Last Dance
Writing Tom Petty
“Last Dance” is not my failed attempt to write a Tom Petty tribute.
This girl’s world was rocked when I heard about Tom’s passing. He represented more to me than a native son townie from Gainesville, Florida. For me, his passing put me right back in those days and times, where doing what you loved best and believing in the potential of yourself and your friends had no limits, as long as you never gave up.
I tried to write a tribute. Any attempt to explain 1970s Florida threw me off track. Those times came off too quaint, too hopeful and certain to wax nostalgic for those who did not come of age in a state hot and humid with talent all “ … workin’ on something big”.
Other people wrote Tom tributes. Lots of tributes, tributes still being written. Everyone misses Tom Petty. Still.
I decided to write a short story and I chose an unreliable narrator to guide me.
Warning. She’s a bit of a distorted truth teller.
Several drafts in, the story caught the tale I’d hope to tell.
Saw Palm: Florida Literature and Art included “Last Dance” as part of Florida Noir, Vol. 14, Spring 2020.
Big thanks to the USF English Department/USF Writing Programs for including “Last Dance” as part of Florida Noir.
Read more about the journal here and while you’re there, grab a cup of coffee and browse through the past issues. Calls for submissions open on July 1st.
Print lives on.
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For those with perfect vision, photos are provided to read “Last Dance” as published.
Otherwise, enjoy the ahem “clearer” copy of the story.
Thanks for reading.
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Last Dance
The sudden passing of Tom Petty had hit her hard.
It wasn’t because Marilyn was a huge fan, but more that she was a huge liar. She found his music ordinary and never gave any real credence to the lyrics she mumbled through in wait for the chorus. Her friends liked the rocker well enough and she would pretend along, but whenever she could work it into a conversation, Marilyn would tell them and anyone else who would listen that she and Tom Petty were born the same year in the same hospital and raised in the same Florida town.
Marilyn rattled off this false claim to fame her entire life. The more she shared, the more she embellished. He lived twenty minutes down the highway, my sister and I drove by his house once and he was out in the yard, mowing the grass, and yes, he waved. To redeem herself, she’d add a lick of the truth, well, no we never actually met … that day. She couldn’t remember when the first lie flew off her tongue, but it was said and gone with no take backs. People hung on her every word like she was someone special and before long, her feigned brush with fame became as much a part of her as her lying heart.
His age at death certainly shook her, he the same age as she, that much was true, but the jolt of mortality didn’t keep her from prompting condolence at the grocery store a few days following his funeral.“Tom Petty,” she said softly, as the cashier rang up the magazine with his picture on the front.“We could have been high school sweethearts, if he hadn’t met my best friend first.” The manager overheard and insisted on carrying her bags out to the car, the least he could do in her time of sorrow. She filled his ears with backwater the entire way. I babysat Tom Petty’s cat. I listened to Tom play dive bars before he hit it big, Tommy and me and our friends screamed around riding bikes to anywhere else, wearing swimsuits and drug store flip-flops, scraping our toes raw by misjudging the down pedal a half inch too close to the steamy asphalt.
Marilyn couldn’t change what was past, but she could revisit it without feeling the need to publicly admit she had lied all these years. She decided as penance for her lifelong lying ways, she would memorize every word and every nuance of Petty’s greatest hits. She rummaged through her keepsake trunk and struck college gold with the find of her Walkman and a shoebox full of old audio cassettes. She chose Mary Jane’s Last Dance to begin her self-imposed punishment, not because she preferred the song to others, but because her aunt had the same first name. When she knew the song by absolute heart, she would move on to another and another after that, until she felt herself absolved or her eardrums bled, whichever came first.
Amazing!! 🐊🍊