I think I mentioned earlier that this "autobiography" was first written a few years ago. I find it extraordinary, then, that Erin's encounter with a gay boy follows so closely after Robyn posted her wonderfully touching account of her relationship with Lainey. I considered delaying posting this a while longer, but then decided that would be silly.
June, 1969 to August, 1970
Steve, Bob and I got together to jam a couple of times over the summer, and it was fun, but there was no thought of getting the band back together. Bob took me out a couple of times, but nothing came of it, and we stayed music friends.
We moved in with Grandma. It was a cute bungalow house, with everything on the first floor except for the attic, which had been finished into a bedroom. It had been Uncle Rob’s room years ago, and it was now mine.
It was rather rustic in appearance and had a very male atmosphere. I did my best to apply feminizing touches, and Laura helped a lot. The privacy it afforded was nice.
The biggest surprise in the move itself was the help we got from a new friend of Mom’s. Fred was actually a childhood friend of Dad’s who worked as a Nassau County policeman – a sergeant – in a nearby precinct. Following Dad’s funeral, he had made it a habit to stop over and see how things were going, and to help out.
He pretty much organized our move, which we appreciated. Grandma was happy to have him as a dinner guest that night, and I found that my initial impression of him was correct – he was funny, warm and very friendly. Mom was grateful for his help and support.
Even before the move, he had taught her to drive and took her for her road test. He had also helped her get rid of the banged up Ford and buy a much nicer used car, a red Rambler American with white interior.
“It’s much more of a girl’s car,” I noted upon seeing it for the first time. Mom laughed at that, and so did Fred.
Living with Grandma, I was now only a couple of blocks from Laura in one direction and from Cookie in another, and in September, we found that we had the same bus stop, so we had a chance to chat just the three of us before getting on the bus each morning. The uniform was the same, but the restriction on skirt length had been abandoned as unenforceable. So, that first morning, we were all showing a lot more leg than we had previously, except possibly for Cookie.
The first day of school, Sue Morrow stopped me in the hall. She had that greater confidence level that seniors always seemed to have.
“I want to try to make the Music Club more of a presence than it’s had in the past,” she said. “We have a new faculty advisor, Miss Brentwood, who is a lot younger. We never had elections for officers in the spring, so we’re going to have them at our first meeting, and I’m running for president.”
“Great,” I said. “I’ll support you.”
“Thanks. But I also want you to run for an officer’s position. How would you feel about vice president?”
I said I would, and she hugged me.
Sr. Agnes also took me aside that first day.
“Glad to see you back,” she said. “I want you to know how much I admire you. You endured a great deal last year, and you came through it with flying colors.”
“Well,” I said quietly, “I’m not sure about that. There were other things you don’t know about…”
“A boy?” she asked. I nodded. “Well,” she said, “I suppose that goes with the territory. I hope you have a wonderful and memorable year.”
The school year had only just gotten underway when Mom came home with interesting news – a woman who had lived next door to us in the apartment worked in an office at Macy’s in Herald Square. She and Mom saw each other on the train quite often, and that evening she had told Mom that her office had an opening for a student looking to work on Saturdays, and asked if I might be interested.
Two days later, I came out of school and walked down to the subway, and I took it to 34th Street. I made my way up to Ann’s office, and was introduced to her boss, Mrs. Greene. A rather heavy, middle-aged Jewish woman, she was at the same time friendly and authoritative. She interviewed me in her boss’ office, and before I knew it, I had a job.
I started the last Saturday of September. I was nervous going in on the subway so early in the morning, and I couldn’t believe that everyone else looked so nonchalant. I had some formalities to go through when I first got there – paperwork, and getting a locker assigned to me. I smiled, though, when I saw that the locker room looked exactly as it had in the movie, “Miracle on 34th Street”.
I had reported at my starting time of 8:30, and I was in the office by a little after 9:30. Mrs. Greene was there, and introduced me to the Saturday crew. Most of them were students – Luba, Thea, Celesta and Joseph. All of them were a year or two older than I; Joseph gave me the once-over, and the girls immediately gave him the business about it.
There were also a few women who worked Saturdays, but the office, which usually held about 30 people, was mostly empty. About half the desks had adding machines while the rest had comptometers, rather large mechanical devices that had 10 rows and 8 columns of numbered keys. I was assigned a desk with an adding machine.
My job was called “batching” – taking a batch of time cards and adding up the hours recorded on each one, and recording it on the cover sheet. Someone else would then repeat the process to check the totals. If they came up with a different total, they’d give the batch back to me and I’d recheck it.
At first, I found myself going very slowly compared with the others, who seemed to fly. I started pushing myself to go faster, but then Luba started bringing mistakes back to me.
“Hey,” she said with a laugh. “Don’t worry about speed, it’s just your first day. Just relax.”
“Yeah,” added Celesta. “We don’t start timing you until next week.”
“Aw, come on,” Joseph said from the desk behind me. “Give her a break, it’s her first day.”
Celesta and Luba then teased him about protecting me.
We went to lunch together, and they all made me feel quite welcome. What was interesting was the ethnic diversity in our little group. Luba was Russian; Thea was Greek; Celesta was Italian; Joseph was Lebanese.
“I’m Irish and French,” I said.
“Thank God,” Joseph cracked. “I was afraid we might become too homogenized.”
“That’s ‘homogeneous’!” Luba said with a laugh.
“No,” he insisted, “I meant ‘homogenized’.”
That evening, as I waited for the subway to take me home, I was filled with a sense of accomplishment a little like what I felt like when we played a really good gig. And yet it was different – I was part of something bigger.
Sue and I, and two other girls, were elected unanimously. Miss Brentwood was also my math teacher and was definitely a change from what we’d had before. A young woman in her late twenties, she wore skirts to school that were almost as short as ours were.
She also encouraged us to get more involved in music, and we talked a lot about different kinds of music. A portion of our meetings was devoted to discussing playing, and even forming bands. She encouraged us to go to concerts, including at the Fillmore East, which was in its heyday at that time.
After one meeting, Gina and I were chatting when Sue came over, and we started talking about getting together to play, since Gina played bass and Sue played keyboards.
“All we need is a drummer,” I said with a hint of sarcasm, since girls just did not play drums back then. But Gina had an idea. A friend of hers, Carol Stanton, who was also a junior, was in the percussion section in the orchestra, and she was interested in joining a band as a drummer.
I immediately said no. Anyone who was in the orchestra could not be a serious musician, and I didn’t want to fool around. Gina looked hurt, and I remembered that she played saxophone in the orchestra.
“I don’t like it,” she said. “But it’s my only choice, and I would rather play with them than not play at all. And I think that Carol would be a good drummer for us. At least we should give her a chance.”
Sue and I looked at each other. What could it hurt?
Standing at the periphery was Beth Gooding, a dazzlingly pretty sophomore with long, blonde hair. She had a look of expectancy.
“You’re not talking about forming a band, are you?” she asked. We explained that we hadn’t quite gotten that far, yet, but we were thinking about jamming.
“Why?” I asked. “Do you play?”
“I can play rhythm guitar, if you need someone. I also sing.”
“You’re in!” I said, and we all laughed.
The next day after school, we all got together to chat. Carol was a nice girl, but very quiet. She didn’t seem like a rebel at all, which is what a girl drummer had to be in those days.
She was also very nervous, but she relaxed as we chatted. We assured her that we were just getting together to have some fun, and not to worry about it. We agreed to get together at Sue’s house on Saturday.
Carol was the only one who hadn’t played in a group before, and so we had to tone her down a little, but the overall sound was good, and we decided to press forward and form a band to see where it went. After some discussion, we decided we would call ourselves Daughters of Eve. We started rehearsing regularly.
Miss Brentwood took an immediate interest, and even came to one of our rehearsal sessions. After we’d played about five or six songs, we decided to take a break, and I asked her what she thought. As I watched her sitting on the edge of an old couch in Sue’s basement, wearing jeans, a sweater and penny loafers, I had a hard time reminding myself that she was a teacher.
“I think you’re doing fine,” she said.
“But…?” Sue pressed. Miss Brentwood hesitated, and I added, “We’re tough, we can take it.”
She laughed at that, and said, “All right. I’ll tell you what I think.
“Erin, your leads are really good, but they sound too much alike. It’s like you’ve found something that works for you, and you try a variation of it every time. Listen to yourself – you may want to tape some of your practice sessions and listen – and then try to make each lead you play sound different from the one that came before.
“Beth, you need to tailor the style of your playing to the song. I know you’re just playing chords, but each song has its own character, so your chords should reflect that. It’s not a radical change you need to make, but it will make the band sound much better.
“Sue, we just don’t hear enough of you. Part of it is the material you’re playing – a lot of it isn’t all that conducive to keyboards. So, I’d suggest branching out – more Traffic, try some Elton John, and maybe some Lee Michaels. But part of it is you – you need to assert yourself more, just like you’ve been doing in school this year.
“Gina, I love your bass lines. Love them. You like Jack Bruce, don’t you? It shows. You might want to try doing some Cream-type jamming with Erin.
“Carol, I’m not a drummer, so I can’t tell you what the specific trouble is, but your beat is somewhat uneven. You seem very uncomfortable playing in slow time, so you might try drumming to more slow songs when you play to recordings. You also might want to have a more experienced drummer listen to you and give his opinion.”
I volunteered that I knew a really good drummer who might be willing to help. When I called Steve to ask him, I got a shock. Steve’s most recent girlfriend, Claudia, whom I had liked a lot, was just out of the hospital, having had a baby, and they were married.
But he was able to come see us the following Saturday, and he gave Carol some really good advice. He echoed Miss Brentwood’s suggestion about practicing, but he also told her to reduce the number and complexity of fills in a song. She should get totally comfortable just keeping time, which was her job, before she tried anything fancy.
Carol took Steve’s advice, and we immediately noticed a difference – with the pressure to show off removed, she was much more relaxed when she played.
The Music Club would sponsor a dance in December, and Miss Brentwood took it as a given that we would play for it. Sue and I were uncomfortable, afraid that we would be seen as using our positions as officers of the club for our own profit. Miss Brentwood, on the other hand, was sure we would be seen as members of the club who proved the club’s mission to take music more seriously, and she convinced us.
“After all,” she said, “No one is going to know what we pay you.”
The day after Thanksgiving, we rehearsed for three hours at Sue’s house. Toward the end of the previous school year, Gina had lent me the “Super Session” album featuring Al Kooper, Mike Bloomfield and Steve Stills. Other than their arrangement of “It Takes A Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry”, which I thought they played much too quickly, I loved it. Sue and I had now decided to lift their version of “Season of the Witch”; we worked out an arrangement that lasted over ten minutes.
I had also discovered a group called Bloodwyn Pig, and we convinced Gina to play the sax for “It’s Only Love”, which we would use to open one of the sets. Sue filled in the bass lines from the keyboard. We also decided to include “Dear Jill” as one of our slow dances.
Sue invited us all to stay for dinner, but in the end I was the only one who was able to stay. Her parents were quite nice to me, as was her older sister, Judy, who was a junior at Fordham. She asked me at one point if I had started thinking about college, yet.
“Erin’s a year behind me,” Sue said.
“Never too early to start thinking about it,” Judy replied. Then, turning back to me, she added, “Do you have any idea what you might want to study?”
“Music,” I said, almost automatically.
“Well,” Judy replied with a laugh, “That sounds definite enough. You want to go away or stay local?”
“I’d like to go away, but I don’t think my mom will be able to afford it, so I’ll probably stay local.”
She told me that there would be scholarship opportunities, so not to despair, but she also said to keep in mind that Fordham had a very good music program.
“And,” she added, “Our basketball team seems to be getting better.”
“That’s good to know,” I replied. Sue looked at me, wide-eyed.
“You like basketball?!” she asked. I told her about the tournament I’d gone to with my cousins and how I’d decided I liked the game a lot.
“You ever watch the Knicks?” she pressed.
“Uh oh,” Mrs. Morrow said with a chuckle.
“The professional team? No, not really,” I said.
“They’re going for the NBA record tonight for consecutive wins. The game is on TV!”
She never did actually ask me if I wanted to watch it. She went on to tell me all about the players on the team – Willis Reed, Walt Frazier, Bill Bradley, Dave DeBusschere, Dick Barnett, Cazzie Russell…she seemed to know everything about all of them. It was a level of fanaticism I never would have guessed she had.
By halftime, I was wondering if the players she had been so agog over had anything to do with the ones I was seeing on the screen, struggling against the Cincinnati Royals. Sue herself was tied in knots, and I found myself biting my lip to keep from laughing at her anguish. I nodded in polite agreement when she railed against the guards walking the ball up the court, while at the same time bracing myself for what she would be like if the winning streak, which at the moment stood at 17, were to be broken.
Mr. Morrow joined us with less than five minutes to go in the game. He was obviously knowledgeable about the sport and the team, and a fan, and yet he wasn’t frantic about the game the way Sue was. The more morose she became, the more her father shrugged and said, “It’s not over, yet.” In a way, he reminded me of my grandfather.
With 16 seconds to go in the game, The Knicks were losing 105-100. Oscar Robertson, I name I recognized from Kyle’s lessons, had fouled out of the game and been replaced by the Royals’ coach, Bob Cousy, a name I also knew. The Knicks were fouled upon putting the ball in play and made two foul shots; Dave DeBusschere stole an inbounds pass and scored; they forced another turnover and missed the shot, but Walt Frazier was fouled; he made both shots; the Knicks won, 106-105.
Sue and I jumped and whooped and hollered and danced around like crazy women. Her dad just sat back and grinned. I suddenly felt like I was a part of something that a couple of hours earlier I hadn’t even known existed.
The next day, at work, Thea skipped lunch with us to meet her cousin, Elaine. It turned out that Elaine would soon join our crew (causing Joseph to complain that the Greeks were becoming overrepresented). Luba had something to do after lunch and Celesta wasn’t feeling well, so it was just Joseph and I talking in the lounge after lunch.
“What are you so happy about?” I asked, as he’d had a silly grin on his face all morning.
“Ah, you’d never understand.”
“Why not?”
“It’s a guy thing.”
“Well,” I said, “I just hope she’s everything you hope for.”
It took him a moment to understand my teasing jab, and he looked a little miffed.
“No,” he said with a sheepish laugh. “It’s not what you think.”
He gave me something of an appraising look. I had already decided I liked Joseph, but I didn’t want to date him. For one, it would make it very awkward at work, and I was still so new. Also, he smoked, which was a major turn-off for me. Now, I wondered if he really did have a thing for me, as Luba had teased him about rather relentlessly since I’d started.
“You don’t by any chance follow sports, do you?” he asked, tentatively.
“Not much,” I said. “Although I did watch that Knick game last night.”
His eyes went wide.
“You saw that?! Wasn’t that fantastic?! I couldn’t believe how…”
He was off on a verbal tear, citing plays from all through the game, talking about players who barely played at all, and even some who were no longer on the team. Then he talked about how great he thought the team was, how they could really go far in the playoffs.
“I was only watching because I was at my friend’s house, and she was watching. I mean, I do like basketball, but I don’t follow it regularly.”
He said he understood, then went right back to his talk about the team and the players. It would be that way for the rest of the season: every Saturday, on breaks or during lunch, he would make sure he mentioned some aspect of the Knicks and their season to me. Together with the constant chatter I heard from Sue, I felt an obligation to watch them play whenever I could so that I’d be able to talk intelligently about them, and so over the course of the season, the attachment formed, deepened, and became fanatical, in my own quiet way.
Word quickly got around the school that the first gigging rock band made up of Mary Louis students was going to be playing the dance. Terri, Laura and Cookie talked it up constantly, and before long we were virtual stars in our own school. By the night of the dance, we were pretty well psyched.
There was a great turnout. Lots of boys from Molloy, Holy Cross and St. Michael’s showed up, and at one point I was almost sorry that I was playing rather than dancing. Almost.
In reality, I was relieved. I wasn’t ready for the hunt, as Cookie liked to call it, and playing was a great excuse to avoid it. I sang and I played, and we all had a great time. A photographer took several pictures of us, and one wound up in the yearbook.
It was nice to be gigging again, and we started to pursue other opportunities. We landed a dance at a parish, and in February, one at Floral Park Memorial, thanks this time to my former neighbor, Charlie.
We were still setting up when a couple of guys came over and made disparaging remarks about a “girl band”. It nettled us, and we decided to cook extra hard that night, leaning a little more toward improvising than playing for dancing. The kids liked us, but gave us weird looks at the same time.
