The love letter to Jesus Danny and the lessons I learned

In honor of Valentine’s Day, I thought I would share a bit of my past with you all.  A story about my very first love letter and the lessons it taught me.

I also did an audio recording of this post.  You can listen to it here:

Listen to Audio of Jesus Danny

Me and Jesus Danny

I was the nice girl in high school. What that meant was everyone really liked me, but no one really liked me. And what that meant was I wrote a lot of terrible poetry. I would spend hours hermitting in my room, my radio playing sad songs as I opened a vein and let the pain spill forth. Did I mention I was also a bit dramatic?

Junior year I fell hard for Danny. The first time I saw him was in a production of Jesus Christ Superstar. Yep, I loved Jesus in a whole new way!

Jesus Danny was nice. He paid me some attention (which if you recall from a previous post is a declaration of everlasting love for me), so I decided he was the chosen one.  I would watch the girl who played Mary Magdalene to his Jesus as she sang “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” and I wanted to scream, “then get the hell off the stage, because I have a pretty good idea of how I could love him.”

Of course, I was never the most confident person in the world, even with my cool 80’s tail swinging with ‘rat”itude from my hairline.

A young Moxie sporting a healthy dose of 80's "rat"itude!

I looked the part, for sure, but I wasn’t the whole package. It’s not that I was shy, but I never really believed someone could love me. Perhaps that’s why no one really did.

Jesus Danny was no exception. He was always so nice to me when we’d all hang out together. But I really wanted to hang out alone with JD.  Maybe sing him a song, tell him “everything’s all right”, be his disciple.

And while I could never really vocalize my feelings to people, there was one thing I was really good at – writing. My best friend at the time, Tresha, did little to talk me down from the idea that I had – a way to tell Jesus Danny how I really felt – a letter.

26 years later  it is simply referred to as “The Letter”. I sat down with my Trapper Keeper full of looseleaf and began to fill up page after page of my deepest feelings for JD. I’m sure I probably used a purple pen or something equally as God-awful and teenage girly, maybe even, God forbid, glittery.

I’m sure I had visions of Jesus Danny embracing me and saying he felt the same way and would I like to play Mary Magdalene and wash his feet.   What I’m sure I didn’t do is think about the fact that regardless of his reaction I would have to face him nearly every weekend.  Jesus Danny would always be with me.

As Tresha drove me down to River Street in her powder blue Datsun, my stomach lurched with each cobblestoned bump in the road. I have no idea what I was wearing. I have no idea if the sun was shining. I have no idea why in the hell I thought this would bring JD, my own personal superstar, the much needed push to give me his burning heart. Clearly the heart of a teenage girl head over heels in love, is nothing but a vault of stupid.

I ran into Saints and Unicorns, the shop where he worked – Jesus Danny and saints, surely this was a match made in heaven.  I saw his glorious face beaming from behind the counter and with sweaty palms and a hopeful heart said, “This is for you” as I pushed “The Letter” over the counter to him.

I think I ran out after wards. I might have thrown up in the river. I’m just not sure because my memory stops there…and picks up at Stageside Desserts, Jesus Danny’s Jerusalem, at least for two more weekend shows.

We were all there in the theater hanging out. Danny walked over to me with his kind smile melting my heart, and Tresha gave me a look that said, “See the letter was the most awesomest idea ever!” I gave her a return look that said, “See my words are like little cupid arrows that no one can resist. Jesus Danny and I will be 2-gether 4-ever and ever amen!”

“Hey Michelle, can you come go for a ride with me?” Jesus Danny wanted me to follow him.  To be his right hand  girl, his Mary M..  Tresha and I exchanged glances and shared an internal squeal of teenage girl delight. “Okay, sure,” I managed to say.  When I was really singing a chorus of “Amazing Grace” in my head – I was lost, but now am found!  I was blind, but now I see!  I was honest, and now I’m loved! Oh, Jesus Danny you rock my world with your superstar ways.  I believe in miracles!

We went to his cobalt blue VW Beetle. The car that would set my butterflies free every time I saw it. As we started driving I kept thinking he was going to park somewhere and gaze into my eyes and profess his love for me. Or maybe, if I was lucky he would pull his acoustic guitar out of the backseat and play a song he wrote for me after I gave him the beautiful gospel according to Michelle letter. I was all smiles and nerves, a bundle of love waiting to be untied.

