How Did It Really End?

“Yesterday Once More” (piano)

Listen to Chapter 19, “How Did It Really End?”


by Julie Johnson

Well, this should not be too hard to figure out, should it?!? Of course, Bill came home safely to me four months after his illegal R&R. He came to North Carolina where Howard and I were teaching at Orchill Hills Academy. We had a beautiful Christmas wedding with Howard playing the organ, then Bill and I moved off campus while I continued to teach piano at Orchill Hills. He worked in town for a few years until we could save up enough money to move back to Riverdale where we still live. Our four children are beautiful and brilliant. Our daughters are teachers and artists, and our sons are computer geniuses and astute business executives. Most of all, the intense love that we have shared since 1963 is for eternity!


by Annie Johnson

One day I walked into my mom’s house and saw a picture of Bill Johnson, my stepdad’s youngest brother. I said, “That is the man I’m going to marry and spend the rest of my life with.” And I did. I began writing to Bill while he was still in Vietnam, even though he was engaged to Julie who worked in North Carolina. When he came home, he went to North Carolina, but came to his brother’s house first, and met my mom and me. That was all it took! We fell in love at first sight, and the rest is history. Bill and I got married, moved back to California, and became friends with Bob and Sandra Miller. Bill never even mentioned Julie again until recently when he found out she’s now a lesbian! Sorry, Bill, you’ve got the wrong body parts for her.


by Howard Davidson

Julie and I began our teaching careers in North Carolina. Even though Julie thought she was going to marry Bill Johnson when he came home from the Army, she was so focused on her work as girls’ dean and piano teacher that she kept postponing her wedding. After a while, Bill gave up on her and married a local girl. I was ecstatic to have Julie all to myself! We got married and seven years later we discovered I was gay and she was a lesbian. We remained legally married, however, and bought a big elegant house in San Francisco. Although I have had many gay lovers over the years, my Orchill Hills student secretary, Lina Jackson, came to live with us and became Julie’s lover. They were each artificially inseminated with my superior donor sperm. Lina and Julie each had one child, both of them intelligent, musical, and superior in every way.


by Janelle Radclyffe

I never forgot my roommate Julie Scott! She was sweet and shy, sensitive and intelligent, and lots of fun to be with. After she left La Paloma, I finished college and began my teaching career. I fell in love with Caitlin, and we lived together for a few years until she broke my heart and got married to a man. But I always stayed in touch with Julie. When her marriage broke up, I invited her to come stay with me for a while. She had two babies by that time and did not want to live on welfare. We quickly fell in love! She stayed at home and taught piano while I continued to teach school. Julie and I raised her children together and became active in supporting gay rights. She became a bold and assertive feminist woman, and I became an understanding and gentle stepmother. We are proud of our independent children who moved out and have lived on their own from a very early age.


by Allen Macintosh

Yes, I remember Julie Scott. I liked her because of her intelligence and devotion to me. It was easy to make her laugh, make her cry, and get her to do just about anything I wanted her to. All I had to do was tell her I loved her, and she always believed me, no matter how badly I treated her. But breaking up with her was the biggest mistake of my life. Although I was married for many years to Shirley, a sensible woman who achieved a brilliant career and was a model wife and mother, after our divorce I contacted Julie again. But by then it was too late for me. Julie had definitely moved on with her life; and, while cordial to me, no longer had any romantic interest in me. I told her to “bloom where you’re planted.” I don’t know why I said that.


by Lina Reiter

My name was Lina Jackson at Orchill Hills Academy where I first met Howard Davidson and Julie Scott. I so loved their music! I never forgot them, even after they left North Carolina. Julie and I, each in our separate worlds, got married, had babies, and raised them halfway to adulthood before our respective marriages fell apart. I moved across the country to begin my new life in California as a business partner with Howard at Davidson Music Press, and I found Julie on the internet! We discovered how much we had in common, what with our mothering, our musical interests, and most of all our mutual love for Howard Davidson and his music. We lived together and finished raising our children together. The children have all become responsible, productive young adults. Now in midlife, Julie and I both have brilliant careers as professional musicians and web designers, and plan to spend our golden years in luxury.


by Bill Johnson

Hey, no one has asked me what really happened in Riverdale! Yes, I knew Julie Scott. I fell in love with Julie that night in Beach City when we walked hand in hand on Rainbow Pier. We played in the Riverdale hay pits, where I kissed her and made love to her for the very first time. We were engaged to be married until I visited my older brother in North Carolina and met my sister-in-law’s beautiful daughter, Annie. We have been married for many decades, have children and grandchildren, and I have had a stable career in computers with the same company for all these years. I’m very much in love with the woman I was always meant to marry, who is beautiful and brilliant and sexy. Our love is forever and always!


by Juliana Harvard

Who is this Julie Scott person, anyway? And how does she presume to use my name to copyright her lousy stories? Her writing is so arcane. She must have been a very confused and dysfunctional teenager, especially to have written such melodramatic trash about her life! As for me, I’m the legendary “Suburban Married Lady” who is writing a series of brilliant autobiographical novels about my life—my marriages, my children, my divorces, my coming out as a bisexual woman, my passionate love affairs with persons of both genders and orientations, and my current fascinating career in Silicon Valley as a high-tech service engineer and successful author. Do I sound like that pitiful Julie Scott of long-ago Riverdale?!?

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