“Don’t take it personally,” I said to Sue as we were breaking down after the dance. “I’ve come to the conclusion there’s something in the air around here, and if you grow up here you have a hard time being normal.”
“I’ll drink to that,” a voice called from the corner. He emerged, and I saw it was a guy who had been watching us all night, and not dancing with anyone. “I take it you’re not from here.”
“Depends,” I said. “I live here, but only moved here when I was 13.”
“Ah! Then you weren’t invaded by the pods when you were at your most vulnerable.”
I laughed, and he smiled at the fact I’d caught the reference.
“Actually,” I said, “Sue is the real fan of ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’.”
“Well, I’ll stop, then. What are you a real fan of?”
“Bob Dylan, blues and ‘The Music Man’,” I said.
“Wow! Dylan and Meredith Wilson! That’s an odd combination.”
“I don’t like being typed.”
“I agree. You’re too beautiful for anything but script.”
I giggled. The flirting felt good.
“So, tell me,” I said. “How did you come to be here? You sound much too intelligent to be a student here.”
“Ah. Well, that’s a long story.”
“I don’t have a short attention span.”
He laughed at that.
“Tell you what…let me drive you home, and I’ll tell you my story.”
Since my amp wasn’t yet packed in Sue’s car, I said yes. She, of course, thought I was crazy, but I figured it was only a few blocks, so what could be the harm?
His name was Tim, and he had started out at Chaminade. He had been a good student, but had found their code of discipline stifling, with mandates for almost every aspect of life there, including how to eat in the cafeteria. After two years of constant battling, he had decided that the quality of the education wasn’t worth it.
Coming to Memorial had been like banging against a bolted door, only to have it suddenly flung open. At the same time, he was an outcast among the students because he hadn’t lost his desire to succeed academically. He was a straight-A student with consistently poor marks in effort.
I liked him. There was a sweetness about him, a complete lack of macho, that I found very refreshing. Later, when I got into Woody Allen movies, I would see a lot of Tim in Allen’s characters.
He asked me for my number, and I gave it to him. He called and asked me out, and I agreed to go. We went to see “Dream of Kings”, which I thought was awful and fascinating at the same time, but what I really enjoyed was the conversation we had afterwards.
Grandma left the outside light on the side of the house on, and it seemed like the brightest beacon I had ever seen. When Tim was very reserved and didn’t make any moves toward me, I blamed the light for his shyness. He did kiss me goodnight, and I was reminded of how long it had been.
We started dating, but it was much different from what I would have expected. It was as if he was happier talking to me than making out with me. We went to plays, to movies, to concerts.
“I think he’s the perfect guy for you right now,” Laura said one night, when she and I were both staying at Cookie’s. “He’s not pressuring you into anything, and you can get back into the swing of things at your own pace.”
“If you’re not too busy mooning over what’s-his-name on the Knicks,” Cookie added, teasingly. I had decided that I really liked Dave DeBusschere – he was nice looking, he worked really hard, he didn’t come off as a conceited show-off and he was nice looking. I did not moon over him.
“He’s married,” I said, dismissively.
“Oh, yeah,” Cookie replied. “Like that makes a difference.”
“His wife is from Garden City,” I said, hoping to end the discussion.
“Well,” Cookie said, “I’m not so sure this guy is so great.”
“Why not?” Laura asked, protectively.
“Cookie just doesn’t like the fact that he didn’t drool over her when he met her,” I said, teasing her back. To my surprise, she didn’t take the bait but instead turned serious.
“No, actually I was glad he didn’t. And not surprised. I can’t put my finger on it, but he just…I don’t know.”
“I’m not looking for anything deep and meaningful, here.” I said, softly. “I…I just couldn’t handle that, yet.”
Laura leaned over and kissed me on the head.
“Well,” Cookie said, “Just make sure you stick to that. Don’t let yourself get hurt.”
He took me to his senior prom. It was strange, because he had very few friends at school, and the few he had didn’t go to the prom. So, we sat at a table with acquaintances of his who weren’t really friends, and I wound up carrying the conversation with the other girls.
Still, he took me to a couple of night clubs, saw some good shows, and I felt for the first time like I might actually be growing into an adult. I had a drink because everyone else did, and it felt cool, but the taste of alcohol was not pleasant to me, and the associations were terrible. I left one drink half finished in each club.
We came out of the second club around four in the morning, and we headed out to the beach. We were sharing a limo with one other couple, and it wasn’t long before they were in each other’s arms. Judging by what I heard, they proceeded up the ladder of intimacy at a record pace.
Hearing the girl’s sighs, followed by moans, I found myself longing for some intimacy of my own. I turned to Tim, and made it easy for him to kiss me, and he did, softly at first, but then with some urgency. I stroked the back of his neck, and I was pleased to hear his breathing grow heavier.
And then…nothing happened. I touched his cheek, stroked his neck, even kissed his earlobe. He smiled and held me, and kissed me some, but that was all.
By the time we got to the beach, it was getting light out. We got out of the limo, while the other couple put themselves back together. We walked out onto the sand, and I took my high heeled sandals off and walked in the sand in my stocking feet.
The horizon was beginning to blaze as the sun was peeking over the edge. We stopped a few feet from the shore line, the sand damp against my stockings. I looked at Tim; he looked away so I wouldn’t see the tears, and I knew.
Tim and I stopped seeing each other, but we remained friends. He would call me from time to time, and once in a great while we’d go out to a movie or a show. Mom and Grandma were always uneasy when he took me out, and one Sunday morning as we were having breakfast, I tried to allay their concerns by saying, “It’s nothing, really; to me he’s just like one of the girls.” They both dissolved into hysterical laughter.
I threw myself into the Knicks and their playoff run. Sue and I compared notes every day at school, and a few of the other girls were caught up in it as well. Like most other Knick fans, we had been sure the first round against Baltimore would be a snap, and were chagrined when it went a full seven games; and like most other Knick fans we expected to struggle against Lew Alcindor and the Milwaukee Bucks in the second round, and were pleasantly surprised when they finished in just five games.
Mom and Grandma were very understanding about me wanting to watch the games. There were a couple of nights, including Game 7, when I was relegated to Grandma’s room to watch on the portable set that Uncle Ray had given her for Christmas, but I didn’t complain. When Willis Reed made his dramatic entrance before that final game, I cried when I heard that intense ovation that was so overwhelming, even the Lakers team stopped in their tracks.
After the championship had been won, Sue and I talked over the game for more than an hour, until finally Grandma looked a little annoyed because she wanted to go to bed. Fortunately, Sue had called me, or else it would have been much worse.
The following week, I felt empty waiting for the school bus. Cookie and Laura seemed to sense it, and they both asked if I was okay. I assured them I was, but with the Knicks’ season over and the band finished because Sue would be graduating, I felt like I had nothing going for me.
I was jealous of Sue and the other seniors, who were so busy now, planning for graduation, planning for the next big step in their lives, planning for new things. They were moving and I was staying, and as much as I loved my school, I felt left out.
Before school ended, I was elected president of the Music Club, and I felt more proud of it than I ever would have expected. Gina was elected treasurer and Terri was elected secretary, so I felt like I had lots of support. Miss Brentwood told me that she had been considering leaving the school, as she wasn’t sure if she really fit in, but had decided to stay in part because of the girls in the club.
“You have a great summer,” she said to me in June. “And then come back and have a great senior year.”
I took driver’s ed over the summer at Memorial, and in the evenings Mom took me out to practice driving. A couple of times, Fred took me out, and I found he was a better teacher than Mom. He also always made me laugh, and I felt very relaxed with him.
By now, he and Mom had abandoned any pretense that they were “just friends” and were dating on a regular basis. Almost every weekend, they were out doing something, and Grandma and I would sometimes sit and speculate about where it all might lead. We grew close that summer, as she told me a few interesting things about what she had noticed about Dad before he and Mom were married – apparently, she knew of his problem, and tried to talk Mom out of marrying him, but Mom insisted that everything would be all right and they she was sure she could help him get his life back on track.
By the end of the summer, I had my driver’s license. I had also worked full time the second half of the summer, figuring to save up for a car when the time was right. Working in Manhattan full time gave me a real appreciation for the city, even in a time when it was far from its best.
For the first time, I started spending some of my spare time there. Dating Tim had triggered that, as he had introduced me to the pleasures of concerts at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall, plays on and off Broadway, and leisurely strolls through the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gina joined me for concerts, Cookie and Laura for shows, and Terri for plays and museums.
Mom was nervous about all of this. She approved of my cultural tastes – well, most of them, anyway – but she worried about what the city had become. I couldn’t blame her, because I had already adjusted to guys coming up to me on the street saying, “Smoke? Smoke?” and going to the theatre was always a challenge because the filth of 42nd Street seemed to have spread up and down Eighth Avenue.
Her reaction was probably made worse by the fact that we were living in the house where she had grown up, in a simpler and more innocent time. Her focus then had always been on the town, and I guess it was natural for her to want my focus to be on the town, too. But I also think she had known from when I had been so adamant about going to high school back in Queens that I was and always would be a city girl.
I won’t pretend I wasn’t nervous when I went into the city. Everywhere, one felt the press of decay, of crime and of dirt and grime. The grand old buildings, the ones with the classic architecture, were coated in soot and ash, baked on by scores of summers under the blazing sun; and the newer, cleaner structures were all steel and glass – gleaming but soulless.
Prowling the streets were petty criminals of every stripe – pushers and pimps, hookers and pickpockets and muggers. After a while, one saw them, or at least where they might be lurking, and one quickly turned in the other direction. Mom’s urgings to always have friends with me were unnecessary – it was obvious even to me.
Laura would sometimes ask me what I saw in the city, why I couldn’t be just as happy with a day at Jones Beach as at the Met. It wasn’t that I disliked Long Island; I didn’t even dislike the town much anymore. It wasn’t mine; it was Mom’s. The city was mine.
Our "Girl Autobiographies"
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Absaroka
- Miss Diamond Goddess
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- Joined: Fri Feb 04, 2005 8:30 am
Erin I love it. Haven't heard anyone mention Lee Michaels in a long time......Also enjoyed the music teachers critique.
I remember jamming with some friends one time. It was decided to all go over to the drummers house, who I had never met or heard of. This alone surprised me, there were only 2 high schools in our town and the kids who were serious about music tended to all know each other. They told me there drummers name and I was very surprised that it was a girl and said so. This was about 1971. Although lots of girls played violin and flute and the like it was rare to find a girl who could play jazz or rock music with enough aggressiveness. But they said I'd be surprised. And she was very good. I've often wondered if the reason I never heard of her before or after was that she was a girl and just not taken seriously.
I also remember it was our band that played at my senior prom. That was a tremendous thrill for me.
I liked the description of Macy's also. It brought back memories of working for man power at department stores and realizing that there was a huge amount of the store that the public never saw. I could practically smell the stale sunlight and dust as I read that part.
Sometime later my girl will also have her band. It was one of my favorite parts of the story, the most fun to write and the most personal also-I was initially terrified to let anyone read it. But that's later.
I also remember 42nd st and it's spread.
Absaroka
I remember jamming with some friends one time. It was decided to all go over to the drummers house, who I had never met or heard of. This alone surprised me, there were only 2 high schools in our town and the kids who were serious about music tended to all know each other. They told me there drummers name and I was very surprised that it was a girl and said so. This was about 1971. Although lots of girls played violin and flute and the like it was rare to find a girl who could play jazz or rock music with enough aggressiveness. But they said I'd be surprised. And she was very good. I've often wondered if the reason I never heard of her before or after was that she was a girl and just not taken seriously.
I also remember it was our band that played at my senior prom. That was a tremendous thrill for me.
I liked the description of Macy's also. It brought back memories of working for man power at department stores and realizing that there was a huge amount of the store that the public never saw. I could practically smell the stale sunlight and dust as I read that part.
Sometime later my girl will also have her band. It was one of my favorite parts of the story, the most fun to write and the most personal also-I was initially terrified to let anyone read it. But that's later.
I also remember 42nd st and it's spread.
Absaroka
everything under the sun is in tune
but the sun is eclipsed by the moon
but the sun is eclipsed by the moon
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Erin L
- Miss Emerald Goddess
- Posts: 244
- Joined: Thu Oct 30, 2008 11:38 am
- Location: Queens, NY
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Robyn Katie
- Miss Platinum Goddess
- Posts: 380
- Joined: Thu Oct 02, 2008 5:02 pm
Hi everyone,
Erin and Absaroka, I am entranced by your adventures. What better way to get to know each other than this?
Just to keep pace, here's the next installment in my continuing soap ...
Love, Robyn Katie
***
Visiting Alison in the infirmary, I find her sharing a tiny room with Mary Ferris, an upperclassman. I don’t really know Mary but she seems to know me. I say hello and turn to Alison.
“Oh, honey, you look so sick.”
“I’m better than I was.” She struggles up against the pillow. I would hug her but of course she’s infectious. So I hold her hand at arm’s length.
“I brought your mail.”
“Oh. Thanks.”
“Also they gave me your class assignments to bring, in case you feel well enough to do any of them, only you don’t, do you.”
Wearily, “So much catching up to do. Four whole days!”
From the other bed Mary (who hardly looks sick at all, in fact I wonder what she could possibly be doing here) gives me such a look! “Is that the one?” she says.
Alison’s face goes stony. She nods curtly, saying nothing. Funny atmosphere I must say. It’s a relief to get out of there, hoping no flu germs came with me, and get back to the room … and Lainey.
For some reason or other I stop by Erica Zimmerman’s room, to find her and her roommate Enid are rearranging things. I don’t know which of them is shyer, in comparison to the two of them I feel bold and daring. Tall skinny Erica is so introverted she almost can’t talk to anyone, but she is beautiful, with muted golden hair and big lovely eyes.
I don’t know why, but I blurt out to her, “You are so adorable!”
“Oh,” she says, as if I’d bitten her.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
“I am not, I never am.”
“—Startle you, I just—”
“What makes you think I am?”
She sounds puzzled and possibly hurt. My darn impulses again. What made me say it? Was it the grace of her willowy form, momentarily caught against the light? Now I feel disgusted with myself, and disloyal to Lainey for having said it. I retreat from Erica’s mild, reproachful eyes.
Lainey works on The Gerroldian, our school paper, she’s assistant to the editor, a senior named Nancy Fulginer. So from time to time she brings stories back to the room to work on.
Tonight I’m helping her with the paste-up to show the printer where stories should go. The text comes in galleys, we cut them and stick them where we decide they belong on a big lined format page. We have to mark how they should “break” from one page to a later page, cut a paragraph if there’s not room, and so on.
She’s even got me writing a news story for her (a thing I never would do on my own). She said the Gerroldian needed to cover the class officers’ meeting, but she couldn’t go because she had to finish a paper, and nobody else could either, ‘cause it’s only a staff of three and they were all busy at that hour. So who went to the meeting for her? Me. And came back with any number of notes, most of which she told me weren’t usable.
“Thanks for doing that for me, though,” she said, Frenching me. She loves French kissing, the tongues, all of that. As it’s a new thing to me, it has taken me time to get used to. (But since I have been kissing her ahem, elsewhere, ahem, it would seem silly to quibble, wouldn’t it!)
“Thanks for doing the story,” she said, after I had typed it up, and she used it, though not very much of it.
Even with all this, she does not intend to be a journalist, she says. She wants to be a botanist. So all this term the room, including Alison’s entire unoccupied bed, is littered with meticulous drawings of flower parts. Night before last she said, “Come here a minute,” and pointed at a drawing that was captioned Cattleya labiata. “Does that remind you of anything you’ve seen lately?”
I giggled. “Eee, you are bad!”
We tumbled together laughing. Nobody ever cleared a bed of papers at such top speed, but she wouldn’t let me undress her yet. “It’s only seven-ten by my watch, dearest, and someone might easily walk in on us.” I love that—she has started calling me dearest now. She wouldn’t for ever so long, but now it seems almost second nature to her.
So to make a long story short we made ourselves be good until lights out. And then made up for it.
As Lainey smokes, I’ve started sneaking smokes with her. We generally puff it out our window, the back one that faces the trees, hanging on the sill and fanning to keep the smell out of the room. This happens to be the window that has the fire escape for this end of the building, so if there was a fire the whole world would be galumphing through our room enroute to safety, if any. Maybe in spring we can sit out there after dark and smoke, that would be better.
