An Excerpt from FOREVER IN LOVE Betrayal and Redemption in the Age of Social Media By Martin Diano ______________ CHAPTER

ONE Cast of Characters

hen I saw him on Good Morning America being interviewed about his new nonfiction book Facebook, Fantasies, and Forever in Love, I immediately remembered him and leaned forward to the edge of my chair to hear more. Paul Conti and I had attended high school together in the 1960s. My name is Adan Cohen. I am a professional screenwriter. Paul and I had been pretty good friends back then. I had always thought of Paul as a real stand-up guy. My eyes were riveted to the TV screen. It was a fascinating interview a true account about personal destruction and the pain Paul caused other people when, after forty-one years of marriage, he used the popular social media site, Facebook, to contact his first-time lover. Hence, the books subtitle The Perils of Using Social Media to Connect with an Ex-Lover. He talked about his long period of introspection and the even longer and lonelier road to redemption. The book reached number one on The New York Times non-fiction best seller list in its first week in release. Paul said in the TV interview that the premise of his book was a cautionary tale about how social media is impacting our lives in ways that are not always positive or wholesome. Immediately after the GMA segment I headed straight for my desktop computer to order the book from Amazon. When the book arrived, I devour every page in a single sitting. It is that riveting and that provocative. In addition to Pauls personal story and how it impacts his family and friends, the book includes a lot of thought-provoking commentary and research about social media. People with problems in their marriage are turning more and more to social networking websites to help find what they may be missing at home. They fool themselves into thinking, because it is not a faceto-face relationship that no emotional attachment will be formed. In Pauls case, hed been haunted literally for decades by a Dear John letter he received while he was in the military. He

F0REVER IN LOVE . . .

An Excerpt

needed an explanation. Its not that unusual for people in their 50s and 60s to try and relive their youth. Social media is the vehicle that is being used to transport them back in time. For those of you, who might be unfamiliar with the term Dear John letter, the following is a commonly accepted definition: A Dear John letter is a letter written to a husband or boyfriend by his wife or girlfriend to inform him their relationship is over, usually because the writer has found another lover. Dear John letters are often written out of an inability or unwillingness to inform the person face to face. Paul writes in his book, Due to its ease and faceless nature social media communities, like Facebook and Twitter, make it easy to find, friend and connect with old flames online. What begins as a simple friend request can turn out to become much more and has led to marriage breakups. Its a very solid self-help book, I believe, with dozens of valuable resources for obtaining professional assistance. In Pauls case, he found it remarkably easy to reconnect with his high school sweetheart after an astounding forty-four years. What starts out as a simple friend request online can easily escalate and spin out of control, which was exactly what happened to Paul. The book cites several online groups, like one titled Facebook Ruined My Marriage, which is filled with hundreds of stories of cheating, lies, and broken hearts. Heres one example Paul includes in the book, a post from a woman named Victoria, a 24-year-old married for two years. She writes: Just found out my husband has been having an affair with an old classmate, who he has reconnected with on Facebook just up and left and didnt even have the balls to tell me himself. I am surprised to learn Facebook is fuelling a new boom in digital private detectives as jealous spouses react to Internet flirting, cheating, and lies. The temptations offered by Facebook and similar social networking websites are proving irresistible to people of all ages. Be truthful. Have you ever been tempted to hook up with an old flame online? Do you find yourself nervously checking your partners Facebook page for signs he/she has been cheating on you? Pauls book is so inspiring it gets me to thinking about writing a screenplay. What a terrific feature film this will make. It has all the ingredients necessary to appeal to a broad audience sex, lies, betrayal, loyalty, conflict, tension, surprises, and irony among them. The film would be an absorbing love story in which the cornerstone is about a man searching for the meaning of being forever in love. How can you go wrong with that? Most people want to be forever in love. Add to the mix social media, which is increasingly popular with all demographic groups and, I believe, I have a winning recipe for a blockbuster screenplay. To provide context, let me tell you a little about myself and how I figure into the storyline. After high school and graduating from New York University Film School, I moved to Los Angeles. Although Ive been a professional screenwriter for over four decades and have had modest success over the years with a few awards to my credit, Ive never written a multinominated, Oscar-caliber, blockbuster film. If you are interested in knowing the titles, you can look me up, Adan Cohen, in the Internet Movie Database. Its all there. Ive also authored four

F0REVER IN LOVE . . .

