I flew back to New York in early 1967, and had to hit the ground running. There were two full apartments and a kitchen that I had already lined up to HalFlat, and I came home to a stack of messages looking to hire me to do more. It was becoming pretty clear that I really needed a full-time workroom. So, in the middle of doing those projects, I worked on one of my own. I rearranged some furniture, and converted my old "music room" into my new (tiny) bedroom. Once that was done, my old bedroom officially became my workroom.

As grateful as I was for all the customers, I had no idea how I was going to get them all done, let alone "in no time flat". I finally did the obvious thing - I hit up Rusty for help. He knew about my business venture, and although he never said anything about it, he must have felt a bit miffed that I had taken his basic idea and made a career out of it. So I went over to his place, and we worked out a deal. Any evening or weekend that he wanted to, he could come next door and pitch in, and I'd pay him for his time. If he wanted to work one hour, or ten hours, that was up to him. Rusty (and Bernice) loved this idea, as it gave him extra money without making specific demands on his time. He usually stopped by a couple of times a week, and worked until he got tired or bored.

The orders got so deep that I made the difficult decision to leave the Hector James Quintet. I was starting to play gigs while feeling worn out from building stuff all day, and that just wasn't fair to the other guys. I did offer to stay until they found a replacement for me. Good thing for them, too, because they didn't find someone for almost two months. I had almost started wondering if they were actually looking for a new drummer, but Hiro insisted, "We can't play with just anyone." Finally, they found a great drummer named Walter. I got him up to speed on their repertoire, and then I was once more out of the live music business.

With no more gigs to worry about, I began stopping by a bar down the street once or twice a week to unwind after a long day. The Dirty Rat was pretty much in the middle of Vermintown, and had made some alterations to reflect the clientele. They had raised the floor at the far end of the bar, and set up some smaller barstools there so rodents could reach the bar easier. I'd go down there after a long day of working, and have a short beer, or maybe split a rodent shot with someone. For a rodent shot, you'd get a standard shot of something in a standard shot glass. You'd knock it back but only take half of the shot into your mouth, then hold it there as you passed the glass to someone else. They'd pour the rest of the shot into their own mouth, and then you'd both swallow. Then they'd put the shot glass down, and you'd both flick it with your paw at the same time. It was a friendly sort of way to say hello (with alcohol).

Which is how I met Ramona.

I didn't see a lot of female rodents at the Dirty Rat, and the few I saw were usually with their husbands or boyfriends. From what I understand, rodent females in New York rarely ventured out alone, even into a rodent-friendly environment like that. Even when there was a female alone there, I never approached her. My self-esteem had improved over the years, but I was still pretty useless when it came to girls.

Luckily for me, it was Ramona who made the first move. I had just sat down at the bar when she walked up and said, "Hey, I'm Ramona. Want to share a shot with me?" I was so surprised that I had no idea how to respond. I think I said "Me? Really?", but with a lot more sputtering and stammering. She took that as a "yes", and ordered the shot for us. We started talking, and within minutes we were chattering away like old friends. As friendly as she was, I was completely floored when she asked me if I'd like to take her home. I did say yes, though - this chipmunk wasn't that tongue-tied.

I woke up the next morning, and blearily watched Ramona finish getting dressed. As she headed down the ladder towards the door, I managed to squeak out "Wait!" I stumbled out of bed, and tried to get my underwear back on. "Uh...Ramona...will I...will I see you again?"

Ramona smiled indulgently. "Of course, TD."

I smiled. "So, uh...tonight, then?"

She kept smiling but shook her head. "No, not tonight. I never see a guy again for at least a week after...you know, the first time."

"A week? Why not?"

"So they don't get the wrong idea."

"...the wrong idea? But I thought...I mean, you and me..."

Ramona touched my chin. "That right there? That's the wrong idea." She sighed. "TD, you're cute. Fun to talk to. And not bad in the sack. But I don't want a boyfriend."

"You...you don't?"

She shook her head. "That's not me. We can be friends. Get together, have some drinks. Maybe fool around once in a while. But that's it, OK?" She opened the door and gave me another smile. "I'll see you at the bar, OK? Bye, TD." She left, closing the door behind her.

I stood there in the middle of my living room in my underwear, staring at the closed door, trying to take in the whole last twelve hours. I'd never met a girl like Ramona. She was fun, outgoing and as sexy as rodents got. I was still totally excited that she had come home with me, but now it seemed like I had screwed something up somewhere. She said she never saw a guy again for the second time for at least a week. That suggested that this wasn't unfamiliar territory for her - that she had climbed into plenty of other beds. And I wasn't sure how to feel about that.

I climbed up into my reading room with my ukulele, and began playing the Beatles' song "Norwegian Wood". And as I started chirping the lyrics to myself, I started to feel better. About myself. About Ramona. And about us. Or as "us" as we two would ever get. OK, so she didn't want a boyfriend. And maybe she had other guys she saw, and fooled around with. Why shouldn't she? I had fun with her. I could still hang out with her. And probably even fool around with her again. That was all right. It didn't have to be "girlfriend or nothing".

I finished the song and smiled to myself. Two years earlier, a Beatles song had gotten me laid. And now, another of their songs had gotten my head back on straight after being with a girl. Man, was there nothing that Beatles songs couldn't do?