We are smoking guiltily one March evening when almost without thinking I put the tip of my cigarette to the skin of my wrist and —
“Robyn! What—don’t!” she cries.
But I’ve already burnt a mark. Ow, it hurts—but I’m very satisfied with it. You see, over the course of the days I have gotten this desperate feeling of need to show her how true, how eternal my love for her is, and in some manner I don’t half understand, this fills the bill.
She’s horrified. “How could you—I don’t understand you—”
“It’s only a burn, gee whiz.”
“It’ll leave a scar!”
“Yes. To last forever. To take to my grave. That’s the whole idea: to commemorate you and my love for you as long as life shall last.” Kissing her aghast mouth. “Don’t look so shocked! I’ve always done stuff like this when I need to make a sign of something truly important in my life.”
She is a blank. “You have?”
“You know …prick myself with needles in my arms and legs, and once in my cheek, see here?”
“Oh my god, Robyn.”
"But I was very careful, sterilized the needle and everything. Why not? I liked how it felt. And …”
“You did?”
Carelessly I run on, unaware how this is affecting her. “You should have seen what I did to myself in fourth grade—”
She takes my face in her hands. “Robyn? Darling? Don’t talk like this—”
“—Dug a big hole in my finger with a protractor point in class ‘cause I don’t know, I just did.”
She draws a little away. “Robyn, never tell anyone else this, promise. Are you aware how crazy that sounds? Please tell me you’re not crazy.”
“’Course not.” Realization dawning, anxious, “You think I am?”
It floods in on me, I lie in her arms and see myself with a bitter dry eye. As if I’m a pretty piece of china but am cracked and glued back together, only the glue isn’t holding so I—
I don’t want to think about this any further.
“Don’t do it again,” she whispers, kissing the tip of my nose (the only one in the world who ever did that).
“I don't see why not,” I insist. “But okay. If it’s important to you, I won’t.”
She manages not to be too aghast at me as we tuck ourselves into bed. It’s quite an art, two of us finding how to fit into a bed made for one. But we’re good at it now.
Spring vacation. I want to stay at school with Lainey, but she’s going home, so I go home too. I more or less have to in any case, as my parents are taking Alice and me skiing during vacation. It’s a long drive from Pennsylvania all the way to Stowe, Vermont, where we stay in a tiny crowded guest house and ski at Mount Mansfield. I love skiing but the time is spoiled for me because of how horribly lonely for Lainey I am.
I try to rally. At Daddy’s insistence I take along my guitar and he dragoons me into singing and playing for the guests. I sit in the middle of the floor and everybody else sort of crams in wherever. I have been learning oodles of songs off the Susan Reed and Burl Ives records and before the five days of vacation is over I sing most of them and the others sing along on the choruses. Daddy gets me to play along on one of his old chestnuts:
There's a long, long trail a-winding
Into the land of my dreams ...
I do it with a bad grace, as I am rather fed up with all those old popular songs. And then everyone wants to sing "I've Got Sixpence" and a bunch of things like that. Not my favorites, but they're all having fun. On alcohol of course.
A boy, Thomas Goode from Fayetteville, New York is interested in me, a great deal more so than I can easily manage. He tries to kiss me in the hall. Eluding him, I take refuge with the daughter of the owner of the guest house, a tall, earnest, quiet, slim blackhaired girl named Maria. She spends half her time writing love letters to her boyfriend in Montpelier, signing them with big prints of fresh lipstick at the bottom of the page.
They’re unbelievably direct, the things she writes. Over her shoulder I catch sight of a sentence or two. Believe it or not, she actually wrote this: “I want you to make love to me so much, I promise this time I won’t let you down like before.” —only "make love" isn’t the term she used. And on another page, “You really can have me, all of me, just don’t get me pregnant, promise!” but the word wasn’t "have."
Right in the U.S. mail! I heard they can put you in jail for that. Imagine if her mother were to open it. But she sticks a stamp on and trots out into the subzero cold to put it in the mailbox herself, raising the flag so the mailman won’t overlook it. How does she dare?
Of course she is older, almost eighteen to my fifteen. The skiing men staying at the house all vie with each other trying to get her to play around with them, but she won’t, she is true to her boy to whom she writes those very frankly expressed things.
She and I talk secretly, seriously, and she doesn’t seem at all the type of person to write in four-letter words. I conclude other people’s lives are stranger than in all my born days I could ever guess.
No sooner am I back at school than guess who is lying in wait. No. I shouldn’t talk about my sweet roommate that way, I love her … just not in the same way as I love Lainey. Yes, Alison has come back from the infirmary.
Lainey’s eyes flare with warnings. Our nights of delirious love, in which all we had to worry about was not making so much noise they could hear us through the walls, are forever at an end.
“You don’t look much better,” I tell Alison, as warmly as I can manage.
“I’m still a little sick. I asked to get out a day early though. I have to talk to you, Robyn, do you mind if we—?”
Hastily Lainey finds somewhere else she has to be, and Alison and I are alone. I regard her with unease, almost as if I know what is coming.
Stern eyes. “In the infirmary I heard something you should know. You remember Mary Ferris was in the room with me, the junior? Well,” swallowing unhappily, “she told me it’s all over school.”
“What is?”
“About you. And Lainey.”
My eyebrows are trying to shoot up into my hair but everything depends on me not showing the slightest reaction. I put on a puzzled look. “Me? And Lainey?”
“Don’t act innocent, you know what I mean.”
“No, as it happens, I don’t,” I say coldly. “Maybe you’d better explain it to me.”
Her eyes plead. “Don’t you see it has to stop, immediately?”
I’m merciless. “What does?”
“You really want me to spell it out for you? All right then, Robyn. Everyone is talking about what you and Lainey do when you think no one is looking.”
“Like what?”
“Kiss each other, and—”
“Oh, big sin. As if no girl ever kissed another girl in a friendly—”
“And *going to bed with each other*, and, well then, if you must know every last thing they’re saying,” uncomfortably, “*having sex.*”
I release a short pent-up breath. "I see."
“Tell me it isn’t true.”
“No." Dazedly, able to think of nothing better to say, I admit it. "As a matter of fact, it’s true.”
“Oh Robyn, how could you. I never dreamed—well, yes, I did dream as a matter of fact, I suspected it weeks ago, before I got sick, but I told myself I was being overly distrustful and maybe mistaken and anyway it was none of my business, but now—” She gazed at me, forlorn. “I’m so terribly upset that I didn’t do anything while there was still time.”
“Do what? What would you have done?”
“I don’t know. Something. I’m so ashamed. Yes, and ashamed of you, too!” Angry now. “Did you ever give the least thought to me? People look at me like I’m somehow responsible. How could you, the two of you? Didn’t you have the least sense of propriety? Did you think you were *invisible*?”
“But that’s—” I scarcely know what I’m saying. “—So much worse than I—than we—”
She doesn't even deign to answer.
A little later Lainey comes back in. We stare a bold kiss but don’t try to approach each other in the presence of a sullen Alison who is pretending neither of us exist. Lainey glances in surprise, brows asking me a question, but I say nothing. Nor, even when we’re whispering alone in her bed in the dead of night (yes, I am that brazen, and proud of it) do I breathe a word of what Alison said. No. I’d let doom strike first. For if I told Lainey, that’d be the end, I know it—she’d insist on stopping forever. And I can’t bear this ever to stop.
I do try to be on my best behavior with her, though.
Next night just after supper Alison says, “I’m going to the library. I’ll be there about an hour and a half I think.” She throws a warning glance at me. I think I know what this means. She’s loyally, if disapprovingly letting me know Lainey and I can have the next hour and a half to ourselves. That’s so sweet of her, I think!
I’m not sure though, her manner is odd. But Lainey and I are in no mood for pussyfooting, since we haven’t the freedom of the midnights any more. We seize the hour.
Luckily when the prefect, Vicky Flisendeller, blunders into the room about twenty after seven we are still dressed! Of course we have our books and papers ready to grab, so as we spring guiltily apart we have something to fiddle with (damp fingermarks on the pages, praying the telltale spots of each other’s juices will go unnoticed).
Vicky gives us one of her snottiest glances. “What on earth are you two up to?”
We stare bright-eyed and guilty as sin, as I scrabble around the floor for the papers we knocked off in our haste to seem innocent. “Her, uh, notes fell on the floor. Just helping her pick them up.”
“There,” Lainey chimes in, putting the rest of the papers on the top of her desk. “All safe.”
(Not till weeks later will it occur to me that Alison might have cleared out by arrangement with the prefect. Did she know that was going to happen? Was she trying to warn me with her eyes? Or did she figure it served both of us right?)
Whatever the case, being surprised by the prefect is the end of us. Afterward Lainey fixes me with eyes sterner than Alison’s. “We mustn’t any more,” she said.
“But—” Though I try to act surprised, the dread was already in my heart before she spoke. “That can’t make any difference—”
“It does, and you know it.”
“She didn’t really suspect anything.”
“Yes she did.”
“Anyway we’ll be good for a few days, all right? so everyone’ll see there was nothing to it at all. We’ll just be extra careful, then after a while, when they’ve forgotten, we can—”
“This isn’t the kind of thing anybody forgets.”
“They can’t know anything. Not for sure!”
She swept her hands apart, palms down. “We just mustn’t. It has to be over. As of right now.”
Tears, so sudden I choke. I plead for a little time. She shakes her head. A kiss? She won’t even give me that.
“Consider yourself lucky we’re not expelled,” is all she’ll say.
Agony.
It only lasted twenty-three days.
Oh the stares. The way everyone looks at me! Or else won’t. Averted eyes, heads turning the other way—backs, innumerable backs. I can hear them thinking, That’s the girl with the unnatural desires, the freak and pervert that forced poor Lainey to do all those ugly things …
It’s so unfair! If they only knew, if they’d been there, they’d realize how deep it was, how true …
In self-defense I go overboard in the other direction. Now they'll call me boy-crazy. Boy-crazy is preferable, according to the accepted wisdom. (*My* wisdom, I have learned, is never ever accepted.)
How satisfied they must feel. —See, told you it was just a stage she was going through, she’d straighten up in time.— How I hate when the wrong things they think turn out to appear true, even though they aren’t! Such satisfaction it gives them, and I just grind my teeth and think, One of these days …
Thus my soggy saga.
Really nothing whatever of interest happens to me from now till school is out. Nor afterward, for that matter. The world was full of love, now it’s empty. Who cares what an empty world is like. I doggedly go through the days, one much like the next. Summertime I work for Pearl again. She uses me (the term is exact) mostly as a secretary, keeping her files and typing her letters and so on. I’m not a very good typist though I took the course! But she says I am a very good speller and that makes up for all the rest. I think that remark was meant to stand for kindness, which she hasn’t any of.
The lawn is knee deep in grass. We have bought this new rotary mower to cope with it, and I must say it does a better job than the old reel type, which choked and stopped if it had to cope with anything tall, and was impossible to restart afterward. But this new mower is so huge, it’s almost as much work as the old rusty hand one. Mowing the lawn under the blazing sun I get so hot sweat drenches me, and this bra, so itchy, all I want to do is take it off. Sometimes I wish I could just go behind a bush, skin off my T-shirt, unhook the damp thing and wad it up in my pocket, just to air myself. But Mom is so eagle-eyed she can spot my breasts loose in my shirt across fifty yards of lawn.
Wish I could take off my top anytime, like boys do! Boys have it easy. (Lords of creation. Think they own the world. They do, sort of. They don’t own me, though. Just even let them try!) If I want to go bare above my waist (let alone below), I have to sneak and hide and make sure no one can see me.
When I can, I get away, far away, making sure they don't know where I am. A favorite spot is the meadow upstream, acres and acres of grass and willows, and no one to see. No one ever goes there, and if anyone were to come I could see them a great way off. There I feel really secure, it's a spot that belongs to me alone.
My beautiful meadow. Often I take a book there to read, leaning my bare back against a tree trunk, the sun buttery lovely (I’m getting a light tan on my breasts and tummy). I love just being there, listening to the rilling of the water, taking a vacation from thinking.
Other places aren’t this happy. I get upset a lot, even when I’m not about to have my period. Also for some reason I seem to get run down in a way I can’t control. I can be walking and I will suddenly stop and almost keel over. I have to drape myself on the scenery. Or I just lie down. At school I did one day, just lay on the grass, and Bindie McBride with her cute freckles came up and asked me if anything was wrong and I just couldn’t answer.
Then Diana Huddleton joined her, asking, “Is she crying?”
“I can’t tell.”
“Well, she can’t just lie there.” But then, since they don’t seem to have any idea what to do about me, they go away.
After a while I get up and go on to class or whatever. They're looking at me even funnier now! I am “moody,” I hear them say. Bending over the spiral notebook on my knee I painfully inscribe dreary misery poems.
I am a flower
Trodden down,
Can’t get up
I’m so drowned.
I am a bird
Wings broken,
Can’t fly, I
Cry unspoken.
For five whole seconds I think maybe this is the finest poem ever written. Then I see how embarrassingly terrible it is and tear it up.
Dolestown is different, as Brenda and Jill Endicott are away all the time. I have to put on a dress to go there because Mom says it’s expected of me. I go with her to the Dolestown Market for food, and rarely, when I can afford it, to Elly’s for clothes. Elly’s has very dull clothes but there aren’t very many other places to buy them nearer than Strawbridge’s in Jenkintown.
Wednesdays Mom goes to play golf with her friends Jean Warren and Sally Smith. When I was younger they wanted to make me caddy for them but luckily the country club doesn’t allow girls to caddy. So as I don’t play golf Mom drops me off in town and I mooch around the newsstand for books. One thing I really like a lot is science fiction. If I was one of the heroines on the covers of those pulp magazines! It’s how I picture myself, I don’t know why: a heroine naked or almost, menaced by horrible space monsters with jaws salivating to crunch into luscious me.
Being eaten? Sure, why not?
Science fiction is the future, you see. It's far away and high among the stars and full of wonderfully impossible adventure (but it could be possible someday) that hasn’t anything to do with miserable me or my circumstances. And my songs come from long ago, put me in worlds all my own. Both take me out of the present moment—and it's the present moment I'm having so much trouble with.
I wanted to find out what my old friend from grade school, Gwenny Fisher, was doing now. But Rickie Welch told me I’d better steer clear.
“Why?”
“Because she is a whore.”
“A what?” Of all the words I could have been expecting, that isn’t it. In fact, I’ve never heard anyone say it before, only seen it in books.
“She’s a prosty now. Has sex with men for money.” Trust that Rickie, she doesn’t mince words.
So here I am on a cloudy afternoon, sun glowing through a summer thunderstorm just about to break, mourning my dear old girlfriend whom I know I will never dare go see now. Wistful for something that never was.
Accepting a rash moment's invite, I go riding in Frank Dearborn’s pickup truck to get the last of the hay, just a truck’s worth, not enough for a full wagon. Elbow out the window, sweaty, I try to whistle but I can only make a wheet sort of noise. I do not look in his direction, as I’m well aware he’s looking at my breasts. My T-shirt’s practically transparent with sweat, and like an idiot I didn’t wear a bra, you can see my nipples, big dark stains in the shirt the size of half dollars. I cross my arms self-consciously. Will I never learn?
We stop in the hayfield. The others have left, taking the tractor and baler back to the barn. This is crazy, I can’t be alone with him! (If he tries anything with me …)
He tries something with me. His big hands all over my front, trying to kiss me too, but I won’t.
“No,” I tell him.
“Aw come on, what do you care?”
“I care. A lot. Frank!” in panic as he gets his hand between my legs. Telling him no a final time, feeling like a trapped animal, I scoot across the wide seat, smack down on the handle. The door flies open and as I’m already tipped past the seat edge, I fall out the door.
“Hey, Robyn, come back here, what’s the matter with you, didn’t you never get it before?”
On hands and knees, panting, eyes wide, I stare up at him. Flinging him a look that I hope curdles his blood, I scramble to my feet, turn my back and stride angrily across the field toward the lane leading to the road. The pickup makes a wide swing and comes after me, I have a qualm that he’s going to run me down, but I refuse to look back. Instead the truck rolls alongside me, him leaning out.
“Come on, you know you want it.”
“Happens I don’t.”
“Hey, you’ve done it before, you can do it again.”
I turn and scream at him, “I have not. I never have.”
He’s honestly startled. “Wait. You’re a virgin?”
“Correct.” I just keep walking.