An Excerpt

novels, all relatively successful, but like the films, none are runaway bestsellers. Theres something about Pauls book, though, that gets my juices flowing. This could be one of those rare feature films that captures the imagination and has people talking about it for days afterwards. I would sure like to have one break-out film before I retire. Screenwriting is a young persons game. Its pretty tough out there for guys my age; nonetheless, Im not going to quit trying. Not yet, anyway.

I contact Paul to gauge his level of interest in adapting the book into a screenplay. He immediately remembers who I am and was delighted to receive me at his home in White Plains NY. Paul is pretty much the same guy I remembered from forty years ago. Tall, about 62, with a distinguished looking face. Not necessarily drop dead handsome, mind you, but good looking with facial features exactly in proportion, topped off by a head of thick and bushy brown hair that every 60-year-old guy wishes he has. And I can just tell Pauls a guy who frequents a gym or works out at home. Surprisingly, our meeting lasts for eight hours. We cover a lot of ground. A lot of memories are recounted. It actually turns out to be a fun afternoon for both of us. In addition to his wife, Denise, I ask Paul who else played a role in his life as it pertained specifically to this incident. I am surprised and somewhat spooked to learn that four other people from Pauls past are four people I also know from high school. There is Paula Connolly, Pauls ex-lover, and Cat Keenan, a tough street girl from the neighborhood, both of whom I remember well. Another person, in particular, I recall with considerable affection is Stephanie ODonnell, the wife of Shane Sweeny, also one of the four people involved in the incident. He is also from the same high school and will figure prominently in the screenplay. I remembered fondly that I had a serious, big time crush on Stephanie ever since the first time I laid eyes on her as a high school freshman. We dated several times, and I knew Stephanie really liked me. In fact, she liked me so much she wanted to meet my family. However, my mother, a Polish Jew who was among a dozen children rescued by the Americans in 1945 from Sobibor, a German extermination camp, made it abundantly clear that being friendly with anyone other than of my own kind, meaning Jewish, was unacceptable. It was an edict I vehemently disagreed with, but never challenged. Stephanie ultimately broke up with me and began dating Shane. We remained good friends throughout high school and through four years at New York University, the same college in which we both, by chance, enrolled. I often thought in college of asking Stephanie out on a date, but I never acted as my gut told me I should because of my mother. Finally, I did work up the courage to ask her out. Imagine my dismay when I learned she had become engaged to Shane Sweeny. The right woman eventually entered my life, but I lost her in a tragic car accident 15 years into my marriage. I did not remarry. I would never imagine that as a result of Paul Contis book, I would meet Stephanie ODonnell again forty-five years later under a set of very unusual circumstances, to say the least.

Returning to my meeting with Paul. At first, he expressed uncertainty about the film project. He acknowledges the book has been effective in spreading the word about the perils of social media and how it could lead to infidelity and ultimately cause divorce. But, he said,

F0REVER IN LOVE . . .

An Excerpt

because it is a non-fiction work, much of the titillating details and personal drama are decidedly muted or purposely omitted. After spending most of the day discussing the merits of the film project, Paul finally sees its value, from both a monetary and entertainment perspective in addition to the powerful educational message he had intended to deliver. But what about the others? he questioned, referring to the other people involved. What if they object? It was a very legitimate question. I assure Paul that even though their approval was not required to be included in the screenplay, as it is a work of fiction and the names would be changed anyway, I will interview all the key people in the book, tell them about the film project and get their perspective and, most importantly, their buy-in. Paul agrees. Whats more, I secured an option to adapt the book into a feature film. It took five weeks to contact the other four people. Three people I visit in person; and one I interview using Skype. They all addressed my questions giving me a much broader sense of the real-life drama they experienced. Interestingly enough, they all support the film version of the book, except for one person. Youll understand why a bit later. I also scheduled three more meetings with Paul and additional interviews with the other stakeholders in the project.

