Michael's golden curls and that velvet voice seemed to flash those I'll love-you-forever-promises just in my direction. And he delivered them like a master, being a singer who could interpret emotionally-charged lyrics, his face beaming bright friendship and romance-forever across every moment I gazed at him in rapt appreciation.

Michael's voice had the smooth soulfulness of youthful masculinity, resonant with affectionate vibrations. When he played the piano, he looked as happy as a clam, and I was too. If this part I was playing with him wasn't the beginning of a 1940s romance film— including a score of hot-but-sophisticated musical numbers—what else could it have been?

What my inventive mind has since made it—with the help of reality-- is simply a romantic's lesson illustrating how even momentary times—short periods-- spent loving each other-- need ever be lost. Walt Whitman indicated as much. There's no such thing as unrequited love, he insisted, "the payment is certain one way or another."

One way or another.

Michael, when I knew him, lived in the very neighborhood shadow of Catholic University in Washington, D.C. I remember a few long and happy nights spent at his apartment, nights when we hardly slept, so eager were we in youth's flush—well…to me, it seemed that way, at least.

Michael—born into the traditions of the Roman church—looked as close, I thought, to an angel as I could imagine. Those golden curls, probably. And his happy-go-lucky song-stance too.

But it was really that wide range of-emotionally-knowing sounds he made that captured my heart most. He looked happier singing in my direction than I could have ever hoped for. I was sure I'd found a Person of Permanence.

"I know why my mother taught me to be true," he crooned, dancing over the piano, catching me straight in the eye, "she meant me for someone Exactly Like You."

Yes, Michael could make me feel "so grand" He seemed to understand each "foolish little dream" I was dreaming; "scheme" I was scheming. He talked lyrics and melody with me a lot and I learned more about popular American music during that music-concentrated period than at any other time in my life before or since.

I began at age 18—and under Michael White's influence-- to give more and more consideration to the importance of lyrics, asking just what are the moods that a song conveys? Knowing as I do the power of mantras—of repeating either wise or stupid things to ourselves in song or otherwise— the lyrical message waxes more relevant, I've decided, in the unfolding or development of our human experiences than we know.

Michael White showed me his shrewd sense, knowing instinctively which lyrics and melodies ought to inhabit his repertoire. And as a budding writer, I was a connoisseur of words too. Each poem-lyric in a song must be good poetry, I insisted. I detested pop's juke-box-schmaltz-songs. And I wanted to hear songs I'd never heard before, but ones I'd pretty much like—bingo-- right on the spot. Michael, at 22, knew how to deliver these type songs, beguiling me with his innovative treatments, quickly winning my teen-throbbed, near-groupie's heart.

A particular song I disocvered through Michael, was one he'd plucked from an old Susan Hayward movie, My Foolish Heart.

"There's a line between love and fascination, that's hard to see on an evening such as this, explained that fabulous song, " 'cause they both give the very same sensation, when you're lost in the magic of a kiss…" Yup, My Foolish Heart —in spite of all the other songs I learned to love that year— was the one I thought ought to best characterize my eighteenth year.

Michael was the first person I'd dated, period. I was definitely harboring hopes we'd become a perma-couple. And, he was the first boyfriend to take me on one of those weekend jaunts from Washington to Manhattan. There, on our final night in the Big Apple, Michael played and sang late late in a Greenwich Village nightclub, sharing the piano with an elderly black diva. Afterwards, at 5 a.m., we were scheduled to return to the nation's capital. At 4 a.m. when the club was closed by law, we waited for an hour to pass, sitting on a bench in Sheridan Square, now the site of Manhattan's gay monument— and directly across from the old Stonewall Inn.

Michael— now outside the club--was still singing in the square, and several times that night he sang Cole Porter's "I've Got You Under My Skin," and the sound was near-perfection. I can still hear that smooth voice leaping happily into night air, resounding against a nearby building. Simultaneously, an enormously fat heterosexual couple on the next bench over went nearly out-of-control in a frenzy of smooching.

It was easily a scene—this-- from that 40s film I saw myself in. Michael's treatment of Cole Porter would echo always, I realized then, in a consciousness—mine—that had pledged never to forget him because of it.

