CAPULETS AND MONTAGUES

I was engaged at 16.

A child madly in love, and so was my Romeo.  His smile broke through the thickest of storm clouds and his eyes sparkled diamonds of happiness.  We were in love at first sight, over the front counter at the Yacht Club where the Montagues held court.  But I was a Capulet.

The Montagues did not want us together, for reasons I did not fully understand at the time. I assumed it had something to do with being a Capulet, which was a very troubled family.  They succeeded in luring him away with a long hiatus in Europe, at exactly the time that I had moved to NYC, to my tiny apartment on East 5th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues.  I would awake each day to see the drag queen across the street in a long pink chiffon robe, having her morning coffee and cigarette.  He would awake in Corfu.  I was changing, and think my inability to speak up for myself was part of the sacrifice I made to become an artist in NYC.  He never did understand my changes, even though they were mainly superficial ones.  Pink hair does not a stranger make.

So the trip to Europe was the expected straw.  There was never an official break up... a returning of a ring, or a broken promise.  He just slipped away.

One day I realized he was no longer there and felt that I had died.

I recently spoke with a member of the Montegues who told me that our demise was part of a long and drawn out plan on the part of his parents.  It had been plotted, and carried out, with the unspoken threat of disinheritance.  

I was engaged at 16... and by 18 was without Montegues, or Capulets for that matter.

Film still from Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet.