Tempo 2 Section 5 Chicago Tribune, Wednesday, June 10, 1987

Talesfromthe front

And her looks rolled his socks."She had the unique ability to look like a cool,

striking, raven-haired model one minute and then witha simple smile to become a warm, open girl-next-door.When we danced, I'd look off the dance floor and seeevery guy in the place watching her. I loved everysingle minute I was with her."

The inevitable was happening."I was falling in love with her."Amanda seemed to be falling, too.They might have a date planned for Thursday night,

and by Tuesday Amanda was on the phone saying,"Let's get together."

Then one night, after they had progressed fromhugging to snuggling, Amanda suddenly said, "I don'twant to hurt you."

(Remember this: When anyone says, "I don't wantto hurt you," bells should start ringing, lights shouldstart flashing, hammers should start pounding you onthe head. What the person really means is, "Are youin for it! You're going to taste blood before I'mthrough. with you!")

But Craig didn't think he could be hurt. He had losthis fiance in a car accident several years before, andthere was plenty of scar tissue protecting his heart. Sothey continued to get closer and closer and closer.And Amanda continued to get stronger and strongerand stronger.

And then, like that, she pulled away. First, she gotmoody. Then she became distant. There were a fewphone calls between them, but they weren't verypleasant. The last time they talked, Amanda told Craigthat her divorce had become final. She also mentionedthat she was seeing several other guys.

For a while, Craig felt "used and discarded." Thenhe realized he just happened to be in the wrong placeat the wrong time.

"If it hadn't been me, someone else would havehelped her through her difficult time." And that guy'sheart would have been broken.

As those wise old Greeks said several thousand yearsago, we learn wisdom through suffering. That certainlyapplies to Craig. He has learned never to date awoman who has been divorced less than a year,preferably two.

"It's a rule I follow to this day."Have you ever gotten revenge on an old flame? Send

your tale, your name, address and phone numbers toLavin & Kavesh, Tales from the Front, 435 N.Michigan Ave., Chicago, Ill. 606JJ.

The ABCs of beinga transition personBy Laura Kavesh and Cheryl Lavin

The one role you don't ever want to have is thatof the Transition Person.

Here's how it works: A is in love with B. Bdumps A. A is devastated. A can't eat. A can't

sleep. A thinks life is over. Then C comes along. Cand A start to date. Life starts to look up for A. Aregains some of the old self-confidence. A starts feelingpretty good. A realizes life has possibilities. Lots ofpossibilities. A meets D, E and F. A drops C. C is leftout in the cold. C is the Transition Person.

Craig met Amanda in a bar. She was "perhaps themost beautiful woman I'd ever seen."

They went out once. They went out twice. On theirsecond date, Amanda told Craig she was goingthrough a divorce. They spent five hours discussingloss, pain and heartache. Mostly Amanda talked andCraig listened.

"I didn't preach or offer advice on how she 'should'feel or what she 'should' do," he says.

At the end of the evening, she gave him a hug.That date pretty much set the pattern for their

relationship. They would have long, serious talks aboutloss and pain, Amanda would get weepy and thenthey'd hug.

And that was it.One night as they were talking, Amanda asked Craig

to hold her. She was a little embarrassed to ask, butCraig told her he had wanted to hold her for a longtime, but he was trying to be sensitive. He didn't wanther to think he was coming on to her.

But the truth was, he wanted to. As he learned herlife's story, he became attracted to her "sensitive,emotional and somewhat vulnerable nature." He'found her "incredibly intelligent, witty and bright."

After so many years,solitude is difficult

Continued from 1st Tempo pageJewel salad bar.

He didn't have a clue to thelogistics of looking for anapartment. In the world in whichhe grew up, wives searched forhomes and later decorated andcleaned them while their husbandswere at work.

In his resentment anduncertainty, he knew only onething: He wanted to stay in thesuburbs.

To the city dweller, living alonein the suburbs may seem likebanishment. Rather than walking aIt b\ocks from home to shops,restaurants and bustling sidewalks,the suburbanite in search of societyhas to drive to a shopping center.

Klinsky, however, like many ofthe divorced men he knows,wanted to stay in the suburbs forthe simple reason that his kids andhis friends are there. He saw thecity as too busy and a littledangerous. He worried that hewould be trapped in frenetic hopsfrom singles bars to health clubsand back.

So he would sit at the kitchentable or in front of the TV, tryingto decipher the gibberish of thesuburban classifieds: "1 bdrm,Indry, A/C, crpt, apple, nr shpg, htincl." He would rip out a page ofads and take it with him when hewent to play racquetball with hisbuddies, grateful that enough ofthem had been through the processthat they could warn him whichsingles habitats to avoid.

