A wrong turn led me down Memory Lane recently. Lucky you, you get to come along, if you so choose.

(I know my posts this week have been shockingly self-absorbed, so if you’ve been reading, thank you for putting up with me).

This past weekend, I was trying to locate an obscure hiking trail a local had recommended to me. Right on Paradise, left on Bliss, he had said, trailhead begins after third tree on the left. But no trail met me, just another gated fence.

Story of my life.

I had turned around to head back to my car when I realized I was smack-gob in the middle of the resort where I had worked as a cocktail waitress in college. I had forgotten it was out here. I decided to treat myself to a walk through the grounds.

It was built-up, but not much had changed. There was employee parking lot B. I remember that short sweet walk into work under those summer lights like it was yesterday. There was the entrance into the concert hall, where I met The Smothers’ Brothers. They were sweet but pervey, with a reputation for groping waitresses. There was the night club. I remember George Michael’s “I Want Your Sex” pounding through speakers so loud I would hear echoes for days after a shift. If we were caught up with drink orders, we were allowed to dance with the clients.

There was the outside bar, where my much older boyfriend broke up with me. Even then I liked older men, and Tom was the 42-year old bar manager. We saw each other most of that summer, but by the end, his old girlfriend Ann the bartender asked him to end it. She thought I was too young for him. Well, duh. He didn’t want to end it, he said, but he was going back to Ann, and he was sorry. I distinctly remember laughing in his face. I was 21 and drop-dead gorgeous, with men lined up out the door to date me. I don’t think he appreciated how well I took it, and my friend Ann the bartender never spoke to me again. Humph.

There were the basketball courts next to the employee office. I remember one early summer night walking past those courts on my way to punch in and a large group of men playing basketball stopped to give me a round of applause. I was 21 years old with really big blonde 80’s hair and even bigger boobs, I was tanned golden from the sun and had a short skirt wrapped around my tiny waist and sky-high heels on my feet.

Good grief, do we ever appreciate the sexiness of our youth?

I had taken the job at this resort when spring semester had ended. My roommate and I had agreed to stay at school together, take classes and make some money. I had an easy schedule since all I had left to graduate was student teaching in the fall. So during the day I sailed, ice-skated, rode horses, and analyzed iambic pentameter in my Advanced Shakespeare class. At night, I strapped on my heels, threw on a black skirt and a white tank top, and carried a tray for up to eight hours a night. I made beaucoup bucks.  

That was one of the most carefree summers of my life. I loved everything about that job.

Memories of the people I loved came flooding back. Dennis, the young, overweight, jolly, bespectacled general manager, who was more like a friend to everyone than a boss, and who was universally loved by every employee in the resort. James, every waitress’s favorite salt-and-pepper haired bartender, who no matter how busy it was, stayed calm and kind when filling our orders. Sheila, the old salty abrasive hostess, who yelled at us for wearing such high heels. “You wait,” she would say. “One day all you girls will have bad backs, and you’ll say ‘Sheila was right!’”

Sheila was right.

Craig and Alex, dinner waiters and best friends, locals who lived on the grounds. They were inseparable, and often let me stay over in their apartment if a night ran late. One day we got word that Craig had gotten into a terrible motorcycle accident and was in a coma. I visited him in the hospital every day for a month, but Alex never visited Craig once. Not once. Craig recovered, and when he arrived home six weeks later, we had a Welcome Home! party ready for him. I can remember like it was yesterday, Craig wobbling back into that apartment on those crutches, his face and body a mass of scars. Alex wouldn’t come out of his room, and when I went in to talk some sense into him, I was shocked to see him climbing out of his window. Coward.

(I remember being confused and upset about that, realizing for the first (and not last) time in my life that people respond to life’s tragedies in different ways).

And as I gazed over the grounds that day, I remembered someone else from that summer. I stood in the middle of that parking lot, and I smiled.  

Frankie. Of course. I hadn’t thought of him in thirty years.

The local help, the workers who worked there all year round, had their own living accommodations on the resort property, much like in the movie “Dirty Dancing.” The waiters and bartenders called the cocktail waitresses their “College Girls,” and invited us to their fairly intense parties. I was just a young innocent sheltered brat, newly 21, and this one swarthy Italian dinner waiter, Frankie, a boy only a few years older than me, grew especially attached to me.

Frankie worshipped me. He would kiss my hand, tell me I was beautiful, help me on and off with my jacket, rub my feet after my shift. But surprisingly, he never made a real pass at me. Not once. He idolized me. He never let me drink to excess, he steered me away from people sniffing cocaine and smoking pot, and he wouldn’t let any guy near me. He never let me walk to my car alone, and sometimes followed me in his car to my apartment to make sure I got home safely. I still remember waving back at him as he waited in his idling car to make sure I got safely in the door.

To this day, someone waiting until I get into my house safely melts me into a puddle.

No man had ever treated me that way before, and never since. And let me tell you, once a woman gets a taste of being treated like that, it never quite leaves her. Over thirty years later, I still remember Frankie’s ballet-dancer grace when carrying a dinner tray, his gruff voice, his Fu Manchu, and his ringed fingers. He treated me like a fragile princess, a woman so precious that he didn’t even dare touch her without permission. And any other man who dared approach me was also brutally rebuffed.

“She’s too good for you, she’s too good for you, back off,” he would say, in his thick Italian accent. The other men seemed to be afraid of him. He would hold my hand at parties, just stroking my knuckles. He would stare at me from across the room, only looking away when I met his glance and nodded that I was fine. He would check on me during my shifts, to see if I needed anything. He once told me that he could never be with me, because his background was too embarrassing.

“I’m not good enough for you either, Princess,” he would say.

(Hold up, skeptics. Of course I know this is the thing of fairy tales and mafia movies. Being treated like an idol of worship can never really last, not in modern and sustainable relationships. It’s all about give-and-take).  

Right? Sigh.

I wonder whatever happened to Frankie, and if he will ever know that he instilled in me a deep and intense feeling of self-worth. Just the thought of him makes me smile, thirty years later. I hope every woman has had the joy of at least one Frankie in her life.

As I drove away from the resort, I wondered what it would be like to return and work there for another summer. To try and conjure those feelings again. I mean, can the past be repeated? Can Memory Lane ever be accessed again once it is gated off?

So this weekend, ladies, if you’ve never had a Frankie in your life, be a Frankie to yourself. Treat yourself like you are the sole object of your own desire. Check on yourself, make sure you’re safe and well-treated. I have a million suggestions on how you can treat yourself like the queen you are. I’ll share some next week.

Because if we can’t treat ourselves like royalty, how can we expect anyone else to?