Ready to move forward with writing the screenplay, the first thing I have to do is to come up with a working title for the film and write a logline. The working title for the screenplay is FOREVER IN LOVE, because it was the overpowering emotion Paul and Paula felt about each other in high school. They often used the phrase Forever in Love as teenagers, and when they reconnect forty years later. As far as the logline goes . . . Oh yes, let me briefly explain what a logline is: in Hollywoodspeak a logline is a short and succinct description of a screenplay. My first working draft of a logline is: A married man uses Facebook to find and reunite with his first-time lover. His life is turned upside down when his wife learns of the tryst, and the ex-lover finds out hes married. The next thing I have to do is to write a film treatment. A film treatment is the foundation screenwriters use to outline the movie, scene by scene. Treatments are sometimes used within the motion picture industry as selling documents presented to movie studios, film production companies and agents that purchase scripts and turn them into feature films. While I have many contacts, I just never know if a screenplay will sell no matter how convinced I may be regarding to the projects commercial viability. Literally thousands of screenplays never get produced; thousands more never even get read. Thats how difficult it is in Hollywood. Industry insiders estimate over 50,000 screenplays are written annually. The first task at hand is to prepare a description of the characters involved in Pauls life. Fresh in my mind from the interviews I had with all of them and from taking copious notes as well as audiotapes of the interviews, I began crafting a profile of each person. Let me share with you what I learned about each of them and how and why they play a fundamental part in Pauls story.

F0REVER IN LOVE . . .

An Excerpt

The main character, of course, is Paul Conti. Faithful to his wife of forty-one years, Paul is convinced by his long-time friend, Shane Sweeny, that there is no moral wrong in reconnecting with his high school sweetheart and first lover, Paula Connolly. Pauls first sexual experience, at age 15, was with Paula, also 15. Throughout high school the two were inseparable. Their reputation as sex fanatics and the bond between them was facilitated by the popular song Hey Paula, a hit song released in 1963, coincidently the year after they began dating. Born in The Bronx, a borough of New York City, Paul was a voracious reader of military fiction and non-fiction novels. He eagerly enlisted in the US Navy for three years during the Viet Nam war, a tumultuous period when many young men refused to serve or fled to Canada to avoid the draft. Paul and Paula made a pact, not a formal engagement, to marry upon his discharge from the Navy. However, six months into his tour of duty and barely three days after he got a tattoo on his left arm with the inscription Paula Forever in Love, he received a Dear John letter from Paula. Forty years later Paul remained obsessed with and haunted by Paulas memory. At Shane Sweenys urging, he created an account on the social networking website, Facebook, to try and connect with Paula. Paul didnt realize it at the time, but by reaching out to her with a single harmless email after all these decades he began on a tortured journey of lies and lust to find the meaning of being forever in love, leaving behind a betrayed wife, who idolized him. Honed while a writer on his high school newspaper and as a communications specialist in the military, Pauls writing skills were exceptional. Upon his discharge from the military, he landed a position with the New York Post, one of five daily newspapers serving NYC at the time. Two years later, one of Pauls articles was noticed by the editor of the New Yorker, where he was hired as a Features Writer. A second generation Italian-American, Pauls parents, Angelo and Mary, emigrated from Bari, Italy, when they were children. Pauls pride in being an American and his staunch patriotism emanated from the example his father, who served in the U.S. Marines in WWII, set.

I remember Denise Romano, her maiden name, fairly well from high school. Like Paul, shes an impressive looking woman almost equal in height to her husband, Paul. Denise and I had a few classes together, but mostly I remember her because I was on the varsity basketball team, where she was a member of the cheerleading squad. Denise was a straight-laced girl brought up by her parents to believe she had to save herself for a husband. She made good on her promise to them and weds Paul as a virgin in 1968. In the early years of their marriage, she tried hard to please Paul but found it difficult to match his sexual appetite for variation and experimentation. Nonetheless, the marriage flourished, and they seemed the perfect couple who had it all, at least outwardly two children, both girls; two homes, one a summer getaway cottage in Upstate NY. Like Paul, Denise enjoyed a successful literary career. After graduating from the prestigious Columbia School of Journalism, she became a respected freelance journalist and author of three non-fiction books. Denises first book chronicled the life of Boss Tweed, the infamous Mayor of New York in the 1870s, who rigged elections and robbed the public coffers on a scale that even by todays standards of corruption was staggering. The book received critical acclaim, won numerous literary awards, and established Denise as a first-rate biographer. Much of her freelance work

F0REVER IN LOVE . . .

An Excerpt

dealt with articles about the Gilded Age of New York, an era notorious for robber barons and stock market manipulators. Over the years Denise remained very close with her childhood girlfriend, Stephanie ODonnell. When Stephanie married Pauls best friend from high school, Shane Sweeny, Denise was her Maid of Honor, and Paul was Shanes Best Man. The two couples saw each other often, sharing vacations together, weekend visits to their respective homes, and the Sweenys becoming Godparents to Contis first born child. An Italian-American, Denises grandparents had been among the millions of immigrants who were processed at Ellis Island. Upon clearing customs in 1919, they originally settle in Schenectady, New York, where her great grandfather founded a construction company.