1967 was the Summer Of Love. And, a few months before the summer actually began, Ramona ended up my best teacher. Not about "love", really. But about "free love", about sex, about girls in general. Before I met her, the opposite sex was a huge mystery that baffled me, and even frightened me a little. But Ramona helped me understand girls a bit more. No, Theodore Chipmunk wasn't suddenly an expert on women - far from it. But Ramona at least got him over the fear.

Ramona and I stayed friends. We'd see each other once or twice a week, and go home together once in a while. It was a bit awkward at first when I'd see her chatting with another guy, and I'd think about the fact that the guy was probably one of her bed-friends, too. But I got over it, or at least I got used to it. That was Ramona. She befriended whom she wanted, and bedded whom she wanted, and all of us were cool with it because occasional-Ramona beat no-Ramona-at-all.

I was a bit hesitant to tell Simon about Ramona. I don't know why, really, but I thought he wouldn't approve of our relationship. That, and Simon and I never really talked about sex, so it was a weird topic to suddenly start talking about. But one day, he called while Ramona was over, and I had to tell him, "I actually have a girl over right now - can I call you back?" And when I finally did tell him the details, Simon's approach was, as always, logical. "It was perhaps a bit surprising to find you in a casual physical relationship," Simon admits. "Only because my mental image of you was as something of a hopeless romantic. But you appeared to be happy, and from all accounts, she was happy as well. Therefore, I had no objections at all."

In one of my monthly phone calls with Alvin, I told him that I was "kind of seeing this girl". I didn't go into detail, even though he kept wanting to know more. "I thought you were pulling my leg," says Alvin. "That you were just pretending to have a girlfriend, to make yourself look good. I don't know why I thought that, really - you weren't the type to lie about stuff like that. But I guess I thought that if you were still a virgin, then my less-than-stellar track record around the time would've been no big deal, so I guess that explains that. But Simon backed you up. He said he'd met this girl, and that she was real enough. He wouldn't tell me anything more, though. 'If Theodore does not feel it prudent to discuss it, then it would be improper of me to reveal anything further.' Come on, you guys!"

But I wasn't the only one who wasn't telling everything. Towards the end of the year, Alvin was approached by Dave Seville about the plans for the next Chipmunks release, and Alvin let Dave know that Simon and I weren't going to be able to make the sessions. This was a straight-up lie, actually. Alvin never even bothered bothering telling us about the project. He sort of shrugs this off today.

"I probably should've at least let you know about it. But I sort of thought of it this way. You two might have decided to come take part in it, just out of a sense of obligation. But if you did, that would make you less likely to come out next time. And I was pretty sure that this album wasn't going to be worth the trip. If anything, it might have made you think 'well, let's not do that ever again'. I figured it was easier to just say 'no' for you."

The idea was for The Chipmunks to record songs from an upcoming movie musical. There was nothing too outlandish about that, since movie musicals were still big business in 1967. At the time, in fact, it probably seemed like a good early call by the folks at Liberty. There was already plenty of positive press around this movie, and it looked like the Doctor Doolittle movie starring Rex Harrison was going to be a massive hit. I mean, it was a movie musical, featuring a man who could talk with the animals, with a romantic subplot to boot. How could it possibly fail?

This was the first full Chipmunks session with only one of us participating, and Alvin recalls what it was like. "It was strange, really strange," Alvin recalls. "Liberty called in two of the rodents who sang on that Go-Go album. A chipmunk named Bob, and a squirrel - don't remember his name. They were OK. Good singers, at any rate. But it was the first time that being in the recording studio really seemed like work. Not a bad job, really, but still a job. I mean, doing the children's album a couple years previous had been tedious, but you were there to suffer through it with me. With this one, I was just plugging away at it. And the whole time, I kept looking at the clock. Every song took more takes than usual. Nobody there seemed to like the songs all that much. And nobody was really enjoying themselves. There was no laughing and joking around between the takes, or even that much chatting. It was just 'ok, we're going to take that again - a bit lighter on the chorus, please'.

"We got the songs before the movie came out, so this was our first time being exposed to them. We had no context for anything. We didn't know that this was going to be sung by this particular character during that particular plot point - it was just 'here's the next song'. And the whole concept of The Chipmunks singing these songs just seemed weird to me. I mean, 'I can talk to the animals.' Um, I am an animal, right? Sort of? Or am I? The whole thing was just...off, you know?"

Alvin gives it some more thought before continuing. "I can say this now - I was starting to get scared. Like, really scared. I remember being in the hallway outside the studio, nervously sipping my coffee, waiting for them to set up so we could record 'Beautiful Things'. And it occurred to me that this was all I had. This was all I knew how to do. Simon was finishing college and teaching some classes, and you had your own carpentry business, but I didn't have anything but this. I didn't have a Plan B. And even though I pretended not to notice, I knew my finances weren't in great shape. I sat there, quietly praying that this piece of crap would be a hit, so I could get a huge paycheck out of it. But the longer the session went on, the more I realized that this was probably going to be another dud. I'd see a few modest paydays over the next few months, and that would be it." He throws up his paws. "It's one thing to do a record like 'Sorry About That, Herb'. We at least had fun doing that one. But to work your tail off on a record that you don't like at all, and watch it flop..."

The movie ended up taking forever to make, and it finally limped into theaters in December 1967. Critics didn't like it, and it opened up against Disney's The Jungle Book. It wasn't a massive bomb, necessarily, but it certainly wasn't the smash success that everybody originally thought it was going to be. And by that point, Liberty had Chipmunks records pressed and ready to go. There was really nothing for them to do but send the record out to the shops, and watch it follow the movie straight into obscurity.