Without another word he guns it. The truck speeds up, leaves me behind, turning into the road without even a pause for looking both ways. What is it about a virgin that scares boys off? Whatever it is they think they want, a virgin isn’t it. Kind of makes you wonder how virginities ever get broken.
He could’ve raped me. Or I could’ve let him. Then all that part of it would be over and I could concentrate on the important things.
I walk home fuming.
In my room I practice assiduously on my banjo and guitar, learning new songs, singing over old ones. Trouble is, music pitches me back into my sorrows over Lainey, and then only the blues will do.
I'm motherless, fatherless, sister and brotherless too,
Motherless, oh, sister and brotherless too,
Reason I tried so hard to make this trip with you.
I loved you reckless, Lainey, and I loved you wild,
I loved you reckless, yes, and you know I loved you wild,
I may not be good lookin' but I was your ...
The tears come.
In better moments I think: I am getting rather good at this. I've never known what I want to do with my life: could it be this? To make records like Susan Reed, and travel around giving concerts to halls full of applause and cheers? But in my moments of clarity I know I'm not good enough. Maybe I never will be.
Strange, how little stamina I have, how little daring. It costs me dearly in fearfulness to even think of leaving home. Other people don’t seem to be afflicted this way, but when I so much as try to face other people I seem to collapse inwardly and I don’t know why. It feels like shame, like guilt, like abject terror molten just under the surface, threatening to drown me if I try to be daring in any way.
The house fills with gloom. Family silences are the rule: alcohol silences. Things not to be admitted to. Not just the things Daddy does to me, either, but the ways he is “tired” and has to lie motionless on the couch every night. We can never come right out and say he’s drunk … that word surely does not apply to anyone in our family. It will be years before I realize he wasn’t just “tired” in the evening after a hard day’s work. At least when he's "tired" he isn't terrorizing me!
Mother is nervous, tense, she gets headaches and has to retire to her room, leaving the house naked around me. As for Alice my sister, she is such a pry I simply want to get free of her, be some place she is not. I thought I missed her when I was away at school, but now that I’m home I see I didn’t. She is a pain, always tagging after me, spying on me too, nagging to know about what I’ve been doing.
I haven’t got friends. Or maybe one. Marji Endreman, a pleasant, sweet brownhaired girl from Hilltown, is my friend, I think, but in this country wasteland she is too far away to be easily reached, so our friendship dies from lack of seeing each other. So I am left to loneliness, fantasies, playing with myself for want of anyone else to play with. This sad summer fleets away, time lost, time wasted.
Our summer trip this year includes a stop in southern New York state with my parents’ skiing friends Dick and Harrington Tyler, she of the guitar and the songs. But our attempt to play and sing together in the evening is jarring, for now I am to the point that I can see I’m a better guitarist than she is. Rudely I push to outplay, outsing her, to play my banjo too, which she cannot do. She retreats into herself, and I, feeling cheap and a bit of a pig, can’t seem to stop myself being so ugly-competitive about singing. By the time I put my instruments in their cases I am sick of myself and my so-called music.
The next morning is bright and clear, a beautiful July day, not yet hot. Their son Joe is away, but their daughter Phillippa is detailed to entertain me until we go. She’s two years older and rather superior, but she conscientiously takes me on a ramble into the woods.
“Show you something,” she says mysteriously, and leads the way to what looks like a square roofline deep in the forest. We break out of the thickest trees into a terrace so thickly overgrown you can barely see the giant urns and pillars; only here and there do flagstones show, a hint of stone steps, a fountain, long dry, with cherub, and rearing above it into the black shade cast by the deep tree crowns that make the very air about us green, a house! It is built as a rectangle, with tiny steel-feamed windows, in that “modern” style of years ago so old-fashioned now.
“Made of concrete?” I exclaim, almost wrenching my ankle on a projecting stone.
“Everything.” She is patronizing.
“But it’s been taken over by … jungle.” Hands clasped in wonder, I am entranced. “It’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever seen.”
“The old family house. Father and Mother couldn’t live in it though. It’d take thousands just to reopen it. Want to see inside?”
She climbs the side steps to a door, opens it. We go in. The rooms are mostly furnished, a couch you wouldn’t want to sit on, all mildewed as it is. Chairs, tables, old dead lamps, even some moldy books in shelves, all just as it was, apparently, when abandoned ever so long ago. An overwhelming dank smell hangs over everything.
We come to the kitchen. An ancient gas stove and refrigerator, a speckled stone sink. Little tin cans of flour and sugar and so on. The flour’s gone to mold, but the sugar is okay; I taste some. I’ve never had enough sugar, always wanted more, but now, tasting it by itself, I realize it’s horrible stuff and I never want to eat it again.
Out we go, down the moss-slick steps, and leave behind this rather repellent fairy palace, nevertheless to remain a secret place in my memory forever.
Kennebunk Beach seems childish now, my cousins playing little-girl games on the porch. I wander lonely along the twisting road among hillside cottages to the beach, burning my footsoles on the hot asphalt. No one I know is here.
Barbara Barnett, my crush of a year ago, is working at Dot’s Lunch at the crossroads about a mile from the beach. She has little time for me. Though she’s my age she’s already distant in some way I can’t explain, she seems to view me from a mountaintop of experiences I’ll never dream of.
One night we walk down to the beach together in the salt dark, climb up on the lifeguard stand and sit together. The seat is barely wide enough for us both; if we had the sort of hips some girls have we couldn’t manage it, but we’re both on the slim side. I put my arm around her. She doesn’t react to this. I try drawing her closer, but she isn’t very willing. Her lips are wonderful but our kisses are short, she doesn’t really want to.
Afterward, giving up, I lean my head on her shoulder. She stares at the surf beating, beating, far down the beach, the tide dead low, kind of like my life. I walk her back home. I want her to kiss me again but she won’t. I can feel her thoughts pushing me away, saying: Girls don’t do this together, and you should know better.
She rarely says much, is silent. Embarrassed, I realize that, much as she seems willing to spend time in my company, I don’t interest Barbara very much, in comparison to the other people she knows. Am just a pastime for her in a life that hasn’t much to look forward to.
This brings out the cynical side of me. The last day we’re here I quite deliberately set out to charm Sally Enders, my old childhood romping friend. She’s very excited, holds hands with me on the beach without the slightest self-consciousness. We clamber out on the rocks of the point below her house. The minute we sit down, we start to neck—two girls in broad daylight in full view of the houses!
I'm having qualms now despite my bravado. “What if they see us?” I mutter, breaking a kiss that anyone from her windows might see without half trying.
“Let them.”
“Your parents’ll be furious.”
“That's their lookout. Kiss me some more.”
"It's all right with me whatever we do, but you—"
“I don’t care,” she whispers, “I love you.”
Heady, us kissing like crazy. She is totally lost in the sheer wonder of kissing me—and I’m not. What a shock. This is the first time in my life I ever kissed anyone coldly, calculatingly, cynically—without love. Casually, unfeelingly, I slip my hand in the top of her bathing suit. “Boobs” seems the word for hers, since they seem nothing but skin, nothing but territory for my fingers to conquer, to admire the piquancy of my scarlet nails on those poor little things that don’t know any better. I feel like a thug (are there girl thugs?), as my heart isn’t in it. We kiss goodbye till next year and my promises aren’t worth a burnt match.
Home again. School will start in a little over a week, I’ll be a junior. A day student this time, since I’ll be able to drive myself. How strange it will seem not being in the dorm! And yet healthier for me I think, for I won’t be so tempted to indulge what I now see is a very wicked and unacceptable taste for love with girls rather than the boys for which Mother Nature supposedly intended me.
Odd, though, how queasy I get thinking of boys. Why is love with girls so wrong, when for me it’s the easy straightforward thing, the thing my blood and bones sing to? Well never mind that, Robyn, haven’t you decided you’re going to learn to be boy-crazy? Yes you have, and the question is not open for further discussion. You’re determined to carry it through—aren’t you? After all, anything at all can be learned—can’t it?
So that’s that.
Perched on the couch, legs under me, skirt smoothed over my knees, I keenly watch the Philadelphia Athletics play the Detroit Tigers on TV. I am really a Brooklyn Dodger fan and love to root for them when they play the Phillies on the local channel; but I’ll watch any baseball, even the dull old Athletics. There’s the venerable Connie Mack, tall, thin, managing in his brown suit from the dugout, a holdover from baseball’s earliest days in the nineteenth century. I still have not let go of my dream of being the first girl to play in the major leagues. The difference is, then I thought it was possible. Now I know it’s nonsense, but I still love the notion.
Sally, my naïve sweet sad conquest of that cynical summer afternoon, writes me avid love letters signed with lipstick kisses—Sally, who never wore lipstick in her life! They’re rapidly filling the drawer in my little chest, I hope Mom doesn’t snoop because they are pretty incriminating.
Darling Robyn,
How are you, oh I miss you so, do you feel my love from all this distance?
School has started but I can’t pay it any attention, I suppose I’m going to flunk, for I just wander around burning, thinking of you and wishing we were together this minute so I could kiss you.
You opened so much to me, how can I bear being apart from you now? I so long to hold you in my arms and kiss, kiss, kiss you. (And other things.) Yes I know it is wrong but I would rather be wrong with you than right with anyone else!!! There was so much we didn’t have time to do, I want to do it all now, give myself to you, all of me, why must we be so many miles apart?
Oh dearest sweetest Robyn, you must think I am such an idiot, but I am happy to be an idiot for you and I adore you forever and love you with all my heart, don’t hurt me, my darling, for I am your very own
Sally
With terrible clarity I know I want no part of her, and feel nothing. Startlingly, blushingly, devastatingly, I understand I have crassly taken advantage of our old friendship out of a moment’s need for loveplay, and ruined it for nothing.
I am so ashamed I can’t bring myself to reply.
***
Next time: Sweet Sixteen ... and the Unforeseen.
Erin and Absaroka, I am entranced by your adventures. What better way to get to know each other than this?
Just to keep pace, here's the next installment in my continuing soap ...
Love, Robyn Katie
***
Visiting Alison in the infirmary, I find her sharing a tiny room with Mary Ferris, an upperclassman. I don’t really know Mary but she seems to know me. I say hello and turn to Alison.
“Oh, honey, you look so sick.”
“I’m better than I was.” She struggles up against the pillow. I would hug her but of course she’s infectious. So I hold her hand at arm’s length.
“I brought your mail.”
“Oh. Thanks.”
“Also they gave me your class assignments to bring, in case you feel well enough to do any of them, only you don’t, do you.”
Wearily, “So much catching up to do. Four whole days!”
From the other bed Mary (who hardly looks sick at all, in fact I wonder what she could possibly be doing here) gives me such a look! “Is that the one?” she says.
Alison’s face goes stony. She nods curtly, saying nothing. Funny atmosphere I must say. It’s a relief to get out of there, hoping no flu germs came with me, and get back to the room … and Lainey.
For some reason or other I stop by Erica Zimmerman’s room, to find her and her roommate Enid are rearranging things. I don’t know which of them is shyer, in comparison to the two of them I feel bold and daring. Tall skinny Erica is so introverted she almost can’t talk to anyone, but she is beautiful, with muted golden hair and big lovely eyes.
I don’t know why, but I blurt out to her, “You are so adorable!”
“Oh,” she says, as if I’d bitten her.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
“I am not, I never am.”
“—Startle you, I just—”
“What makes you think I am?”
She sounds puzzled and possibly hurt. My darn impulses again. What made me say it? Was it the grace of her willowy form, momentarily caught against the light? Now I feel disgusted with myself, and disloyal to Lainey for having said it. I retreat from Erica’s mild, reproachful eyes.
Lainey works on The Gerroldian, our school paper, she’s assistant to the editor, a senior named Nancy Fulginer. So from time to time she brings stories back to the room to work on.
Tonight I’m helping her with the paste-up to show the printer where stories should go. The text comes in galleys, we cut them and stick them where we decide they belong on a big lined format page. We have to mark how they should “break” from one page to a later page, cut a paragraph if there’s not room, and so on.
She’s even got me writing a news story for her (a thing I never would do on my own). She said the Gerroldian needed to cover the class officers’ meeting, but she couldn’t go because she had to finish a paper, and nobody else could either, ‘cause it’s only a staff of three and they were all busy at that hour. So who went to the meeting for her? Me. And came back with any number of notes, most of which she told me weren’t usable.
“Thanks for doing that for me, though,” she said, Frenching me. She loves French kissing, the tongues, all of that. As it’s a new thing to me, it has taken me time to get used to. (But since I have been kissing her ahem, elsewhere, ahem, it would seem silly to quibble, wouldn’t it!)
“Thanks for doing the story,” she said, after I had typed it up, and she used it, though not very much of it.
Even with all this, she does not intend to be a journalist, she says. She wants to be a botanist. So all this term the room, including Alison’s entire unoccupied bed, is littered with meticulous drawings of flower parts. Night before last she said, “Come here a minute,” and pointed at a drawing that was captioned Cattleya labiata. “Does that remind you of anything you’ve seen lately?”
I giggled. “Eee, you are bad!”
We tumbled together laughing. Nobody ever cleared a bed of papers at such top speed, but she wouldn’t let me undress her yet. “It’s only seven-ten by my watch, dearest, and someone might easily walk in on us.” I love that—she has started calling me dearest now. She wouldn’t for ever so long, but now it seems almost second nature to her.
So to make a long story short we made ourselves be good until lights out. And then made up for it.
As Lainey smokes, I’ve started sneaking smokes with her. We generally puff it out our window, the back one that faces the trees, hanging on the sill and fanning to keep the smell out of the room. This happens to be the window that has the fire escape for this end of the building, so if there was a fire the whole world would be galumphing through our room enroute to safety, if any. Maybe in spring we can sit out there after dark and smoke, that would be better.
We are smoking guiltily one March evening when almost without thinking I put the tip of my cigarette to the skin of my wrist and —
“Robyn! What—don’t!” she cries.
But I’ve already burnt a mark. Ow, it hurts—but I’m very satisfied with it. You see, over the course of the days I have gotten this desperate feeling of need to show her how true, how eternal my love for her is, and in some manner I don’t half understand, this fills the bill.
She’s horrified. “How could you—I don’t understand you—”
“It’s only a burn, gee whiz.”
“It’ll leave a scar!”
“Yes. To last forever. To take to my grave. That’s the whole idea: to commemorate you and my love for you as long as life shall last.” Kissing her aghast mouth. “Don’t look so shocked! I’ve always done stuff like this when I need to make a sign of something truly important in my life.”
She is a blank. “You have?”
“You know …prick myself with needles in my arms and legs, and once in my cheek, see here?”
“Oh my god, Robyn.”
"But I was very careful, sterilized the needle and everything. Why not? I liked how it felt. And …”
“You did?”
Carelessly I run on, unaware how this is affecting her. “You should have seen what I did to myself in fourth grade—”
She takes my face in her hands. “Robyn? Darling? Don’t talk like this—”
“—Dug a big hole in my finger with a protractor point in class ‘cause I don’t know, I just did.”
She draws a little away. “Robyn, never tell anyone else this, promise. Are you aware how crazy that sounds? Please tell me you’re not crazy.”
“’Course not.” Realization dawning, anxious, “You think I am?”
It floods in on me, I lie in her arms and see myself with a bitter dry eye. As if I’m a pretty piece of china but am cracked and glued back together, only the glue isn’t holding so I—
I don’t want to think about this any further.
“Don’t do it again,” she whispers, kissing the tip of my nose (the only one in the world who ever did that).
“I don't see why not,” I insist. “But okay. If it’s important to you, I won’t.”
She manages not to be too aghast at me as we tuck ourselves into bed. It’s quite an art, two of us finding how to fit into a bed made for one. But we’re good at it now.
Spring vacation. I want to stay at school with Lainey, but she’s going home, so I go home too. I more or less have to in any case, as my parents are taking Alice and me skiing during vacation. It’s a long drive from Pennsylvania all the way to Stowe, Vermont, where we stay in a tiny crowded guest house and ski at Mount Mansfield. I love skiing but the time is spoiled for me because of how horribly lonely for Lainey I am.
I try to rally. At Daddy’s insistence I take along my guitar and he dragoons me into singing and playing for the guests. I sit in the middle of the floor and everybody else sort of crams in wherever. I have been learning oodles of songs off the Susan Reed and Burl Ives records and before the five days of vacation is over I sing most of them and the others sing along on the choruses. Daddy gets me to play along on one of his old chestnuts:
There's a long, long trail a-winding
Into the land of my dreams ...
