TV Boyfriends

About Elizabeth Elizabeth Fournier
All Men Are Cremated Equal: My 77 Blind Dates
After she got over her dream of being a Solid Gold Dancer, Fournier promptly headed into the local funeral home and asked for a job, any job. She became the live-in night keeper which meant she resided in a trailer in the far reaches of a large, hilly cemetery and slept with a shotgun near her bed. It was the scariest summer of her life.
She is currently the voice of the autopsy exhibit in the forensic wing at the United
States National Museum of Medicine and a full-time mortician. She is also a ballroom dance instructor at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. But she couldn’t resist writing the story of her unusual method of dating that led her to the love of her life.

I was sitting outside the principal’s office of my tiny Catholic grade school yet again. Sister Bernadette just couldn’t get her habit around the fact I was in love. She deemed it inappropriate to write "I <heart> Shaun Cassidy!" all over my white pleather Jordache purse with a pink felt pen. I had written the same thing on my pee-chee folder, but that time in purple.
What really Frenched her toast was the forbidden Teen Beat magazine found in my desk. I took a picture of myself and pasted it next to Shaun’s face. I told her he wrote Hey Deanie  for me after he secretly attended my piano recital where I performed a crisp version of Da Doo Ron Ron.
Shaun was dreamy on TV, but in my upstairs bedroom, I was his front row audience. We had a super hush-hush friendship: Shaun, his Adam’s apple, and little old 4th grade me. I wore out the grooves on his vinyl disks. I studied the liner notes of all his albums and even inked in my name as acknowledgment for his inspiration.
The sexier of the two Hardy Boys was pasted inside my closet wall. Not a poster, but an Elmer’s School Paste collage. Every picture, paragraph, and sentence on Shaun I could find was affixed to that chunk of cardboard. Whenever he was on a glossy page, the headline would scream SHAUN!
I made him birthday presents and sent them to the address I found in 16 Magazine. I wrote him letters and included my name, address, and telephone number, but didn’t need to send a photo since I was certain his closet wall held an anthology of me!
Yes, I had intact mental faculties, and no, I didn’t live in the middle of nowhere without a mall or something better to do. Did I want to marry him? Totally no way! I didn’t even want to date him, mind you. Remember when Victoria Principal got all that hate mail for dating Andy Gibb?
Fast forward to 2004. I was sitting alone in my room and was watching a show starring Kate Hudson’s big brother, Oliver, called The Mountain. The credits rolled and Shaun’s name was listed as the executive producer. I felt that familiar gooey emotion akin to Bonnie Bell Lip Gloss and Jean Nate Bath Splash. I was so excited I immediately craved a Candy Stix Cigarette with the famous red tip.