Love Story Series

 Laurie Kuntz and Steven DeBonis

 

 

Steven DeBonis and Laurie Kuntz in 1969 

 

Desperately Seeking Donovan

by Laurie Kuntz

In 1969, when I was 17, I first saw the singer Donovan on the Smother Brothers TV show. I was smitten and called my best friend Maggie and told her that I wanted a boyfriend who looked exactly like Donovan. That weekend Maggie and I went to the Jolly Bull Pub on Flatbush Ave in Brooklyn. We were too young to go into the pub, so we hung out outside of the pub. It was on that hangout June night in 1969, that I saw this guy who looked like Donovan. I brazenly went over to him, told him he looked like Donovan, and I was looking for a boyfriend who looked like Donovan, and that was the beginning.

I met Steven DeBonis, who was Donovan's doppelganger, in Brooklyn, where we both grew up and lived. We dated that entire summer, it was the summer of Woodstock. We both went to Woodstock, but we did not go together, even though we were a couple by the time Woodstock rolled around.  

And here is a little addendum to my love story regarding our Woodstock journeys:
I went to Woodstock out of spite. Regardless of that fact, this is a love story because what
does a 17 year old really know about spite.  And, in 1969, vengeance was easy--no social
media to unfriend anyone, no cell phone numbers to block, and no one who I knew was
practicing law, yet. So, when Steve, my boyfriend told me he was going to Woodstock with his
friend, Gary, instead of me, I started to weave my wicked web of revenge. I implored my
best friend, Maggie, to accompany me. Then, I set out to find a ride for us. We were cute,
we were sassy, and we were lucky.  And, our lack of worldliness only helped take away
any fear of leaving Brooklyn for the wilds of upstate. I bamboozled Benjie, a counselor at
the day camp I was working at, to take me and Maggie to Yasgur's Farm.
 
Off we went, without a plan in our pockets.
 
What happened at Woodstock is not important. It was muddy. It was loud.
It was crowded.  It was safe. It was lyrical. It was peaceful. It was freeing.
It was fun. It was the beginning, and it was the end.
 
 I am now married to the boy I set out to spite.
 
Going to Woodstock, even though Maggie and I have our own versions of this trip, gives
us a collective history, a past, and the cache to cool-- very cool.
 
I think of Woodstock as our communal story.
 
Spite can, at times, turn into forgiveness. The boy who went to Woodstock without me
has redeemed himself a few times over. And, in retrospect, I probably made wiser, albeit
still fun, decisions while in the wilds with my best friend instead of my boyfriend. Today,
Maggie and I have slightly different tales of how we got home from Yasgur’s Farm, but
we did--get home that is.
 
Woodstock is my love story because a love story is not only about love, but about the
journey-- the beginning and the ongoing.   In 1969, I ended up at Woodstock.  What luck
to land in that huge garden.  It's that garden this story gets me back to.

 

Short story:   

Husband is Steven DeBonis
Met in June of 1969 in Brooklyn in front of a bar called The Jolly Bull Pub, which no longer exists.
Married Oct. 6th 1987
together for 55 together years and 37 legal years
one son who is 36 years old.

PS: Maggie, my BFF and I are still good friends. She was with me at Woodstock and the night I met Steven. Just last month the Woodstock Museum interviewed Maggie, Steven, and me together for their historical archives. They had an interest in us because we all knew each other the summer of Woodstock and we are still all alive and still friends.
 

 

 

Steven and Laurie recently

 

Old Married Couple Cutting Watermelon
 
There are some things
we just don't do well together.
I am not your tennis partner.
There are some mountains you climb alone.
I cannot sing while you tune your guitar.
But, we have learned the rhythm of
a couple with a cleaver.
 
We both know how to check for ripeness.
A lawn green skin with a yellow sun
bursting at its center.      
An ear to the rind,
checking for the sea caught in a shell sound.
 
At home, we prepare the counter
find a balance so the orb does not roll,
fill containers with a ruby red squares
that will quench our aging thirst.
 
One July day, while you napped
the temperature  grew thick
as a watermelon skin.
Alone in the kitchen, I tackled the green ball
with a serrated edge,  
found the sweet spot on the counter
to conquer the roll, sliced the fruit
in halves and quarters until tins were glowing
with squares looking like polished gems.
 
What I thought was a job for two,
I could do by myself--
handle a knife, square a slice, dispose of rinds,
fill a bowl that only I would gorge from,
a selfish appetite quenched.
 
Alone, in the kitchen,
I picked the ripest pieces,
but the juices did not burst,
nor run over my tongue
with the same coupled sweetness.

From That Infinite Roar

 

Anniversary, Again
 
I don’t know a love that does not chip away
at the day to day of what couples us.
Every act of creation, also an act of destruction,
and memory is history's great reviser.
 
The years pass, the regrets mount,
but so does the shared light
we both enjoy at sunset.
And, there's the song of the brown thrasher
hidden in our magnolia tree.
 
We strain to catch a glimpse before it flies--
this memory implanted on its wingspread
soaring away with a piece of what's been shared.
 
Things we mark as love
belong in no engraved setting,
but seen in the dusting of grey hairs off the vanity,
the sweeping of the dead
palmetto bug from under the porch light,
ripe pears in a bowl placed on a table,
all marking the tart juice of our shared years.

The days pass as starlings ignore
the boundaries of the skyway.
We remain together under the weight
of every season, standing some days
on a stark precipice weaving stories
into our own private landscape,
all we let in under the presence
of every necessary ripening thing
like these collected years.

From That Infinite Roar.

 

TAILGATING THE AMBULANCE

We must have been reeling,
my hand straddling your thigh,
the possession I had over you
more intoxicating than the speed limit we broke
tailgating the ambulance, so close,
I could see the old woman, her hand
resting on the brow of her husband strapped to a gurney,
I wondered aloud—would we be together that long?
You faltered, in that tentative voice, the one
that still keeps you from making promises,
yet here we are sharing sciatica stories—
We stopped for a red light,
the ambulance did not.
It is only now that I hear the sirens beginning to sound.

From The Moon Over My Mother's House.

On Marriage and Wood

Years collect like a spread of dust on shrouded sills.
You, my son, are up to 5, celebrating on the autumn equinox.
 
A balance of light and dark, a hardy harvest—
the symbol for your 5th year, is wood.
 
Sturdy, useful, and so very flammable,
joined with the notion of "lovely, dark, and deep."
 
This is how to grow as a couple
the cut of a tree, the frame of a house, the rock of a cradle,
 
counting the many miles to go.

 First appeared in MasticadoresUsa