I do it with a bad grace, as I am rather fed up with all those old popular songs. And then everyone wants to sing "I've Got Sixpence" and a bunch of things like that. Not my favorites, but they're all having fun. On alcohol of course.
A boy, Thomas Goode from Fayetteville, New York is interested in me, a great deal more so than I can easily manage. He tries to kiss me in the hall. Eluding him, I take refuge with the daughter of the owner of the guest house, a tall, earnest, quiet, slim blackhaired girl named Maria. She spends half her time writing love letters to her boyfriend in Montpelier, signing them with big prints of fresh lipstick at the bottom of the page.
They’re unbelievably direct, the things she writes. Over her shoulder I catch sight of a sentence or two. Believe it or not, she actually wrote this: “I want you to make love to me so much, I promise this time I won’t let you down like before.” —only "make love" isn’t the term she used. And on another page, “You really can have me, all of me, just don’t get me pregnant, promise!” but the word wasn’t "have."
Right in the U.S. mail! I heard they can put you in jail for that. Imagine if her mother were to open it. But she sticks a stamp on and trots out into the subzero cold to put it in the mailbox herself, raising the flag so the mailman won’t overlook it. How does she dare?
Of course she is older, almost eighteen to my fifteen. The skiing men staying at the house all vie with each other trying to get her to play around with them, but she won’t, she is true to her boy to whom she writes those very frankly expressed things.
She and I talk secretly, seriously, and she doesn’t seem at all the type of person to write in four-letter words. I conclude other people’s lives are stranger than in all my born days I could ever guess.
No sooner am I back at school than guess who is lying in wait. No. I shouldn’t talk about my sweet roommate that way, I love her … just not in the same way as I love Lainey. Yes, Alison has come back from the infirmary.
Lainey’s eyes flare with warnings. Our nights of delirious love, in which all we had to worry about was not making so much noise they could hear us through the walls, are forever at an end.
“You don’t look much better,” I tell Alison, as warmly as I can manage.
“I’m still a little sick. I asked to get out a day early though. I have to talk to you, Robyn, do you mind if we—?”
Hastily Lainey finds somewhere else she has to be, and Alison and I are alone. I regard her with unease, almost as if I know what is coming.
Stern eyes. “In the infirmary I heard something you should know. You remember Mary Ferris was in the room with me, the junior? Well,” swallowing unhappily, “she told me it’s all over school.”
“What is?”
“About you. And Lainey.”
My eyebrows are trying to shoot up into my hair but everything depends on me not showing the slightest reaction. I put on a puzzled look. “Me? And Lainey?”
“Don’t act innocent, you know what I mean.”
“No, as it happens, I don’t,” I say coldly. “Maybe you’d better explain it to me.”
Her eyes plead. “Don’t you see it has to stop, immediately?”
I’m merciless. “What does?”
“You really want me to spell it out for you? All right then, Robyn. Everyone is talking about what you and Lainey do when you think no one is looking.”
“Like what?”
“Kiss each other, and—”
“Oh, big sin. As if no girl ever kissed another girl in a friendly—”
“And *going to bed with each other*, and, well then, if you must know every last thing they’re saying,” uncomfortably, “*having sex.*”
I release a short pent-up breath. "I see."
“Tell me it isn’t true.”
“No." Dazedly, able to think of nothing better to say, I admit it. "As a matter of fact, it’s true.”
“Oh Robyn, how could you. I never dreamed—well, yes, I did dream as a matter of fact, I suspected it weeks ago, before I got sick, but I told myself I was being overly distrustful and maybe mistaken and anyway it was none of my business, but now—” She gazed at me, forlorn. “I’m so terribly upset that I didn’t do anything while there was still time.”
“Do what? What would you have done?”
“I don’t know. Something. I’m so ashamed. Yes, and ashamed of you, too!” Angry now. “Did you ever give the least thought to me? People look at me like I’m somehow responsible. How could you, the two of you? Didn’t you have the least sense of propriety? Did you think you were *invisible*?”
“But that’s—” I scarcely know what I’m saying. “—So much worse than I—than we—”
She doesn't even deign to answer.
A little later Lainey comes back in. We stare a bold kiss but don’t try to approach each other in the presence of a sullen Alison who is pretending neither of us exist. Lainey glances in surprise, brows asking me a question, but I say nothing. Nor, even when we’re whispering alone in her bed in the dead of night (yes, I am that brazen, and proud of it) do I breathe a word of what Alison said. No. I’d let doom strike first. For if I told Lainey, that’d be the end, I know it—she’d insist on stopping forever. And I can’t bear this ever to stop.
I do try to be on my best behavior with her, though.
Next night just after supper Alison says, “I’m going to the library. I’ll be there about an hour and a half I think.” She throws a warning glance at me. I think I know what this means. She’s loyally, if disapprovingly letting me know Lainey and I can have the next hour and a half to ourselves. That’s so sweet of her, I think!
I’m not sure though, her manner is odd. But Lainey and I are in no mood for pussyfooting, since we haven’t the freedom of the midnights any more. We seize the hour.
Luckily when the prefect, Vicky Flisendeller, blunders into the room about twenty after seven we are still dressed! Of course we have our books and papers ready to grab, so as we spring guiltily apart we have something to fiddle with (damp fingermarks on the pages, praying the telltale spots of each other’s juices will go unnoticed).
Vicky gives us one of her snottiest glances. “What on earth are you two up to?”
We stare bright-eyed and guilty as sin, as I scrabble around the floor for the papers we knocked off in our haste to seem innocent. “Her, uh, notes fell on the floor. Just helping her pick them up.”
“There,” Lainey chimes in, putting the rest of the papers on the top of her desk. “All safe.”
(Not till weeks later will it occur to me that Alison might have cleared out by arrangement with the prefect. Did she know that was going to happen? Was she trying to warn me with her eyes? Or did she figure it served both of us right?)
Whatever the case, being surprised by the prefect is the end of us. Afterward Lainey fixes me with eyes sterner than Alison’s. “We mustn’t any more,” she said.
“But—” Though I try to act surprised, the dread was already in my heart before she spoke. “That can’t make any difference—”
“It does, and you know it.”
“She didn’t really suspect anything.”
“Yes she did.”
“Anyway we’ll be good for a few days, all right? so everyone’ll see there was nothing to it at all. We’ll just be extra careful, then after a while, when they’ve forgotten, we can—”
“This isn’t the kind of thing anybody forgets.”
“They can’t know anything. Not for sure!”
She swept her hands apart, palms down. “We just mustn’t. It has to be over. As of right now.”
Tears, so sudden I choke. I plead for a little time. She shakes her head. A kiss? She won’t even give me that.
“Consider yourself lucky we’re not expelled,” is all she’ll say.
Agony.
It only lasted twenty-three days.
Oh the stares. The way everyone looks at me! Or else won’t. Averted eyes, heads turning the other way—backs, innumerable backs. I can hear them thinking, That’s the girl with the unnatural desires, the freak and pervert that forced poor Lainey to do all those ugly things …
It’s so unfair! If they only knew, if they’d been there, they’d realize how deep it was, how true …
In self-defense I go overboard in the other direction. Now they'll call me boy-crazy. Boy-crazy is preferable, according to the accepted wisdom. (*My* wisdom, I have learned, is never ever accepted.)
How satisfied they must feel. —See, told you it was just a stage she was going through, she’d straighten up in time.— How I hate when the wrong things they think turn out to appear true, even though they aren’t! Such satisfaction it gives them, and I just grind my teeth and think, One of these days …
Thus my soggy saga.
Really nothing whatever of interest happens to me from now till school is out. Nor afterward, for that matter. The world was full of love, now it’s empty. Who cares what an empty world is like. I doggedly go through the days, one much like the next. Summertime I work for Pearl again. She uses me (the term is exact) mostly as a secretary, keeping her files and typing her letters and so on. I’m not a very good typist though I took the course! But she says I am a very good speller and that makes up for all the rest. I think that remark was meant to stand for kindness, which she hasn’t any of.
The lawn is knee deep in grass. We have bought this new rotary mower to cope with it, and I must say it does a better job than the old reel type, which choked and stopped if it had to cope with anything tall, and was impossible to restart afterward. But this new mower is so huge, it’s almost as much work as the old rusty hand one. Mowing the lawn under the blazing sun I get so hot sweat drenches me, and this bra, so itchy, all I want to do is take it off. Sometimes I wish I could just go behind a bush, skin off my T-shirt, unhook the damp thing and wad it up in my pocket, just to air myself. But Mom is so eagle-eyed she can spot my breasts loose in my shirt across fifty yards of lawn.
Wish I could take off my top anytime, like boys do! Boys have it easy. (Lords of creation. Think they own the world. They do, sort of. They don’t own me, though. Just even let them try!) If I want to go bare above my waist (let alone below), I have to sneak and hide and make sure no one can see me.
When I can, I get away, far away, making sure they don't know where I am. A favorite spot is the meadow upstream, acres and acres of grass and willows, and no one to see. No one ever goes there, and if anyone were to come I could see them a great way off. There I feel really secure, it's a spot that belongs to me alone.
My beautiful meadow. Often I take a book there to read, leaning my bare back against a tree trunk, the sun buttery lovely (I’m getting a light tan on my breasts and tummy). I love just being there, listening to the rilling of the water, taking a vacation from thinking.
Other places aren’t this happy. I get upset a lot, even when I’m not about to have my period. Also for some reason I seem to get run down in a way I can’t control. I can be walking and I will suddenly stop and almost keel over. I have to drape myself on the scenery. Or I just lie down. At school I did one day, just lay on the grass, and Bindie McBride with her cute freckles came up and asked me if anything was wrong and I just couldn’t answer.
Then Diana Huddleton joined her, asking, “Is she crying?”
“I can’t tell.”
“Well, she can’t just lie there.” But then, since they don’t seem to have any idea what to do about me, they go away.
After a while I get up and go on to class or whatever. They're looking at me even funnier now! I am “moody,” I hear them say. Bending over the spiral notebook on my knee I painfully inscribe dreary misery poems.
I am a flower
Trodden down,
Can’t get up
I’m so drowned.
I am a bird
Wings broken,
Can’t fly, I
Cry unspoken.
For five whole seconds I think maybe this is the finest poem ever written. Then I see how embarrassingly terrible it is and tear it up.
Dolestown is different, as Brenda and Jill Endicott are away all the time. I have to put on a dress to go there because Mom says it’s expected of me. I go with her to the Dolestown Market for food, and rarely, when I can afford it, to Elly’s for clothes. Elly’s has very dull clothes but there aren’t very many other places to buy them nearer than Strawbridge’s in Jenkintown.
Wednesdays Mom goes to play golf with her friends Jean Warren and Sally Smith. When I was younger they wanted to make me caddy for them but luckily the country club doesn’t allow girls to caddy. So as I don’t play golf Mom drops me off in town and I mooch around the newsstand for books. One thing I really like a lot is science fiction. If I was one of the heroines on the covers of those pulp magazines! It’s how I picture myself, I don’t know why: a heroine naked or almost, menaced by horrible space monsters with jaws salivating to crunch into luscious me.
Being eaten? Sure, why not?
Science fiction is the future, you see. It's far away and high among the stars and full of wonderfully impossible adventure (but it could be possible someday) that hasn’t anything to do with miserable me or my circumstances. And my songs come from long ago, put me in worlds all my own. Both take me out of the present moment—and it's the present moment I'm having so much trouble with.
I wanted to find out what my old friend from grade school, Gwenny Fisher, was doing now. But Rickie Welch told me I’d better steer clear.
“Why?”
“Because she is a whore.”
“A what?” Of all the words I could have been expecting, that isn’t it. In fact, I’ve never heard anyone say it before, only seen it in books.
“She’s a prosty now. Has sex with men for money.” Trust that Rickie, she doesn’t mince words.
So here I am on a cloudy afternoon, sun glowing through a summer thunderstorm just about to break, mourning my dear old girlfriend whom I know I will never dare go see now. Wistful for something that never was.
Accepting a rash moment's invite, I go riding in Frank Dearborn’s pickup truck to get the last of the hay, just a truck’s worth, not enough for a full wagon. Elbow out the window, sweaty, I try to whistle but I can only make a wheet sort of noise. I do not look in his direction, as I’m well aware he’s looking at my breasts. My T-shirt’s practically transparent with sweat, and like an idiot I didn’t wear a bra, you can see my nipples, big dark stains in the shirt the size of half dollars. I cross my arms self-consciously. Will I never learn?
We stop in the hayfield. The others have left, taking the tractor and baler back to the barn. This is crazy, I can’t be alone with him! (If he tries anything with me …)
He tries something with me. His big hands all over my front, trying to kiss me too, but I won’t.
“No,” I tell him.
“Aw come on, what do you care?”
“I care. A lot. Frank!” in panic as he gets his hand between my legs. Telling him no a final time, feeling like a trapped animal, I scoot across the wide seat, smack down on the handle. The door flies open and as I’m already tipped past the seat edge, I fall out the door.
“Hey, Robyn, come back here, what’s the matter with you, didn’t you never get it before?”
On hands and knees, panting, eyes wide, I stare up at him. Flinging him a look that I hope curdles his blood, I scramble to my feet, turn my back and stride angrily across the field toward the lane leading to the road. The pickup makes a wide swing and comes after me, I have a qualm that he’s going to run me down, but I refuse to look back. Instead the truck rolls alongside me, him leaning out.
“Come on, you know you want it.”
“Happens I don’t.”
“Hey, you’ve done it before, you can do it again.”
I turn and scream at him, “I have not. I never have.”
He’s honestly startled. “Wait. You’re a virgin?”
“Correct.” I just keep walking.
Without another word he guns it. The truck speeds up, leaves me behind, turning into the road without even a pause for looking both ways. What is it about a virgin that scares boys off? Whatever it is they think they want, a virgin isn’t it. Kind of makes you wonder how virginities ever get broken.
He could’ve raped me. Or I could’ve let him. Then all that part of it would be over and I could concentrate on the important things.
I walk home fuming.
In my room I practice assiduously on my banjo and guitar, learning new songs, singing over old ones. Trouble is, music pitches me back into my sorrows over Lainey, and then only the blues will do.
I'm motherless, fatherless, sister and brotherless too,
Motherless, oh, sister and brotherless too,
Reason I tried so hard to make this trip with you.
I loved you reckless, Lainey, and I loved you wild,
I loved you reckless, yes, and you know I loved you wild,
I may not be good lookin' but I was your ...
The tears come.
In better moments I think: I am getting rather good at this. I've never known what I want to do with my life: could it be this? To make records like Susan Reed, and travel around giving concerts to halls full of applause and cheers? But in my moments of clarity I know I'm not good enough. Maybe I never will be.
Strange, how little stamina I have, how little daring. It costs me dearly in fearfulness to even think of leaving home. Other people don’t seem to be afflicted this way, but when I so much as try to face other people I seem to collapse inwardly and I don’t know why. It feels like shame, like guilt, like abject terror molten just under the surface, threatening to drown me if I try to be daring in any way.
The house fills with gloom. Family silences are the rule: alcohol silences. Things not to be admitted to. Not just the things Daddy does to me, either, but the ways he is “tired” and has to lie motionless on the couch every night. We can never come right out and say he’s drunk … that word surely does not apply to anyone in our family. It will be years before I realize he wasn’t just “tired” in the evening after a hard day’s work. At least when he's "tired" he isn't terrorizing me!
Mother is nervous, tense, she gets headaches and has to retire to her room, leaving the house naked around me. As for Alice my sister, she is such a pry I simply want to get free of her, be some place she is not. I thought I missed her when I was away at school, but now that I’m home I see I didn’t. She is a pain, always tagging after me, spying on me too, nagging to know about what I’ve been doing.
I haven’t got friends. Or maybe one. Marji Endreman, a pleasant, sweet brownhaired girl from Hilltown, is my friend, I think, but in this country wasteland she is too far away to be easily reached, so our friendship dies from lack of seeing each other. So I am left to loneliness, fantasies, playing with myself for want of anyone else to play with. This sad summer fleets away, time lost, time wasted.
Our summer trip this year includes a stop in southern New York state with my parents’ skiing friends Dick and Harrington Tyler, she of the guitar and the songs. But our attempt to play and sing together in the evening is jarring, for now I am to the point that I can see I’m a better guitarist than she is. Rudely I push to outplay, outsing her, to play my banjo too, which she cannot do. She retreats into herself, and I, feeling cheap and a bit of a pig, can’t seem to stop myself being so ugly-competitive about singing. By the time I put my instruments in their cases I am sick of myself and my so-called music.