The strong emotions evoked in me at such times must have grown, some think, over an extended period of time. Yeah, two whole glorious weeks. A teen's lifetime. Yup, I'd been seeing Michael White for only two measly weeks when he dropped me-- plunko— never once saying why.

I had no theories as to why. Not one. I'd thought he wanted me as much as I did him. Everything had seemed perfect to me. But what could a first-timer like me really know about another first-timer like Michael? Nothing. We'd laughed together sure-- and were respectful of each other. Michael had introduced me to some damn good songs and appreciating them has remained part of his gift to me, romantic residue that has seeped into a lifetime of joy.

Michael remained mum about our break-up. I'd just been dumped. No explanations deemed necessary. At first he wouldn't let me see him again, either. He was wiser than I then realized, perhaps. So, there I was—over the remainder of the summer--flushed with a sense of Early Autumn poignancy. I couldn't grasp how, in my song-angel-man's arms, I'd turned so suddenly from somebody to love into a forgotten dream.

But had I?

Could our glad romance that I thought he'd been singing about to me, have just gone up in smoke? Had my hopes been dashed utterly to naught, leaving no traces for the future? Would it really have helped then if I could simply have seen the future? If I could have foreseen today, for example?

Twenty years first passed. Great times for me. Michael would be altogether absent from these decades. But one evening I walked into a nightclub near The Great White Way and there singing at the piano and holding a rapt Manhattan audience's attention, was my song man, Michael White. His style still had, I noticed, its special, youthful warmth, a driving kind of sincerity.

I crept up behind him between songs and tapped him on the shoulder. "Do you know, My Foolish Heart?" I petitioned mischievously, hoping to surprise him. He recognized me immediately. Then smiling, he leaned on the piano keys, once again serenading me with My Foolish Heart, full-throated.

Afterwards we talked for a while and later that year we corresponded briefly after I left the Big Apple, disappearing where "good times there are not forgotten", in Dixie.

Twenty-two more years then elapsed, and now its been a total of 42 years since I first laid eyes on Michael White. Its now June, 1998. The telephone rings. Its him, its Michael, right out of the blue. "Is this Jack Nichols' number?"

That youthful, smooth masculinity he had at 22 remains an intriguing draw in his voice. In Manhattan he's just recorded a new album, he tells me. Its titled Try Your Wings. There's a cut called My Foolish Heart, he says.

Try Your Wings arrives in the mail. I take the CD to the player but first here's the songlist. I'm wondering…will that youthful bounce and know-how still be in his singing voice like in his telephone voice?

The songs listed, I note, are each followed by Michael's comments. My Foolish Heart. Yes, there, beneath that title Michael first takes note of composer Victor Young's lush romantic tones. Then he remarks: "This song brings back memories of Jack Nichols and the 50s. Ever since I first sang it for him, he would always ask me to sing it."

Jack Nichols and the 1950s? Yes, its been that long ago. It was 1956, in fact, in the early summer. Ours was only a two-week affair, but somehow—even so— some of these particular embers have now managed to cast their strange, long-ago brightness across two score years and two.

I press a button on my CD machine and Michael White's voice once again fills the living room around me. He's singing, "You Fascinate Me So," and its him alright, wow, it's him. Youthful and bouncy in style, warm, smooth and as emotionally knowledgeable as he had always sounded.

Next, comes the album's title song—Try Your Wings-- and its rich lyrics tell of a brand of life-wisdom in Michael that deftly celebrates love in just that way he's always done in song. "If you're hungry for the sound of a lover saying sentimental things, try your wings!"

Those are appropriate words for a golden-haired angel to sing, n'est pas? And sing like stud-angel, he does.

There's a song about friendship by Paul Williams called That's What Friends Are For, and it isn't the version I'd thought it would be. But somehow I find myself liking this version—a different song entirely--even better!

Michael's new album, produced and arranged by Dave Stryker, also features Allen Farnham, piano and keyboards; Dave Stryker, guitar; Bill Moring, bass; Eric Halverson, drums.

(left to right): Eric, drums; Bill, bass; Michel, vocals; Allen, piano; Dave, guitar (1998)

Michael's voice has the kind of backing it deserves from these four fine musicians. Each playing his instrument—often in unison with the others—carries along the same vivid, subtle appreciation for romantic nuances that Michael White embodies.