“Mickey Rourke” was First published on 29 March 2017 in Lost Balloon Magazine, and thank you editor Chelsea Voulgares for including my work in your new journal.

I also want to thank One Story Magazine for having these amazing online writing classes. It was one of those classes that prompted students to write about a crush.

Who was your crush? I loved young Mickey Rourke — can’t think of him without Booker T and the MGs “Hip Hug Her” playing, the opening of the film Barfly as the neon blinks.

I just rewatched that before posting it, and what a solid set-up the whole opening is there — the color, the music, the guiding pov. Even Rourke’s Snaggletooth delivery. Really masterful — I always associated the film with Rourke, to the point where I’d forgotten it’s a Francis Ford Coppola film.

It is a fantastic movie.  So is Diner, and Pope of Greenwich Village. Mickey Rourke was in all these cool films at a very cool time in my life. His best work might be more recent though. Did you see The Wrestler? man, he’s still irresistible on the big screen. He is all in.

So, this story imagines a girl Karen having a crush on Mickey Rourke, and because she falls in love with bad boys by proxy, she wrecks, just a bit.  The oddball statement she makes at the end is an allusion to Barfly, something Mickey Rourke’s raffish character says. I always loved it. It’s just so whacky.

Here are the only pictures I can find of me that I am sure from around the year Barfly came out, 1987. I miss Polaroids.  You were careful taking those pictures — the cartridges were expensive — and so you’d be choosy.

Yes, that’s me with Roger Staubach, the Dallas Cowboys QB. Yes, that’s my bra strap showing.  Good lord. Those were the days. I think I still have a book of advice from him that he signed. He might have written Anne, keep reasonable hours. Captain America. Also a picture of me (sporting a Parthenon necklace that I still own) between two fellow barflies. We all frequented a place called The Recovery Room, and that’s Scott Lukacz and D.H. Crosby. Then, below that, a Polaroid of me and this cool girl I used to know, Sue Dube, up in New Hampshire 5/86, and there’s an early one of Paul and me. Paul is wearing a wig because we are at this bar, watching his Uncle Glen’s glamrock band, Love Pirates. That was at The Cove in Roselle. The header picture in this post is a picture of Paul and me in Brooklyn last week, at the Flapperhouse reading.

I thought Mickey Rourke was cool. I still do. But in terms of lifelong love? I was always waiting on Paul.

I hope you enjoy this very short flash, “Mickey Rourke,” and please take a minute to read a few more stories at Lost Balloon while you’re there.  It’s a brand new magazine, starting off with a bang! Best wishes to Ms. Voulgares in 2017 and beyond!

Thank you for stopping by my blog. I am glad for your company.