Sometimes, scanning the ads ashe sipped instant coffee, itoccurred to him that somethinghad gone dreadfully, inexplicablywrong. Often he still thinks it has.

"I resent 25 years of workingtoward a day when you can enjoyyour mate and your family life andlight up your pipe and kick offyour shoes on the porch-I don'tsmoke a pipe and I didn't have aporch, but you know what I'mean-I mean enjoy what you'veworked for. And instead, you laceup your Reeboks and go out tohave a drink." •Evergreen Glen in ProspectHeights is the kind of apartmentcomplex that abounds in suburbsacross the country, one of thosehuge places with a sylvan nameand acres of asphalt. There is noglen, and the evergreens are a fewscraggly 3-foot pines.

But Evergreen Glen wasKJinsky's first home alone, and heliked it, once he got used to thethrobbing of stereos through thewalls, the ceiling and the floor. Heenjoyed meeting the young singlepeople who filled the place, and theolder woman whose Germancooking perfumed his hall.

He was luckier than otherdivorced men he knows, who hadto refurnish their lives from Wickesand Swingles. He had inherited asectional couch, a table and sixchairs, kitchen utensils and 12 wineglasses.

He laughs about the glasses: "Ican't imagine having 12 peopleover to dinner anymore."

He stored his tools in twodressers. In front of the sofa heplaced a table he had made from aprinter's type box and whoseniches his kids had filled withseashells from a family vacation.He pushed two single beds togetherto make a double.

"It came out nice," he says. "I. was pr ud of it."

With his apartment in order, heset about reconstructing his sociallife.

He took off his wedding ring. Heput on a pinkie ring.

Gone were the school activities,the neighborhood projects, theweekly or twice-weekly visits withthe family to temple. His newschedule was racquetball onMonday nights; Tuesday at Billyand Co., in Wheeling; Wednesday"who knows"; Thursday at homewith a Big Mac, "Hill Street Blues"and the bills. Friday and Saturdaywere date nights, and on Sundayshe joined the crowd at theSnuggery in Schaumburg.

At the bars, he became part of asuburban recycling circuit traveledby the formerly married. Thepeople he met thete have becomehis new community.

His favorite times are spent withthe Tuesday night regulars atBilly's. When the dinner customershave gone, he and a few friendswho don't like the flashing lightsand synthesized drum in the baracross the lobby push togetherseveral tables in the dining room.They often sit there in the lowlights, amid the dark wood, the redbooths and the gold chandeliersand talk until I or 2 in themorning. Of the many things towhich he has been introduced sincehis divorce, this easy camaraderieamong men and women is one hevalues most.

Even so, he longs for the rewardsand routines of family life. Aftertwo years alone, he moved into anapartment with a woman he got toknow at Billy's. Her son still livedat home, and her parents were stillalive. He saw a way to replanthimself quickly in a family.

It was a mistake bred ofloneliness. He soon moved out andinto another modern one-bedroomapartment.

Mar Rue is in a Prospect Heightsneighborhood made up almostsolely of condos and apartments.Complex after complex stretchesdown a road shaved of trees. Theyhave names such as Old WillowFalls, Lake Run, Bay Grove, namesthat do little more than recall whatthe land was before it was pavedand built upon.

The best recommendation he canmuster for his apartment is, "It'sclean."

Its deficiencies do not mattermuch because he tries not to bethere much. He fills his time tooverflow, but still one truthremains:

"When you're living alone, whenall of it's over, you still go homealone," he says. "That's one of thebiggies. You still go home alone,wash the clothes alone, eat some ofyour meals alone. And the thingthat I think about probably themost is if you wake up ... "

He pauses and looks apologetic."I say it as a joke, but ... butwhat happens if you wake up deadone morning? Who's going to missyou?"

He thinks about his friends atBilly's. If one of them weren't toshow up for a week or 10 days,he'd notice. "But I wouldn't thinkthey were dead in their apartment.I'd think they had something elseto do."

What would happen, he wonders,if he went home one night, packedhis bags and hopped the next flightto Europe? How long would it takefor his friends at Billy's to say,"Hey, what happened to Phil?"How long would it take his kids?

ALL LITTLE KIDSSEEM TO NEED SOMETHING

FOR SECURIT'<' ..

Singles scene,military style

There are 874 military in-stallations in the continen-tal United States, accord-ing to American

Demographics magazine. Theyrange from three-person Cam-pion Air Force Base in Galena,Alaska, to the Norfolk Naval AirStation in Virginia, which em-ploys 48,000 people.

These bases are primarily malebastions because, says AmericanDemographics, 90 percent of ac-tive-duty military personnel aremen ages 18 to 40.

If, as some studies allege, thereis a national shortage of bache-lors, the Norfolk-Virginia Beach-Newport News metropolitan areais aberrant. There, men outnum-ber women in every age categorybelow 35, and in the prime mar-rying-age range-18 to 24 yearsold-there ate 135 men for every100 women.