He parked the car someplace that I can’t remember. Then he turned to me…yes, yes, and he smiled, oh I love you too Jesus Danny, and he said….

“I like you.” I must have let out a sigh, I know I must have. Finally, finally someone liked me. “But…” Oh wait, don’t ruin it, but what? I felt my insides tighten.

“I feel like everyone is pushing us together and it just doesn’t feel right that way.” “No,” I wanted to scream. “It does feel right, it can feel right. What about the letter? What about my heart?  What about the whole love one another and Jesus loves you and Jesus, this can NOT be happening to me!”

Instead, I smiled and said, “Oh okay. I understand.” My smile was frozen. I was crying inside and my stomach was a burning pit as I looked out the window. The letter was never even mentioned. My words remained stuck to the page forever. And I wondered how Danny felt when he read them, if he read them.

We remained friends. And I saw him nearly every weekend. Saw him as he started dating a close friend of mine. Saw him and wondered every time, whatever happened to my words, Jesus Danny.

Years later Danny was playing a gig at a local art museum. My husband, and I went with our son Jacob. After Danny played, Warner took Jacob outside so I could say hi to Danny. Of course with years behind us the discomfort was gone. I laughed and said, “Oh Danny I just wanted to apologize for the, um, the letter.” I expected him to laugh too. But he didn’t. Instead he said, “Oh don’t apologize. It was how you felt. There was nothing wrong with that. Nothing at all.  Don’t ever be embarrassed by how you feel.”

Looking back, I don’t regret that I gave Jesus Danny the Letter. I think that it was the beginning of my life of expression. I learned that sometimes you can write the things you can’t say.  And I learned that sometimes there are some things that just need to be said regardless of whether or not anyone wants to hear them.

And maybe Jesus Danny didn’t love me back, but I believe that he did resurrect in me a desire to continue to put my words on paper for all to read, whether they love me or not.

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My Life in Letters – “D” is for Donny

Me and my ex-boyfriend

It’s hard to remember a time growing up when I didn’t have a crush. I was just that kind of girl. If you looked at me, I loved you. Which meant that I spent a great deal of my time in heartbreak because 9 times out of 10, well, actually more like 9.99 times out of 10 the crushee didn’t return the sentiment.

I remember my first crush, my first love. He wore purple socks, had perfect Chiclet gum teeth, and a voice that made my little girl heart beat out of my chest and I loved him more than any Barbie, more than any thing, I loved him.

His name was Donny. He never really knew me, but I knew him well. I watched him from afar and decided I would marry him one day because he had pretty brown hair and could sing songs about feelings I wanted to wear like a grownup. Feelings that wouldn’t really fit my 8 year old self, but I didn’t care because Donny understood “how a young heart really feels and why I love(d) (him) so.” I’m quite sure I played the scene out in my head over and over again as I fell asleep, his songs echoing in my hopeful mind.

It’s funny how anything’s possible in a heart that still believes in fairy tales, still believes in princes and Quixote-like devotion. I knew we would marry. I would find a way for him to know me. I would be his “Puppy Love“.

Sadly, that day never came.  I clearly remember lying in my bed one night looking at my poster of Donny Osmond, his big brown almond eyes looking out into my room that I shared with my brother in that sad little ramshackle house on Causton Bluff. The home where I could hear Lupo, the German Shepard who had crawled underneath the house and positioned himself just under the tub where I bathed, throwing up some bad chemical-laden grass or maybe a foul river rat.

It was in that house, in that bed with my brother sleeping across the room underneath a poster of his crush, Linda Rondstadt, who wore hot pants and roller skates with her perfect cupid bow lips, that I finally realized it would never happen. I would never marry Donny Osmond.

And it was in that bed, one night that I cried myself to sleep for the love I had decided was mine before I even had it. The love I had to let go before I had even known it. Without even knowing me, Donny Osmond had broken my heart.

Flash forward many, many, years, crushes, heartbreaks and wonderful husband, later and I find myself watching Dancing with the Stars rooting for my former crush. He looks happy and I’m glad, because I am too.

Without my crush on Donny I might never have felt the early flutterings of my heart. I really believe that since the heart is a muscle it needs to be worked out.  My crushes were nothing but workouts making me stronger and stronger – preparing me for the real Donny whose name just happened to be Warner.

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