Throwback Thursday.....Sluggy's Sordid Past

Have you ever "googled" old boyfriends and flames?

I did recently and found some upsetting news.

Back when I was a senior in high school I hung out with a diverse mix of folks.
In high school I had a variety of friends.......my "art" friends, my "theater" friends, my friends who I had known since childhood and elementary school and then my friends who I took  the same classes with and hung out with both in school and outside of school.

Then there were the friends I made outside of school doing local community theater.
One of these friends was named Jane and she was an older woman.....well "older" meant anyone over 18 years old at that time to me. lolz

I met her doing a local theater production of "Once Upon a Mattress". (Sort of a fitting title for a show if you knew Jane. *snort*)
As it turned out she worked at the hospital across the street from my high school and lived nearby with her husband.
Jane wasn't happy in her marriage and use to go out to clubs dancing all. the. time. 
And sometimes I went with her.  She was planning on leaving her husband and had rented an apartment and I and a friend from school(who's mother had kicked her out of the house)were going to share the apartment with her for the Summer(after I graduated from high school). 

Anyway, I was hanging out with Jane at night sometimes when I wasn't working my part time job or doing theater and let's just say that Jane met some interesting characters. ;-)  One night Jane invited me to hang out with her and her newest boyfriend, Romeo(yes, that was actually his name!)and this new beau brought along his friend, Mike.

Romy and Mike were buddies serving on the same ship in the US Navy.
My hometown had quite a large population of Filipinos, either immigrants from the Philippines or Filipinos who had joined the US Navy and were stationed in Norfolk, VA.
Yes, I dated a squid.....squid is the not so endearing term used by locals to describe members of the US Navy.
Hey! I grew up near one of the largest naval installations in the US so it's only natural that I would date a sailor at some point.

Mike was a nice guy and fairly shy.  He was only my second serious relationship at that point in my life.  He was also 6 years older than me and he was born and raised in the Philippines.  He joined the navy to see the world and to rise above a life of poverty back in the Philippines.  He had a large family with many siblings, all younger than he was.
He taught me how to make "pancit" and a few curse words in Tagalog, his native tongue.

We were "an item" the Spring and Summer of 1977 but the relationship quietly died away when I left to attend college outside of Baltimore that Fall.  Mike wasn't a letter writer and this was before the internet and cell phones and I had no landline at college.

I heard nary a word from Mike after the Summer of 1977, until two years later, during the Summer of 1979, while I was in New Hampshire doing Summer Stock Theater in a little town called Milford.   The phone in Mrs. Guertin's barn, where the theater's costume shop was located, rang one day and out of the blue, it was Mike on the line.  He had called my family home in VA and my mother happened to have been there at that time and gave him the number for the theater where I was living/working in NH.

We spoke for about a half an hour.  Mike was still in the Navy and still stationed in Norfolk VA.  He had leave(aka time off)and wanted to make a trip up to see me and renew our relationship.    Being Summer Stock I didn't get time off if he came up anyway so that wasn't such a good idea.
Besides I was now seeing and had been together with my current Hubs about 1.5 years at that time.  He said he'd call me again when I returned to Virginia before going back to college, we said goodbye and I never heard from him again.

  Mike and Romeo aboard ship..  Mike is the one mugging for the camera.

I went googling Mike the other day just out of curiosity and found out that he was dead.

Evidently he stayed in the Navy and achieved the rank of Chief Petty Officer.  Unfortunately he died in 1993 at the age of 39.  Place of death was listed as the North Pacific which means he died aboard ship. 
He was so young to have died.  It's sort of shocking to find out someone you knew when you were young died so long ago.
I don't know what he did between when we ended communications and his death.  I hope he had a good life after we parted ways and found love in his journey.
I still have a soft spot in my heart for him and this news saddened me greatly.

R.I.P.
Michael Carlos Nepomuceno

Sluggy