The next morning is bright and clear, a beautiful July day, not yet hot. Their son Joe is away, but their daughter Phillippa is detailed to entertain me until we go. She’s two years older and rather superior, but she conscientiously takes me on a ramble into the woods.
“Show you something,” she says mysteriously, and leads the way to what looks like a square roofline deep in the forest. We break out of the thickest trees into a terrace so thickly overgrown you can barely see the giant urns and pillars; only here and there do flagstones show, a hint of stone steps, a fountain, long dry, with cherub, and rearing above it into the black shade cast by the deep tree crowns that make the very air about us green, a house! It is built as a rectangle, with tiny steel-feamed windows, in that “modern” style of years ago so old-fashioned now.
“Made of concrete?” I exclaim, almost wrenching my ankle on a projecting stone.
“Everything.” She is patronizing.
“But it’s been taken over by … jungle.” Hands clasped in wonder, I am entranced. “It’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever seen.”
“The old family house. Father and Mother couldn’t live in it though. It’d take thousands just to reopen it. Want to see inside?”
She climbs the side steps to a door, opens it. We go in. The rooms are mostly furnished, a couch you wouldn’t want to sit on, all mildewed as it is. Chairs, tables, old dead lamps, even some moldy books in shelves, all just as it was, apparently, when abandoned ever so long ago. An overwhelming dank smell hangs over everything.
We come to the kitchen. An ancient gas stove and refrigerator, a speckled stone sink. Little tin cans of flour and sugar and so on. The flour’s gone to mold, but the sugar is okay; I taste some. I’ve never had enough sugar, always wanted more, but now, tasting it by itself, I realize it’s horrible stuff and I never want to eat it again.
Out we go, down the moss-slick steps, and leave behind this rather repellent fairy palace, nevertheless to remain a secret place in my memory forever.
Kennebunk Beach seems childish now, my cousins playing little-girl games on the porch. I wander lonely along the twisting road among hillside cottages to the beach, burning my footsoles on the hot asphalt. No one I know is here.
Barbara Barnett, my crush of a year ago, is working at Dot’s Lunch at the crossroads about a mile from the beach. She has little time for me. Though she’s my age she’s already distant in some way I can’t explain, she seems to view me from a mountaintop of experiences I’ll never dream of.
One night we walk down to the beach together in the salt dark, climb up on the lifeguard stand and sit together. The seat is barely wide enough for us both; if we had the sort of hips some girls have we couldn’t manage it, but we’re both on the slim side. I put my arm around her. She doesn’t react to this. I try drawing her closer, but she isn’t very willing. Her lips are wonderful but our kisses are short, she doesn’t really want to.
Afterward, giving up, I lean my head on her shoulder. She stares at the surf beating, beating, far down the beach, the tide dead low, kind of like my life. I walk her back home. I want her to kiss me again but she won’t. I can feel her thoughts pushing me away, saying: Girls don’t do this together, and you should know better.
She rarely says much, is silent. Embarrassed, I realize that, much as she seems willing to spend time in my company, I don’t interest Barbara very much, in comparison to the other people she knows. Am just a pastime for her in a life that hasn’t much to look forward to.
This brings out the cynical side of me. The last day we’re here I quite deliberately set out to charm Sally Enders, my old childhood romping friend. She’s very excited, holds hands with me on the beach without the slightest self-consciousness. We clamber out on the rocks of the point below her house. The minute we sit down, we start to neck—two girls in broad daylight in full view of the houses!
I'm having qualms now despite my bravado. “What if they see us?” I mutter, breaking a kiss that anyone from her windows might see without half trying.
“Let them.”
“Your parents’ll be furious.”
“That's their lookout. Kiss me some more.”
"It's all right with me whatever we do, but you—"
“I don’t care,” she whispers, “I love you.”
Heady, us kissing like crazy. She is totally lost in the sheer wonder of kissing me—and I’m not. What a shock. This is the first time in my life I ever kissed anyone coldly, calculatingly, cynically—without love. Casually, unfeelingly, I slip my hand in the top of her bathing suit. “Boobs” seems the word for hers, since they seem nothing but skin, nothing but territory for my fingers to conquer, to admire the piquancy of my scarlet nails on those poor little things that don’t know any better. I feel like a thug (are there girl thugs?), as my heart isn’t in it. We kiss goodbye till next year and my promises aren’t worth a burnt match.
Home again. School will start in a little over a week, I’ll be a junior. A day student this time, since I’ll be able to drive myself. How strange it will seem not being in the dorm! And yet healthier for me I think, for I won’t be so tempted to indulge what I now see is a very wicked and unacceptable taste for love with girls rather than the boys for which Mother Nature supposedly intended me.
Odd, though, how queasy I get thinking of boys. Why is love with girls so wrong, when for me it’s the easy straightforward thing, the thing my blood and bones sing to? Well never mind that, Robyn, haven’t you decided you’re going to learn to be boy-crazy? Yes you have, and the question is not open for further discussion. You’re determined to carry it through—aren’t you? After all, anything at all can be learned—can’t it?
So that’s that.
Perched on the couch, legs under me, skirt smoothed over my knees, I keenly watch the Philadelphia Athletics play the Detroit Tigers on TV. I am really a Brooklyn Dodger fan and love to root for them when they play the Phillies on the local channel; but I’ll watch any baseball, even the dull old Athletics. There’s the venerable Connie Mack, tall, thin, managing in his brown suit from the dugout, a holdover from baseball’s earliest days in the nineteenth century. I still have not let go of my dream of being the first girl to play in the major leagues. The difference is, then I thought it was possible. Now I know it’s nonsense, but I still love the notion.
Sally, my naïve sweet sad conquest of that cynical summer afternoon, writes me avid love letters signed with lipstick kisses—Sally, who never wore lipstick in her life! They’re rapidly filling the drawer in my little chest, I hope Mom doesn’t snoop because they are pretty incriminating.
Darling Robyn,
How are you, oh I miss you so, do you feel my love from all this distance?
School has started but I can’t pay it any attention, I suppose I’m going to flunk, for I just wander around burning, thinking of you and wishing we were together this minute so I could kiss you.
You opened so much to me, how can I bear being apart from you now? I so long to hold you in my arms and kiss, kiss, kiss you. (And other things.) Yes I know it is wrong but I would rather be wrong with you than right with anyone else!!! There was so much we didn’t have time to do, I want to do it all now, give myself to you, all of me, why must we be so many miles apart?
Oh dearest sweetest Robyn, you must think I am such an idiot, but I am happy to be an idiot for you and I adore you forever and love you with all my heart, don’t hurt me, my darling, for I am your very own
Sally
With terrible clarity I know I want no part of her, and feel nothing. Startlingly, blushingly, devastatingly, I understand I have crassly taken advantage of our old friendship out of a moment’s need for loveplay, and ruined it for nothing.
I am so ashamed I can’t bring myself to reply.
***
Next time: Sweet Sixteen ... and the Unforeseen.
-
Erin L
- Miss Emerald Goddess
- Posts: 244
- Joined: Thu Oct 30, 2008 11:38 am
- Location: Queens, NY
September, 1970 - January, 1972
When school started – my senior year – Mom and I made a deal. I could take the car to school one day a week. I usually chose Fridays, and of course Cookie and Laura came with me. Sometimes, we stopped and picked up Terri, too.
We then had the car after school was out, so we started bringing a change of clothes with us, and changed before we left school. But I didn’t always hang out with them after school – a lot of times, I had the Fender in the trunk, and I’d hook up with Gina, Carol and Beth and we’d get together and practice. Beth was getting better, and after a while, we stopped looking for another keyboard player.
It was Beth who grabbed me one morning in late September as I came into school.
“I have to talk to you,” she said, her voice heavy with worry. We went into the cafeteria, and I got myself a cup of coffee. We sat down at a table; she looked fretfully from side to side before she started talking.
“Do you promise not to tell a soul about this?” she asked.
“Of course,” I assured her, patting her on the hand. “What on earth is wrong?”
She froze. She opened her mouth a couple of times, but said nothing.
“Beth, whatever it is, you can tell me.”
Her eyes kept darting to the door, as if she were watching for someone. I asked her who, and it turned out she was afraid that Cookie and Laura might join me.
“I didn’t drive in this morning,” I told her. “And I’m early, besides. Now, please, tell me what this is all about.”
“And you promise not to tell anyone? And that you’ll still be my friend?”
I assured her I wouldn’t tell anyone, and that I would always be her friend. She froze again, but then, slowly, tortuously, the words were pushed out.
“I…I think I’m pregnant.”
The details tumbled out in haphazard fashion. A party over the summer…drinking…a cute guy…making out…more than making out…should she or shouldn’t she…what could one time hurt…
“What makes you think you are?” I asked.
“My period is five weeks late. Erin, what am I gonna do?!”
She couldn’t tell her mother, she’d kill her. She couldn’t ask anyone in the school because they’d tell her parents. Telling the school nurse or a doctor would result in the same thing.
“There are ways to get rid of it, aren’t there?” she asked in a stark whisper.
“Stop it,” I said. “You need to find someone you can trust. I have an idea, if you’ll trust me.”
She didn’t like it. I didn’t like it. But I couldn’t think of anything else.
At lunch time, I saw Miss Brentwood outside the cafeteria. I told her that I had something personal that I needed to talk to her about, and could she see me after school? She told me to meet her outside the teacher’s lounge at 3:15.
When I got there, she was waiting for me.
“Can we go somewhere and talk privately?” I asked. She considered it for a moment, then gestured for me to follow her. We left the building and walked to her car.
“My private office,” she said with a laugh. “Now, what’s on your mind?”
“I have a friend who’s in trouble,” I said, cautiously. “She thinks she might be pregnant.”
She looked at me searchingly.
“No,” I said with a smile. “It’s not me. But it is someone you know. The thing is, she’s very frightened that whomever she tells is going to tell her parents.”
I told her everything that Beth had told me.
“Are you sure she…”
“Yes. She was adamant about that,” I said. She asked me how old my friend was, and I froze. If I told her the girl was younger, she might very well figure out it was Beth.
“Erin, it’s important,” she said.
“She hasn’t turned 16 just yet.”
I could see the file cards flipping. A look of recognition crossed her face and my heart sank.
“It’s Beth, isn’t it?” she asked, softly. Dejected, I nodded. “Keep in mind that because she’s so young,” she said, “She may be late because her cycle isn’t regular, yet.”
“What should she do?” I asked.
“She really needs to see a doctor. That’s the only way to know for sure.”
We both knew that was out of the question, but I agreed to tell her, anyway.
“Please encourage her to come talk to me,” Miss Brentwood said. “I know she’s afraid, but she needs to trust an adult. She really does.”
When I told Beth, she was crushed, and angry at me for breaking a confidence. She stopped talking to me for a few days, but then every time I saw her, she looked worse. There were dark circles under her eyes, her hair was unkempt and she wore almost no makeup at all; in short, she was a haggard shell of the pretty girl I had come to know.
I finally confronted her outside of the cafeteria as I was going in with Terri. I pulled her aside after telling Terri I’d meet her and the girls inside.
“You know,” I said, “You put me in a really difficult position, and I did my best to try to help you. I know you’re afraid, and I don’t blame you. But if you had any brains, you’d go talk to Miss Brentwood and see what advice she has to offer. She told me she wouldn’t bust you, and I think you can trust her; I mean, if we can’t trust a teacher like her, then we can’t trust anyone.”
And I walked away.
When I joined the girls inside, they all gave me questioning looks, and I just said I didn’t want to talk about it.
“Well,” Cookie said. “All I can say is that Beth Gooding sure is letting her looks go to hell these days. You’d think she was pregnant or owed
someone money or something.”
I didn’t turn a hair.
By mid-October, I was beginning to fret about something else – my senior prom. Unlike most schools, ours was in December, the weekend after Christmas. I had already missed my junior prom, so I really did want to make it to my senior prom.
“Then you have no choice,” Cookie said one day at lunch. “You have to get out there.”
I agreed. We decided on an upcoming dance at our school as the best bet, because the boys who came would be more aggressive, probably older. Maybe we’d even luck out and find a college freshman.
I met a senior from Molloy named Mike MacLean. We followed the usual routine of dancing together and then getting to know one another; he was low key, and seemed to have a sense of humor about it all, and I liked that. At the end of the evening, he offered to drive me home, and when I told him I had my own car, he laughed and said, “I’ve never heard that one before.”
I gave him my number, and was a little surprised when he called me during the week. We went out the following weekend, and when he brought me home, he was rather daunted by Grandma’s searchlight.
“You ever get complaints from the planes going into JFK about that?” he asked me. We both laughed, and then he was about to kiss me, and I pulled back a little. He hesitated a little, then smiled and said, “Not on the first date, I guess.”
I sighed. Then I decided to tell him the truth.
“It’s not that. And it’s not that I don’t like you, so please don’t think that, either. It’s just that I’ve had kind of a rough time of it, lately. I was going with a guy a couple of years ago, and we broke up suddenly; it really hurt me a lot.
“Since then, my dating life has been really bad. I mean, the last guy I went with for any length of time turned out to be…um…”
“I get it,” he said with a chuckle. “In other words, your dating life has been about as happy as ‘Easy Rider’. Fortunately, I am the perfect person to have come along at this point in your life, because my criminal past, my four outstanding parole violations and my tendency to murder sweet parochial high school girls means that I have to lay low and play it cool, so I’m not about to make any sudden moves.”
I laughed heartily at that.
“Oh, and I have a rule. If you laugh, you owe me a kiss,” he added. And then he kissed me very tenderly.
The week after I met Mike, I came in one morning to find Beth waiting for me. She was holding a small package, and when she saw me, she hesitated before calling me over. She looked better than she had in a long while – the circles were gone, her hair was nicely curled, her makeup was neatly applied.
“I’m not pregnant,” she said, softly. “I got my period yesterday. Miss Brentwood said it might very well happen that way.”
“That’s great,” I said sincerely.
“I’m really sorry,” she went on. “I was a real bitch. Please accept this as a token of my thanks for being there for me.”
She gave me the package, a little gift-wrapped box. I opened it, and it was small figurine of a little girl holding a sign that said, “Best Friend”. I hugged her and was surprised when she clung to me.
“I was so scared!” she whispered.
I knew that.
Mike and I started dating regularly. Each time we went out, there would be a little making out, which was nice, but I always cut it off whenever it got past basic kissing. He was a good sport about it, and when I asked him to my prom, he eagerly accepted.
Planning in school was proceeding at a feverish pace. There was a group of eight of us girls planning everything together – two tables, where to go afterward, everything. The weekend following Thanksgiving, we decided to all get together, all eight couples, to plan things.
Laura, Cookie, Terri, Diane, Gina, Carol, Peggy and I, along with our boyfriends, made up the group. Cookie and, surprisingly, Peggy, were dating college freshmen. But the guys all seemed to get on well together. We all got together at Peggy’s house in the little town right next to mine, and had a pizza party.
The guys suggested that since the limos comfortably held four each, that we arrange two couples to a car and group up based on where the girls lived. Peggy and Rick, her college boyfriend, would share a car with Mike and me. Before the afternoon was over, we had planned everything except what clubs to go to afterward.
Since the prom was in the winter, we agreed that the beach wouldn’t make much sense, so we decided on the airport in order to watch the sun come up. Then we’d find a place to have breakfast. For the first time in a very long time, I was looking forward to a major social event.
The girls invited me to go gown shopping with them, but I declined. The following Saturday, I went to Mrs. Greene when I first got into work and asked her advice. She told me she’d let me know, then as I went to my desk and started in on some batching, I saw her pick up her phone.
When we all went out for our mid-morning break, she called me over.
“I have a friend down in the misses’ department,” she said. “Emily Gardner is her name. I told her all about you, and she said to come down at lunch time and she’ll take good care of you.”
“Oh!” Mrs. Gardner said when I saw her after lunch. “I think a winter prom is just so charming! Now, let’s see what your size might be, and what we have for you!”
She measured me, being quite careful to get everything just right. Then she had me try on a couple of gowns. As it happened, I was wearing a skirt, stockings and heels, which I didn’t usually do on Saturday at work. But she told me to wait while she went and got a pair of evening shoes for me to use.
