Once Upon A Time In Texas

It was Spring time and I was in love. He was very tall and blond and was from Australia. He had the most wonderful accent. So on this beautiful Spring night he invited me to go to Galveston with him for the evening. I was always happy to go to Galveston and going with him was going to be especially wonderful.

We drove down I-45 and over the bridge into Galveston. To me there was always something magical about Galveston. I'd been there many times but this was a particularly special night. Some nights are just seething with that delicious aura of wonderfulness. It was a night like that. He said he wanted to take me someplace where we could dance, how about The Balinese Room? Excellent idea.

I had been in the Balinese Room before. I had walked the length of the deck and purchase souvenirs in the shop and had more than a couple beers in The Ice House, the casual bar there. But I'd never been there at night, to dance, with a man I was in love with.

I've always been attracted to the nightclub scene of 1940s and 50s. I think in a past life I was a torch singer with one of those bands. I've always said that of all the characters I've ever created Ruby in My Last Romance is the closest to being my alter ego. I think Ruby was conceived on that night. In My Last Romance when Ruby sets out to seduce Silvio she makes herself a lipstick red dress and, as she says, “I looked like sin itself strutting into The Balinese Room that night.”

My dress was more of a rose red, I still remember it, crinkled gauze with a peasant neckline that drooped off my shoulders. And white wedgie sandals and a necklace made of white seashells I had purchased in the gift shop there a few years earlier.

The Balinese Room stood at the end of a 600 ft covered pier stretching out into the Gulf of Mexico. It was famous for its bands and its raucous, slightly shady atmosphere, and the fact that all kinds of glamorous people of bygone eras had frequented it --- Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, all those guys who invented the whole concept of nightclubs. There had been a notorious casino in the last room of the building and the 600 ft. pier made raids difficult because, by the time the cops, ran the length of the pier, all the evidence of misbehavior could be stashed away. And there were rumors of ghosts --- wonderful ghosts who appeared dressed in their finest gowns and cruised the dark corridors looking for their missing dance partners.

The murals on the walls depicted exotic island women in colorful clothes with dark hair and mischievous eyes and seductive posture. There were pillars decorated to look like palm trees and wrapped in twinkling gold lights. The place smelled of generations of booze and perfume and cigarettes all washed by fresh Gulf air. It was the sort of place where you could snuggle up to your dance partner and pretend it was another time, right after the War, maybe, and tomorrow was a million years away. All that mattered was tonight. It was the sort of place where you could go outside to watch the waves roll in and the sun go down and kiss and kiss and kiss.

That wasn't the last time I went to The Balinese Room --- with the Australian and later without him. But it was a time that will linger on the edge of my sweetest memories forever. I have often said that if life was perfect I would live in Gloucester from May through November and in Galveston the rest of the year. I dreamed about more nights in The Balinese Room --- maybe not as magical but every bit as delicious.

Early this morning Hurricane Ike ended that fantasy. The Balinese Room was ripped to shreds and tossed carelessly into the Gulf and over the seawall. It is no more.

I've had a bad year for losses and, in many ways, this is yet another one. But, like the others, the memory is sweet. And it is mine and I am grateful for that.

Thanks for reading.