All of us guys in high school were jealous of Paul. We all knew he and Paula Connolly were getting it on. The best way to describe Paula is that she was a product of the 1960s age of sexual freedom and experimentation. Paula was a free spirit, who wanted to try everything with Paul, her first-time lover. Matched like a set of fine china when it came to being sexual soul mates, the two of them began their sexual odyssey at age fifteen. The rumors about Paul and her getting it on thats what we called getting laid back then provide plenty of fodder for us students to discuss in the school cafeteria at lunchtime. The rumors ranged from the two getting it on in the boys bathroom while class was in session, to engaging in mutual oral sex on the second floor stairwell of the high school. One rumor that elevates them to near legendary status has them doing the nasty yet another popular slang term we used for having sex on a subway train. Yes, thats right, a subway train! When I asked Paul about the rumors, he confirmed they were true. Im tempted to ask him to expand a bit on having sex on a subway train, but I hold off for the moment. I dont want to give the incorrect impression Im voyeuristic. The erotic, free-wheeling sex between Paula and Paul continued for four years until the eve of Pauls departure for basic training in the U.S. Navy. Although Paula pledged to marry Paul upon his tour of duty ending, she sent a Dear John letter to him barely six months into his enlistment. Conspicuously absent from the letter was the reason why she was terminating the relationship, just that she did not want to see him ever again and that he should not to try to contact her. Not that it mattered or would have changed the circumstances, Paula had no way of knowing that barely seventy-two hours earlier, Paul had had a tattoo on his left arm of a heart emblazoned with the inscription Paula Forever in Love. When Paula received an email on Facebook from Paul four decades later, she was overwhelmed with emotion. Her eyes teared up and she became light headed from the emotion Paul evoked in her. Paula has fond memories of Paul and, over the years, thought about him from time to time, particularly when she heard the Oldies song Hey, Paula. It had been fortysix years since they were last together. When Paul asked her to meet in Las Vegas, she accepted the invitation without a moments hesitation. Only afterwards did she think to herself, What if he asks me why I ended the relationship.

Shane Sweeny knew as a teenager he could have his way with most girls and, as an adult, with women, as well and used every opportunity he could to prove it despite his marriage to Stephanie. Now, at sixty-three, Paul found his day of infamy when a jilted lover told his wife about their affair.

F0REVER IN LOVE . . .

An Excerpt

A retired New York City Police Detective, Shane had joined the police department as a patrolman in 1966 soon after graduating high school. It was a period when police corruption ran rampant throughout the NYPD. When the Knapp Commission began its investigation of widespread corruption of the police department in 1970, Shane already had a well earned reputation as a "Meat Eater." Meat Eaters are police officers who spend a good deal of time aggressively looking for situations they can exploit for financial gain. Shanes sexual proclivities were heightened by his shaking down pimps and prostitutes for money and sexual favors. Upon his promotion to detective, Shane was assigned to the vice squad, where he further degenerated morally and began to lead a secret second life. Shane was the Alpha male in his relationship with Paul. The two men were as close as men can be, sharing every tiny bit of information about the most personal aspects of their lives. Shane confided in Paul stories about his sexual conquests and encounters as an NYPD patrolman and later as a detective all, that is, except one aspect of the secret double life he led for most of his married life. Shanes influence and dominance over Paul had always been significant. The two of them often talked about Paula and specifically Pauls obsession with her. One day at a backyard barbecue and four beers into a discussion about women in general, Paul once again brought up Paula. Shane strongly urged that Paul create a Facebook profile to find and connect with Paula.

