even know her married name.

Out of the blue I received an e-mail from a free web site. This woman found my Phillis. It turned out we had lived for years in Florida 30 miles away. She had lost her first husband in 88 and remarried and had a very unhappy marriage. She was in the process of getting divorced. We met and found we loved each other even more than ever. It was if no time had passed. Our lives are filled with love and my health has improved greatly. It is so great everyday I wake up with surprise it is not a dream. I could not be more happy if I won 50 million in the lottery.