So perhaps single womenshould consider moving close toa military base where 40 percentof enlisted men and 25 percentof officers are unmarried.

News for you

Overlooked problemWife beating is a nightmare, but

within that form of abuse thereexists an even more disgustingphenomenon. A recent study at aprenatal clinic in the Houstonarea showed that 12 percent ofthe pregnant women using theservice had been beaten.

The March of Dimes says ob-stetricians and other providers ofhealth care should pay attentionto pregnant patients who repeat-edly miss appointments, offervague medical complaints andshow such visible injuries asbruises and black eyes.

Vididiots reduxIn recent years the home video

game industry has bounced aboutlike a pinball. Sales skyrocketedfrom less than $100 million in1978 to $3 billion a year in 1982and 1983, according to statisticscompiled by video gamemakerNintendo of America Inc. From1981 to 1982, sales of homevideo games increased an incredi-

Tribune photo by Charles Cherney

Debra Atkins, waitress at Billy's, takes Phil Klinsky's order: The Tuesday band of regular customersshares a "brotherhood of tribulation."

It is close to 10 one Tuesdaynight when KJinsky arrives atBilly's wearing jeans, boots, afringed blue suede jacket and ashirt open at the collar to reveal agold chain and mezuza. The jacketwas a present from a woman hemet at Billy's. The chain was apresent from his kids.

"Sure, I dress different now," hesays. "A little more flamboyant. Iused to be a jeans-and-sports-shirtkind of person. Now I realize thatthe jeans have to be clean. Youhave to look in the mirror longerbecause other people are looking atyou more."

The music from "Fame" pulsesfrom the bar, but the dining roomis quiet. From across the room,two men wave. KJinsky joins them.

These men belong to abrotherhood of tribulation. KJinskyexplains that many of his friendshave traveled the same routethrough life, from growing up inthe city to rearing a family in thesuburbs to finding themselvesunexpectedly alone in midlife .

"The hardest part for me is theloneliness," says one of the men,who wears aviator glasses and adesigner sweatshirt. His grimace isa mix of amusement and self-disgust. "So I go jump my wifeevery night. That's really learningto live alone, isn't it?"

"The hardest part for me," saysthe other, "is learning to take careof myself. I had never donelaundry."

"Yeah," says the first one,nodding. "My socks aren't whiteanymore. But I tell you" -hisvoice rises with pleasure- "I amvery neat. And now I don't have topick up after anybody anymore."

His friend stirs his drink andshrugs in contradiction. "And I'mnot neat, and now there's nobodyto pick up after me."

One of the men wanders off. Theother takes to stroking the back ofa friendly woman. KJinsky orderscoffee.

"I have found in my age categorya lot of men have never taken timeto develop side interests," KJinskysays. "They spend most of theirlives making a living. When theyend up alone, they don't knowwhat to do with themselves. If theydon't sit and watch television, \they're lost." That's part of whythey spend so much time in thebars.

A waitress pours him a third cupof coffee and he mentions his kids.They are in their early to mid-20s.

"One of the hardest things forme is holidays. Thanksgiving, Momgets first shot. Christmas, Momgets first shot. That changeseverything."

The year he was divorced hewaited until the day beforeThanksgiving to accept a friend'sdinner invitation, hoping until thelast minute that the kids wouldcall.

Last Christmas, when his kidssuggested he meet them for abelated holiday dinner in arestaurant, he decided it was timeto exercise parental prerogative.

He filed his demands: Theywould buy a bucket of chicken. Hewould load the presents that hadbeen sitting on his kitchen table fora month into his brown '77 Buick.He would drive to his daughter'sapartment. They would sit togetherin a home, not a restaurant. Theywould talk to each other like afamily, not acquaintances. Theydid. They had fun.

KJinsky tries to talk to his kids atleast once a week on the phone,but he feels awkward inviting themto his apartment. He can't imaginewhat he would say to them oncethey were there.

Last summer, however, heoffered his son a key. Whoever gothome first earned the right to theking-size waterbed. The otherwould have to settle for the sofa.His son never took him up on theoffer, but KJinsky knew it wasappreciated.

Gradually, he has reconciledhimself to his new life. He evenprefers parts of it to his marriedways. He likes the fact that ratherthan staying home on Saturdaynights with hot dogs and "LoveBoat," he tries exotic restaurants.He feels more confident aboutreviving and making friendships.

He says he has startedappreciating the nights when hecan come home, kick off his shoes,sit on the floor and eat ahamburger while watching TV.

He is lonely sometimes but nolonelier, he says, than on thosemany nights during his marriagewhen he'd come home from workat 8 p.m. and find the kitchen tableset for one.