Stephanie Sweeny was fiercely loyal to her husband of forty-four years, Shane, but was totally blind to the fact that he was a serial philanderer and, worse, a sex addict. Over the years, he also abused her verbally when he frequently came home drunk. Owing to the advice from her friend and confident, Denise Conti, however, things were about to change. Stephanie had received a telephone call that literally shook her to the core. Stephanies unable to grasp what she has just heard and agreed to meet the caller at a public place within an hour. Was this person capable of manufacturing out of whole cloth such an astonishing story about her husband? At the meeting, she was emotionally paralyzed by what she had just heard and seen. Stephanie returned home to find her friend Denise waiting for her in the driveway. They leaned on each other for emotional support. A top advertising executive for a leading Madison Avenue ad agency, Stephanie earned a marketing degree from New York University in 1973. When she became pregnant with their first child, Shane wanted her to be a stay-at-home mom, but Stephanie refused to give up her career. After all, this was the era of the Womens Liberation Movement. Stephanie was a prime example of a woman wanting both a career and a family. No one, not even Shane, was going to prevent her from having both. She ultimately prevailed. Stephanie can trace her Irish roots back to the slums of the Five Points section of Manhattan in 1848, where her great grandparents initially emigrated. Stephanies familys history during that period is so interesting and the history of Five Points so fascinating that her best friend, Denise, made it the focus of her second book. Stephanie offered to help with the research and made available historical documents and newspaper clippings from the era curated by her great grandmother, grandmother, and preserved by her mother. Five Points is the original American melting pot and, at that period in time, the countrys largest slum. At its height during the Civil War, few places on earth could rival it for sheer population density, disease, infant mortality, unemployment, prostitution, violent crime, and other awful ills of the big city destitution. When Stephanies great grandfather, the owner of a small tavern on Bowery

F0REVER IN LOVE . . .

An Excerpt

Street, was killed in the Dead Rabbits Riot in the summer of 1857, the family moved to The Bronx, a burgeoning borough of New York City that was at the time still relatively rural.

As a teenager, Sister Mary Catherine Keenan was a rough-edged, foul-mouthed bully. Known then as Cat, a name coined by her gangster father, Eddie the Butcher Keenan, a leader in the notorious Upper Westside Irish Mob known as the Westies. Cat routinely fought with other girls who dared to look at her cross-eyed. Nevertheless, one day in August 1965, she met her match in what has become known as the Greatest Girl Fight Ever. When Cat was sixteen, her father was gunned down over a territorial dispute with the Genovese crime family of the Italian Mafia. After her fathers death, Cats mother then moved from Hells Kitchen, the area of Manhattans West Side where the Westies operated from, to The Bronx with her younger sister in hope of a better life for the three of them.

What a strangely eclectic group of people these five are. Their lives had been altered forever by a single Dear John letter sent four decades earlier, igniting a series of coincidences, chance meetings, broken promises, and a date with infamy exposed. For a screenwriter, its difficult to imagine creating from scratch such an ensemble cast of characters for a feature film. All five are rich with real-life strengths and weaknesses so that creative embellishment is unnecessary. To the day, one month after interviewing all of them, an opportunity presented itself that changed my approach to the screenplay. A friend of mine, an acquisition editor at a major book publishing company, heard about the film project, knew I was in New York at a literary conference, and requested that I stay an extra day to visit with him in Manhattan to discuss the possibility of publishing Forever in Love first as a novel. The deal he offered seemed at the time sweet enough. Besides, I thought to myself, it may be easier to option the book through an agency in Hollywood. But I also remained committed to writing the screenplay. Finally, I opt to undertake both projects at the same time. Anxious to begin the two projects, I couldnt wait to immerse myself in Paul Contis world and began the journey down the path he took that had as so many hills of exhilaration and valleys of despair and desperation. I wanted to write about his lovely wife, Denise, whom he loves dearly yet betrayed in the worst way possible. I wanted to tell the world about the kind of emotional grip Paula Connolly had on Pauls life for almost five decades. And, of course, there was Shane Sweeny, Pauls best friend and how he, on three occasions, served as a catalyst for major defining events in Pauls life. From the interviews I conducted, I learned there was an interesting sidebar about Shanes wife, Stephanie, Denises best friend, and how they comfort each other at the most critical points in their lives, both of which happened on the very same day. Finally, completing the puzzle that comprised Pauls life was Sister Mary Catherine Keenan, one of the girls in the Greatest Girl Fight Ever that the others all witnessed, including me. I was there, I know. It was really a sight to behold. I started writing and writing and writing. In no particular format, mind you, just feverishly getting my thoughts placed on the computer screen. I figure formatting and organizing my thoughts can happen afterwards.

F0REVER IN LOVE . . .

An Excerpt

Their story begins in The Bronx, New York in the year 1962.

For the complete manuscript, contact: Martin Diano 3 N Bolera Lane Casa Grande AZ 85194 520-280-3462 | martindiano@gmail.com | @Martin_Diano