“Much better,” she said. She watched me react to the different gowns she chose, and then she had a sudden brainstorm. “Wait!” she cried, and disappeared in the back. She emerged a couple of minutes later holding a gown of the most gorgeous deep burgundy I had ever seen.
“Now,” she said, “This is just a tiny bit irregular. If you like it, I will personally reinforce it so it isn’t a problem for you.
“This is a designer gown, worthless now because of the irregularity. But it is you!”
I loved it. It was several layers of silk with some chiffon, and it had a little cape that went around it, with a white faux fur trim. When I saw myself in it, I knew she was right.
The morning of the prom, Laura, Cookie and I all had our hair done and a complete makeover. I had a mass of curls, with ringlets down each side of my face. Mom and Grandma cheered when I came in the house.
I got dressed in Mom’s room on the first floor, because Grandma didn’t want me to risk coming down the steep stairs in a long gown and high heels. I heard Fred arrive as I was getting dressed, and when I came out, he looked at me and said, “Wow!”
“That’s some gown,” Grandma said with approval. Fred took several pictures of me, including all the usual combinations, and then Mike arrived.
“Oh, my!” he said when he saw me.
“That means he likes it,” Mom whispered to me. We took more pictures, and before long Peggy and Rick arrived with the limo, and we took still more pictures.
We got out to the limo, and Peggy and I got into the back first, with Mike and Rick sliding into the jump seats. The prom was at the Hotel Roosevelt in Manhattan, so we sat back to enjoy the ride.
“This must feel like going to work for you,” Peggy said to me.
“No, I never take the limo to work,” I said, and everyone laughed.
“Why, where do you work?” Rick asked me, and I told him Macy’s on 34th Street. “Oh!” he said. “Just a stone’s throw from the Home of the Knicks!”
“Uh oh,” Mike said to Peggy. “We’re in trouble.”
“I love the Knicks,” I said by way of explanation, and soon Rick and I were comparing our favorite moments from the championship run the year before.
“Have you read DeBusschere’s book?” he asked me, and I said I hadn’t. “I’ll loan you mine,” he said, and we all laughed. Then I turned to Peggy and got the conversation back to something more common.
When we came into the ballroom of the Roosevelt, there were two photographer stations set up. For each couple who came in, they took the girl’s picture, and then the couple’s. It was a nice touch.
We had a large table for all of us, and the guys made some pleasant conversation while we girls chatted. There was plenty of dancing, and I was happy that I could be so comfortable in such high heels. Someone took our picture, and it turned out to be for the yearbook.
At one point, we were slow dancing, and Mike said to me, “So, have I met your expectations, my lady?”
I laughed and asked him what he meant.
“In not moving too fast.”
“Oh, yes. Definitely. And I really appreciate it.”
We danced a while longer, and he held me a little more tightly.
“So, you think maybe we might be ready to advance a little bit?”
I thought it was a strange question, but especially there on the dance floor at my senior prom. At the same time, I didn’t want to ruin anything. So, I told him that I only knew that I liked him very much, enjoyed the time we had together, and that I thought we should just see where that led us.
“Sounds good to me,” he replied happily.
When the dinner and dance were over, we got back to our limo and headed for our first stop, the Persian Room at the Plaza Hotel. We couldn’t get a table for 16, so we settled for two tables. Gina and Carol, who were sharing a limo, sat at our table.
“Everyone here is 18, right?” asked the waiter, and then he took our drink orders without waiting for an answer. I ordered a rye and ginger, which I had decided I almost liked. Peggy ordered a martini, which got everyone’s attention, and Mike ordered a double bourbon.
I had to admit, Peggy looked very sophisticated sipping her martini, although it looked strange, considering that she was still so petite. I asked her when she had first started drinking them, and she giggled a little and said this was her first. I suggested she go easy.
Mike wasn’t going easy, though, and I was alarmed to see him order a second drink during the show. He urged me to have another, and I declined, although I surprised myself by finishing the one I’d had. The first indication I’d had that he’d ordered another one for me was when the waiter set it down in front of me, and it irritated me.
We stayed for a while after the show was over, then went to our next destination, a smaller club called the Living Room. On the way, Mike and I did a little making out, but he smelled of alcohol and that really turned me off. I used keeping my makeup presentable as an excuse to stop.
We arrived at the club and were immediately disappointed. The acts there weren’t as good, and it definitely wasn’t a usual stop for the prom crowd, but we had a good time, anyway. Peggy decided to order a Manhattan this time.
“Peg,” I said quietly, “Haven’t you ever heard that you’re not supposed to mix different kinds of liquor?”
“No,” she said, already showing signs of being tipsy. She giggled again.
“You’ll get sick if you’re not careful.”
But she kept sipping happily away. To my left, Mike had downed a couple more double bourbons, and they were starting to show their effects. He was becoming louder, and I had to quiet him down.
A band was playing, and Gina and Carol were both having a good time, as were the other couples. Mike ordered another drink for both of us, and this time I caught it and told the waiter, “Not for me.”
“Maybe you should,” Mike said in my ear. “Might help ya loosen up a little.”
From across the table, Gina gave me her most sympathetic gaze, and to my right, Peggy had lost some of her sparkle.
It was a little before four in the morning when we decided to leave in order to get out to the airport in time for sunrise. As we walked to the front of the club, neither Mike nor Peggy were very steady on their feet. We were walking down the block to where our limo was parked, when all of a sudden, Peggy threw up.
I managed to point her to the gutter, making sure I didn’t catch any and neither did she. I immediately pulled some tissues out of my purse to clean off her face, and Cookie came over with some packaged wipes.
“Trust me,” she said. “I’ve had lots of practice with this.”
Peggy got sick a few more times, and then her stomach finally settled.
“Good thing she didn’t have too much,” Rick said with a grin. We moved her toward the limo and went to put her in the back seat, when we saw to our surprise that Mike was already sitting there, sound asleep.
“Mr. Tough Guy,” Rick said. We decided to put Peggy in the back with Mike, and Rick and I sat up front in the jump seats.
“Airport?” the driver asked.
“Give us a minute,” Rick said. “Somehow,” he said, turning to me, “I don’t think you have a burning desire to see the sun come up.”
“Not especially,” I admitted.
“I also don’t want to take the chance on either of their stomachs chiming in.”
“Eeeewww!” I said softly, and he laughed.
“Let’s do this: we’ll get Sleeping Beauty and Prince Charming home, and then we’ll see what we can do to salvage the remainder of the night.”
I nodded. Rick gave the driver Mike’s address. I was surprised he wanted to drop Mike off first.
“Peggy’s stomach has already rebelled. But Mike drank considerably more than she did, so for him, the worst is yet to come.”
We chatted – not the usual getting-to-know-you chat, but more like we’re-in-this-together-so-let’s-make-the-best-of-it. We joked a little about what had happened and then we pulled up to Mike’s house.
The driver and I had to help Rick get Mike out of the back seat. Rick half guided, half hauled him to the front door and rang the bell. The sky was just getting light when the door opened and a very irritated father answered, regarded his son for a moment, and then with one furious yank pulled him inside.
“One down, one to go,” Rick said to me as he got back in. It wasn’t all that far to Peggy’s house, and we were there in just a short while. This time, I went with Rick to the door, and when Peggy’s mother answered, looking terrified, then relieved, then angry, I explained what had happened.
Mrs. Klassen listened, then nodded, and then wordlessly took Peggy inside.
“Thanks,” Rick said as we got back into the limo. “You handled that with dignity and grace.”
I smiled at that.
“Something that was in short supply tonight, I’m afraid,” I said.
“Oh, I don’t know. Depends on where you looked.”
The driver asked where to next. I said that I just wanted to go home, but Rick suggested that we go out to breakfast, just the two of us. I wasn’t really in the mood, but he said, “If you just go home now, it will be the night that idiot Mike ruined your senior prom. If we go and have breakfast and laugh at it, then it will become something else.”
We found a diner, and he was right.
“It’s funny,” he said after we’d ordered. “Both Mike and Peggy wanted so badly to show how grown up they were, and they wound up acting like spoiled children. It’s always that way. You and I ended up cleaning up after their messes.”
“Literally,” I groaned, taking a sip of coffee. The coffee tasted very good. He laughed heartily.
“I like you,” he said suddenly. “We were still heading into the city when I realized that I was wishing I was with you instead of Peggy tonight.”
“So,” I said, mildly accusingly, “This was all a plot on your part!”
He laughed and said, “Oh, if only I could plan that well! No, I’m afraid not. But I do like you, and I would like to see you again. That is, if the associations from tonight aren’t too painful.”
“I’d like that,” I replied, surprised. I gave him my phone number.
He brought me home, and walked me up the driveway to the side door. The sun was up, and it was a little before seven in the morning. I could hear Grandma puttering around inside.
“Thank you, Rick,” I said to him, kissing him on the cheek. “You really did help me salvage what could have been an awful night.”
He kissed me on the forehead, then on the bridge of the nose, which made me giggle.
“We’ll leave it there for now,” he said. I was still watching him walk down the driveway to the limo when the side door opened.
“You comin’ in or not?” Grandma wanted to know. When I came into the kitchen, Mom was up, too.
“Erin,” she asked, “Wasn’t that Peggy’s date?”
“What?” I asked. “Oh. Yeah. Peggy had too much to drink and got sick.”
“Where’s Mike?”
“He had too much to drink and passed out. Rick and I took them both home, then Rick took me out to breakfast. Well, goodnight!” I finished cheerily.
I went upstairs and got undressed. I hung up the gown and the cape, put my shoes away, and then put my stockings and under-things in a pile on my bed. I slipped into a flannel nightgown and slippers and brought the pile down to the hamper in the bathroom, washed up and brushed my teeth.
When I came out, Mom and Grandma were having breakfast in the dining room.
“One favor,” I said. “If Mike calls, I’m not here.”
“We figured that,” Mom said with a smile.
Mom had great news for us right after the new year. She and Fred were going to get married. Grandma and I weren’t surprised, and Diane, Fred’s daughter who would be my younger step-sister, and I were thrilled.
Rick and I dated for the next few months. It never got very intense, and after a while we just decided it wasn’t going anywhere. Mike called me a few times, and I hung up on him each time.
I was accepted at Fordham University, and I decided to double-major in music and English Lit. With graduation approaching, I was getting ready to say goodbye to Mary Louis, and I knew I was going to miss it. More to the point, I was going to miss the girls.
Peggy refused to talk to me after the prom, blaming me for having stolen her boyfriend. The rest of the girls thought that was pretty funny. I thought so, too.
Terri was going to Boston College, Laura to Villanova, and Cookie was going to Stonybrook. There was a story that the eagle on the flagpole at Stonybrook would fly away if a virgin every graduated from the school, and Cookie said she was glad the eagle had nothing to fear from her.
Gina and Carol were both going to St. John’s. Our friend, Diane, was going to Ohio State, and would be the first one to lose touch with the rest of us, other than Peggy.
Mom and Fred were married in late June, a week after my 18th birthday and graduation. My new sister was 13, and clearly looking up to me, which was nice. We hit it off immediately, which made both Mom and Fred feel really good.
They honeymooned for a week out in eastern Long Island, taking a house. The second week, Diane and I went out to join them. Also with us was Heidi, Fred’s two year old dachshund.
Heidi was the crankiest, most ornery dog I’d ever met. The first time I met her, Fred told me in the car that he had told Heidi I was coming, so everything would be all right. I thought that was funny, until we got to the house and he actually introduced me to the dog, and she just kind of looked me up and down.
We were on the beach one afternoon – on Peconic Bay, with its awful, rocky bottom – when Fred heard a voice calling to him. It was a friend of his from the police department, who had a summer house a few blocks away from us, right on the water. He invited us to a big barbecue the following night.
When we got there, the place was packed. It seemed he had invited everyone he knew. Diane’s eyes went wide when she saw all the guys: Fred’s friend had three sons, aged 20, 19 and 17, and they had lots of friends.
They were serving White Russians, and I decided to try one. These, I liked, but I was careful. I also stayed close to Diane, not wanting to leave her alone in such a group.
That didn’t mean that I wasn’t open to some good healthy flirting, and a couple of the guys really interested me. When a bunch of us decided to head down to the beach late that night, I was aware of some interest. But then Jack, the oldest son, got a dune buggy fired up, and a bunch of us went for a ride on the beach.
We sped down the beach, sending plumes of sand skyward. At the first sharp turn to the left, I landed in the arms of a boy whose name I didn’t even know. I thought that was funny and so I stayed there.
We careened all over the beach, but he held me firmly in his arms. When we finally got back to the house, he jumped down and then pulled me down, cradling me in his arms. I laughed at first, but then said, “Okay, you can put me down, now.”
“Do I hafta?” he asked, and I said he did. Just then, Fred called and said it was time to go.
The last couple of days, every time we went to the beach, I looked for those guys but they were never there.
When we got home, Mom and I moved into the house in Bethpage. Heidi seemed extremely vexed at the prospect of two new residents in the house. The plan was for us to move in immediately, and then for Grandma to sell her house and join us later.
In the meantime, there was work to do. For the moment, I moved into Fred’s room which was on the first floor: once again, I was thrown into a room with not a shred of femininity. I didn’t bother to add any, since I knew I wouldn’t be there long.
Fred had the basement finished, with baseboard heating added and a dehumidifier for the summer. Once corner of it became my bedroom, while the rest became my unofficial living room; it was like having my own suite. There was plenty of room for my amp and guitars, as well as to host any jam sessions.
I worked full time the rest of the summer, and was able to save up enough for a car. It was a slightly used white Chevy Nova, and I loved it. Fred really grilled the dealer before he agreed to let me take it.
I also spent part of the summer reaching an accommodation with Heidi. She had nipped me a few times, and finally, I yelled at her, calling her a very bad dog, and telling her to stay away from me. She avoided me for a couple of days, and then one night when I came home from work and was sitting at the kitchen table while Mom made dinner, she came over holding one of her rubber chew toys and nudged me to play with her.
I grabbed hold of the toy, and while I carried on a conversation with Mom, Fred and Diane, she pulled and yanked on the toy, growling up a storm. She began to chew her way up the toy to get a better grip, until she was very close to my hand. At that point, I stopped talking and looked down at her and said, “Heidi!” in a very threatening tone of voice, and she immediately dropped the toy and started vigorously licking my hand.
“Looks like she got the message,” Diane said.
After dinner, if we didn’t have anything else to do, Diane and I would often take Heidi for a walk. These were nice times for us, because she was filled with questions about everything from boys to makeup to menstrual cycles. One night, I told her about Jeff and about how we broke up.
“Oh, God!” she said. “That’s awful! Didn’t you ever want to get back together with him?”
“I used to think about it all the time,” I said. “But then I realized at some point that he was never going to call, and it was too late for me to call him. It took a long time, but I think I’ve really put it behind me.”
“But,” she pointed out, “You haven’t had a really serious boyfriend since then.”
“True. But I was way too young to have that serious a boyfriend at that age; I was only 15. For a while, I thought Mike was going to develop into something, but then he acted like such a jerk at my senior prom, getting totally drunk, and another guy brought me home.”
“So, what happens now?” she asked me.
“I’m starting a new school, in a new place, with all new people,” I replied with a laugh. “I’ll be happy just to see where it all leads.”
After a while, I was convinced it led nowhere. I had gone to the dean and asked permission to carry 21 credits, because I knew I wanted to double-major. I hadn’t thought seven classes would be much, but one of them was French, and that meant a language lab on top of everything else.
Among the music majors, there was a divide between the musicians who tended toward classical music and everyone else. Since I wanted to learn as much as I could, I knew I had to take classical music seriously. Besides, I had loved classical music from when I was very young, a gift to me from Dad and from Grandpa.
But I also wanted to play guitar, and the classical music kids wanted no part of that. What’s more, because I was identified as a classical musician, the other kids didn’t take me seriously, either. I finally complained to my faculty advisor about it.
“Why is it that wherever you turn, people want to exclude somebody or something they don’t like?” I asked him. He laughed at that.
“That’s a problem that goes way beyond music,” he said. “That’s a problem inherent in the human condition.”
“Yes, but isn’t music supposed to be a way to communicate beyond such things? Isn’t it supposed to be so that we can express in music what we can’t express in words?”
“Yes, but even with non-classical music, look at all the walls we put up. I’ll bet if you go into any of the student lounges tonight, or into the rathskellar, you’ll hear arguments about rock versus blues versus folk versus pop. I know you like Dylan, and so I’m sure you know that when he first took the stage with an electric guitar in 1965, they almost booed him off.