"One plate, one glass, one placesetting," he says. " 'Did you e •

dear?' 'Yeah, I ate with the kids. Ihad to eat with the kids. Now I'mgoing to go finish my book.' "

He just wishes that some of thethings that give him pleasurenow-old friends, new restaurants,nights out-s-he had takenadvantage of when he was married.

"I'm a guy who loves to beproud of a house," he says. "I missmy house."

If suddenly his old house weregiven back to him, though, if hiskids said they were going to moveback in with him, if there weresome magical way to resume hisold life, he would have to thinktwice about the offer.

If that meant he could never goto Billy's again, never talk to Pamthe waitress, not try new businessventures as easily, it might not beworth it.

"I've tasted other things," hesays. "I like them both. I'd like tohave the best of both worlds. I'dlike to have a nice house that I'mproud of and also to be able to sayon Tuesdays to all my friends atBilly's, 'Hey, Friday night, let'smeet at my place.' "

Phil KJinsky recently moved inwith a woman he met at Billy's.

Thursday: Katie Rodriguez-Hinman, 14, is the child of amodern marriage who must spendmuch of her time alone.

DEARBORN CinemaDowntownWATER TOWERChiC8g0HYDE PARKChicagoNORTOWNChiC8g0BOLINGBROOKBolingbrookEDENSNorthbrookEVANSTONEvanston

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ble $2 billion.What spurred the boom initially

was the game Pong in 1979. Thatyear Atari joined the fray, and therace was on. In 1981 Mattei en-tered the market with $250 mil-lion in annual sales, and a yearlater Colecovision came aboardwith $286 mi11iona year in sales.

Then the market crashed like agunned-down space ship, partlybecause of dumping and discount-ing. Sales dropped from $3 billionin 1983 to $2 billion in 1984. Bylate 1985 the bottom had fallenout; annual sales of home videogames ran around $100 mi11ion.

Now the industry has started tocome back gradually. Sales indus-trywide rose to $430 mi11ionin1986 and are expected to reach$825 mi11ionin 1987.

New, more sophisticated gamesthat attract a wider audiencehelped fuel the comeback Nin-tendo says that in the UnitedStates 30 percent of home videogame users are more than 24.

Body beautifulBarbie's measurements are 5lf4-

3-4314.Jim Spencer

Horoscope:June 10By Joyce Jillson

Birthday: More options open up thisyear. Get in step with the public; learn,grow and expand. Keep down roots,too. Wait for trends to develop thismonth. July finds you smiling, laughingand loving. New romantic prospectsdevelop. Tend to practical matters inAugust. Structure your activities more.Travel, communicate, study in Septem-ber. A thrilling change is in store. Oc-tober is more settled. Positive businessdevelopments come in December. Feb-ruary is strong for career. New trendsform in April.

Aries (March 21-Aprll 19): Build abetter relationship with relatives. Yoursalesmanship will improve over thenext three weeks. Increase yourreading; improve your mind.

Taurus (April 20-May 20): You'rehappy about a positive financialchange. Other people are impressedwith your impeccable taste in clothesand art objects. You'll be sensitive toemotional rejection.

Gemini (May 21-June 21): Betweennow and July 5, Venus will be improv-ing your finances and relationships.Work for the love of it, not for materialgain. Your personality attracts others.

Cancer (June 22-July 22): eep twosteps ahead of everyone else. Onceagain you feel optimistic about the fu-ture. Payoff old debts, and avoid goingon an emotional binge. You receivegood news in the evening.

Leo (July 23-Aug. 22): Your positiveapproach is the key to your success.The next few weeks will bring you abatch of new friends. Don't judge thefuture by your past. You're breakingnew ground.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Take on alarger view of life. Details are not im-portant. Plan a trip if you want to. Letlife support you; have faith in yourselfand your talents.

Libra (Sept. 23-0ct. 23): After a peri-od of emotional questioning you are fullof optimism again. A new relationshipadds excitement to your life. Be opento meeting people from all walks of life.

Scorpio (Oct. 24-Nov. 21): You'll beable to assess the new financial trends.The import/export business may attractyou or perhaps the travel industry.Take a broad overall view of life.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): You'rein the center of the action. Some ofyour dreams will be fulfilled today. Ifyou want quick results, start somethingnew. You get the recognition you de-serve.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): You'vebeen keeping up a steady pace. Nowyou get to vary your routine. If you'releaving on a trip it's bound to be suc-cessful. Take care of behind-the-scenes matters.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Thingscome to a head in your social life.Some people will leave it, and somewill stay. You're clearer about your pro-fessional goals. Don't overexpand.

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20): You areenthusiastic about the success in yourcareer. Your security comes from beingappreciated in your job. Build every-thing on the strength of your domesticlife.

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