#3 The Passion Queen

I met #3 at the Paragon Bar one Monday evening, likely March 8th, in 1976. I’m pretty sure she picked me up; she was with a fellow librarian out for smokes and beers. I was out having a few brews. The Paragon was one of the great bars of its time with a waitress named Annie who had served me one of my first legal beers in that very bar almost four years earlier. One of the resident drinkers at the bar was a man named Daniel Boone. It along with the aforementioned Wheatland Inn, Millersville’s Barn Door, as well as the neighborhood haunts Luckee’s Elbow Room, the Lauzus Hotel, Johnny’s Tavern, Bates Tavern, and the Hi-Fi were among my favorite watering holes. Like I hope I made clear earlier I was no playboy; I might have thrown a lot of darts but rarely hit the bull’s eye. After all that is why we are discussing #3 rather than #33 at this juncture.

#3, though, was a doozy. You know what they say about librarians. I don’t remember much about that first night cept we went back to her place and she schooled me. I had left the Paragon a naive teenager – despite my almost 25 years – and quietly entered the 340 Club at sunup the next morn an educated man. I remember telling Phil she was the prettiest woman I’d ever been with and – one of us – named her “the Passion Queen.”

Turned out she was married, quite convenient for my sentiments, to the Dean of Men at Millersville State College where I had not only graduated from but had been disciplined by none other than the Dean of Men. Whooboy! I was back at her apartment after taking her to dinner on Thursday and back again on Saturday only that was where the fun ended. For not only was she married (separated) but she had a boy friend (apparently not separated). No sooner had we turned the lights off – she was a lights on kinda girl – than there came a poundin’ from the fire escape. That’s when she told me about the boyfriend. After that noise subsided the knockin’ now came from the front door to the apartment. She calmly told me to stay still and he would go away. Well, he did stop knockin’ … and started kickin’. Next thing you know the door had obviously been breached and we could hear him cursin’ coming down the hall way. I braced for the worst and soon the lights were on –he was a lights on kinda guy – and he was standing over the bed. “I got no beef with you buddy” he said “I just wanna talk to my girl for a few minutes … you can come back when I’m done.”

Well, given the choice between heel or hero I opted for the former. I was in my pants and an unbuttoned shirt, carryin’ my shoes, before he gave the circumstances a second though. I’m sure I said some kind of goodnight to the Passion Queen. She was anxious for me to get out of there just as much as I was. As I headed down the stairs I heard him beginning to “talk” to his girl.

Remarkably it all worked out. The “talk” apparently wasn’t all that hard on her. I was welcome in her bed whenever the spirit moved her; which it did for several years and me and her boyfriend became friends.