“Musicians like to think of themselves as possessing a special gift of introspection and insight, but the truth, my dear Erin, is that they are as screwed up as any other member of the human race.”
A few guys reached across the various divides and asked me out, and I went with some of them. Some were egoists interested only in a cheering section for themselves; some were painfully insecure, looking for someone to support them and prop them up; and some just wanted to get me into bed. By midyear, I was almost lonely enough to give in, but I didn’t.
My new little sister tried to help. Her best friend, Claire, lived across the street, and she had a brother, Todd, who was twenty. In January, we had a heavy snowfall, and Diane and I were helping Fred with the shoveling when we saw Todd and Claire working across the street.
Claire came over to chat with Diane, and after a few minutes, Todd called to her to come back and help. She ignored him. He called again, and again she ignored him.
Finally, he came storming across the street.
“Claire, come on!” he snapped. “I’m not going to do this all by myself.”
I had the sense that Diane was keeping Claire there, so I went over to tell her that they could get together later on. But as I did, Claire turned to face her brother, and with the sweetest smile, said, “Sure, Todd. Oh, by the way, have you met Diane’s step-sister, Erin?”
With that, the two girls turned and walked away.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi. Claire’s actually told me quite a lot about you.”
“Really? I haven’t talked to her that much.”
“I’m sure she has other sources,” he said with a grin. He seemed like a nice guy, and we chatted for a few more minutes before deciding we had to get back to work.
When we’d finished, Claire came back over to tell Diane that Todd had offered to drive them over to Bethpage State Park for some sledding.
“You’re invited, too, Erin,” she said to me. I was about to decline when Diane said that of course I’d come. Claire ran out of the house before I could say anything to the contrary.
“What are sisters for?” Diane said to me as the door slammed shut.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “But I have a feeling I’m going to find out.”
I thought about putting on a little makeup, but decided against it, because I didn’t want Diane to get the wrong idea. Besides, if she and Claire were so determined to play matchmaker, I figured I’d make it as challenging for them as possible. So, I put on my white parka, pink scarf and pink tam and gloves, and ventured out into the elements.
The park was beautiful. Home to a famous golf course, in winter it just overwhelmed me with its beauty. After a short walk, we found a hill that earlier sledders had already packed down, and the girls ran off to join some of their friends from school.
“So,” he said. “Do you have any other brothers or sisters?”
“No, it’s been just me up until now,” I replied.
“That must be weird. I mean, one day, you’re an only child, the next you have a 13 year old sister.”
“I suppose. We tease each other a lot, but then we’re close, too. I think it’s because we were both ‘only children’ – it’s like we’re trying to catch up on what we missed.”
He had graduated from Farmingdale, an agricultural and technical school, with a two-year degree, and was now going to New York Tech.
“It’s not exactly MIT,” he said, somewhat abashedly, “But I think I can learn enough there to get a decent job when I’m out.”
“Hey!” Claire yelled from the crest of the hill. “When are you two gonna try it?!”
“Right now!” Todd yelled. “C’mon,” he said to me. “You’ll love it.”
Before I knew it, we were standing at the top of what was actually a very long hill. The path down had been smoothed by other sledders, and I noticed that it turned to the right near the bottom. Claire gestured to the sled, and he sat on it with his feet braced against the steering rod.
“Okay, Erin, come on,” he said.
“You mean we’re going down together?” I asked, incredulously.
“Sure.”
With mounting doubts, I climbed onto the sled in front of him, and he closed his legs against me. Just then, I saw another couple going down together, and I was appalled at how quickly their sled gathered speed.
“Can we take this slowly the first time down?” I asked.
“I don’t think so,” he replied, and with a shove we were suddenly moving forward. The grade of the hill increased after about ten feet, and we picked up speed quickly. I was suddenly terrified, but also thrilled, as we plummeted down. As we neared the bottom, where the path turned to the right, his foot slipped, and instead of turning right, we turned left, into a rather large mound of soft snow that billowed out (Diane later explained) as we hit it.
We lurched to a stop so suddenly that we were both thrown from the sled and deeper into the mound of snow. My tam flew off and I had to dig it out of the snow. He was laughing heartily, but stopped when he saw how upset I was.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, serious now.
“I’m a musician,” I said, a little heatedly. “I could have broken a finger!”
“Oh, hey, I’m really sorry. Are you okay?”
“Yes.”
I picked up my tam and dumped the snow out of it, and he had to stifle a laugh. He again asked me if I was all right, and I assured him I was. He then gestured to the small, narrow footpath that ran alongside the course we had just come down, and he picked up the sled as we began our climb back to the top. Twice, along the way, I slipped and fell, and the second time he burst out laughing.
By the time we got to the top, I had to laugh, too. We both looked ridiculous, covered with snow from head to toe. Claire and Diane laughed hysterically when they saw us, and that was enough for me – we retreated to the car, which he started, and the heater soon warmed me.
“I guess this would be the wrong time to ask you out,” he said.
“Yes, it would,” I said.
But he did, anyway, and I said yes.
When school started – my senior year – Mom and I made a deal. I could take the car to school one day a week. I usually chose Fridays, and of course Cookie and Laura came with me. Sometimes, we stopped and picked up Terri, too.
We then had the car after school was out, so we started bringing a change of clothes with us, and changed before we left school. But I didn’t always hang out with them after school – a lot of times, I had the Fender in the trunk, and I’d hook up with Gina, Carol and Beth and we’d get together and practice. Beth was getting better, and after a while, we stopped looking for another keyboard player.
It was Beth who grabbed me one morning in late September as I came into school.
“I have to talk to you,” she said, her voice heavy with worry. We went into the cafeteria, and I got myself a cup of coffee. We sat down at a table; she looked fretfully from side to side before she started talking.
“Do you promise not to tell a soul about this?” she asked.
“Of course,” I assured her, patting her on the hand. “What on earth is wrong?”
She froze. She opened her mouth a couple of times, but said nothing.
“Beth, whatever it is, you can tell me.”
Her eyes kept darting to the door, as if she were watching for someone. I asked her who, and it turned out she was afraid that Cookie and Laura might join me.
“I didn’t drive in this morning,” I told her. “And I’m early, besides. Now, please, tell me what this is all about.”
“And you promise not to tell anyone? And that you’ll still be my friend?”
I assured her I wouldn’t tell anyone, and that I would always be her friend. She froze again, but then, slowly, tortuously, the words were pushed out.
“I…I think I’m pregnant.”
The details tumbled out in haphazard fashion. A party over the summer…drinking…a cute guy…making out…more than making out…should she or shouldn’t she…what could one time hurt…
“What makes you think you are?” I asked.
“My period is five weeks late. Erin, what am I gonna do?!”
She couldn’t tell her mother, she’d kill her. She couldn’t ask anyone in the school because they’d tell her parents. Telling the school nurse or a doctor would result in the same thing.
“There are ways to get rid of it, aren’t there?” she asked in a stark whisper.
“Stop it,” I said. “You need to find someone you can trust. I have an idea, if you’ll trust me.”
She didn’t like it. I didn’t like it. But I couldn’t think of anything else.
At lunch time, I saw Miss Brentwood outside the cafeteria. I told her that I had something personal that I needed to talk to her about, and could she see me after school? She told me to meet her outside the teacher’s lounge at 3:15.
When I got there, she was waiting for me.
“Can we go somewhere and talk privately?” I asked. She considered it for a moment, then gestured for me to follow her. We left the building and walked to her car.
“My private office,” she said with a laugh. “Now, what’s on your mind?”
“I have a friend who’s in trouble,” I said, cautiously. “She thinks she might be pregnant.”
She looked at me searchingly.
“No,” I said with a smile. “It’s not me. But it is someone you know. The thing is, she’s very frightened that whomever she tells is going to tell her parents.”
I told her everything that Beth had told me.
“Are you sure she…”
“Yes. She was adamant about that,” I said. She asked me how old my friend was, and I froze. If I told her the girl was younger, she might very well figure out it was Beth.
“Erin, it’s important,” she said.
“She hasn’t turned 16 just yet.”
I could see the file cards flipping. A look of recognition crossed her face and my heart sank.
“It’s Beth, isn’t it?” she asked, softly. Dejected, I nodded. “Keep in mind that because she’s so young,” she said, “She may be late because her cycle isn’t regular, yet.”
“What should she do?” I asked.
“She really needs to see a doctor. That’s the only way to know for sure.”
We both knew that was out of the question, but I agreed to tell her, anyway.
“Please encourage her to come talk to me,” Miss Brentwood said. “I know she’s afraid, but she needs to trust an adult. She really does.”
When I told Beth, she was crushed, and angry at me for breaking a confidence. She stopped talking to me for a few days, but then every time I saw her, she looked worse. There were dark circles under her eyes, her hair was unkempt and she wore almost no makeup at all; in short, she was a haggard shell of the pretty girl I had come to know.
I finally confronted her outside of the cafeteria as I was going in with Terri. I pulled her aside after telling Terri I’d meet her and the girls inside.
“You know,” I said, “You put me in a really difficult position, and I did my best to try to help you. I know you’re afraid, and I don’t blame you. But if you had any brains, you’d go talk to Miss Brentwood and see what advice she has to offer. She told me she wouldn’t bust you, and I think you can trust her; I mean, if we can’t trust a teacher like her, then we can’t trust anyone.”
And I walked away.
When I joined the girls inside, they all gave me questioning looks, and I just said I didn’t want to talk about it.
“Well,” Cookie said. “All I can say is that Beth Gooding sure is letting her looks go to hell these days. You’d think she was pregnant or owed
someone money or something.”
I didn’t turn a hair.
By mid-October, I was beginning to fret about something else – my senior prom. Unlike most schools, ours was in December, the weekend after Christmas. I had already missed my junior prom, so I really did want to make it to my senior prom.
“Then you have no choice,” Cookie said one day at lunch. “You have to get out there.”
I agreed. We decided on an upcoming dance at our school as the best bet, because the boys who came would be more aggressive, probably older. Maybe we’d even luck out and find a college freshman.
I met a senior from Molloy named Mike MacLean. We followed the usual routine of dancing together and then getting to know one another; he was low key, and seemed to have a sense of humor about it all, and I liked that. At the end of the evening, he offered to drive me home, and when I told him I had my own car, he laughed and said, “I’ve never heard that one before.”
I gave him my number, and was a little surprised when he called me during the week. We went out the following weekend, and when he brought me home, he was rather daunted by Grandma’s searchlight.
“You ever get complaints from the planes going into JFK about that?” he asked me. We both laughed, and then he was about to kiss me, and I pulled back a little. He hesitated a little, then smiled and said, “Not on the first date, I guess.”
I sighed. Then I decided to tell him the truth.
“It’s not that. And it’s not that I don’t like you, so please don’t think that, either. It’s just that I’ve had kind of a rough time of it, lately. I was going with a guy a couple of years ago, and we broke up suddenly; it really hurt me a lot.
“Since then, my dating life has been really bad. I mean, the last guy I went with for any length of time turned out to be…um…”
“I get it,” he said with a chuckle. “In other words, your dating life has been about as happy as ‘Easy Rider’. Fortunately, I am the perfect person to have come along at this point in your life, because my criminal past, my four outstanding parole violations and my tendency to murder sweet parochial high school girls means that I have to lay low and play it cool, so I’m not about to make any sudden moves.”
I laughed heartily at that.
“Oh, and I have a rule. If you laugh, you owe me a kiss,” he added. And then he kissed me very tenderly.
The week after I met Mike, I came in one morning to find Beth waiting for me. She was holding a small package, and when she saw me, she hesitated before calling me over. She looked better than she had in a long while – the circles were gone, her hair was nicely curled, her makeup was neatly applied.
“I’m not pregnant,” she said, softly. “I got my period yesterday. Miss Brentwood said it might very well happen that way.”
“That’s great,” I said sincerely.
“I’m really sorry,” she went on. “I was a real bitch. Please accept this as a token of my thanks for being there for me.”
She gave me the package, a little gift-wrapped box. I opened it, and it was small figurine of a little girl holding a sign that said, “Best Friend”. I hugged her and was surprised when she clung to me.
“I was so scared!” she whispered.
I knew that.
Mike and I started dating regularly. Each time we went out, there would be a little making out, which was nice, but I always cut it off whenever it got past basic kissing. He was a good sport about it, and when I asked him to my prom, he eagerly accepted.
Planning in school was proceeding at a feverish pace. There was a group of eight of us girls planning everything together – two tables, where to go afterward, everything. The weekend following Thanksgiving, we decided to all get together, all eight couples, to plan things.
Laura, Cookie, Terri, Diane, Gina, Carol, Peggy and I, along with our boyfriends, made up the group. Cookie and, surprisingly, Peggy, were dating college freshmen. But the guys all seemed to get on well together. We all got together at Peggy’s house in the little town right next to mine, and had a pizza party.
The guys suggested that since the limos comfortably held four each, that we arrange two couples to a car and group up based on where the girls lived. Peggy and Rick, her college boyfriend, would share a car with Mike and me. Before the afternoon was over, we had planned everything except what clubs to go to afterward.
Since the prom was in the winter, we agreed that the beach wouldn’t make much sense, so we decided on the airport in order to watch the sun come up. Then we’d find a place to have breakfast. For the first time in a very long time, I was looking forward to a major social event.
The girls invited me to go gown shopping with them, but I declined. The following Saturday, I went to Mrs. Greene when I first got into work and asked her advice. She told me she’d let me know, then as I went to my desk and started in on some batching, I saw her pick up her phone.
When we all went out for our mid-morning break, she called me over.
“I have a friend down in the misses’ department,” she said. “Emily Gardner is her name. I told her all about you, and she said to come down at lunch time and she’ll take good care of you.”
“Oh!” Mrs. Gardner said when I saw her after lunch. “I think a winter prom is just so charming! Now, let’s see what your size might be, and what we have for you!”
She measured me, being quite careful to get everything just right. Then she had me try on a couple of gowns. As it happened, I was wearing a skirt, stockings and heels, which I didn’t usually do on Saturday at work. But she told me to wait while she went and got a pair of evening shoes for me to use.
“Much better,” she said. She watched me react to the different gowns she chose, and then she had a sudden brainstorm. “Wait!” she cried, and disappeared in the back. She emerged a couple of minutes later holding a gown of the most gorgeous deep burgundy I had ever seen.
“Now,” she said, “This is just a tiny bit irregular. If you like it, I will personally reinforce it so it isn’t a problem for you.
“This is a designer gown, worthless now because of the irregularity. But it is you!”
I loved it. It was several layers of silk with some chiffon, and it had a little cape that went around it, with a white faux fur trim. When I saw myself in it, I knew she was right.
The morning of the prom, Laura, Cookie and I all had our hair done and a complete makeover. I had a mass of curls, with ringlets down each side of my face. Mom and Grandma cheered when I came in the house.
I got dressed in Mom’s room on the first floor, because Grandma didn’t want me to risk coming down the steep stairs in a long gown and high heels. I heard Fred arrive as I was getting dressed, and when I came out, he looked at me and said, “Wow!”
“That’s some gown,” Grandma said with approval. Fred took several pictures of me, including all the usual combinations, and then Mike arrived.
“Oh, my!” he said when he saw me.
“That means he likes it,” Mom whispered to me. We took more pictures, and before long Peggy and Rick arrived with the limo, and we took still more pictures.
We got out to the limo, and Peggy and I got into the back first, with Mike and Rick sliding into the jump seats. The prom was at the Hotel Roosevelt in Manhattan, so we sat back to enjoy the ride.
“This must feel like going to work for you,” Peggy said to me.
“No, I never take the limo to work,” I said, and everyone laughed.
“Why, where do you work?” Rick asked me, and I told him Macy’s on 34th Street. “Oh!” he said. “Just a stone’s throw from the Home of the Knicks!”
“Uh oh,” Mike said to Peggy. “We’re in trouble.”
“I love the Knicks,” I said by way of explanation, and soon Rick and I were comparing our favorite moments from the championship run the year before.
“Have you read DeBusschere’s book?” he asked me, and I said I hadn’t. “I’ll loan you mine,” he said, and we all laughed. Then I turned to Peggy and got the conversation back to something more common.
When we came into the ballroom of the Roosevelt, there were two photographer stations set up. For each couple who came in, they took the girl’s picture, and then the couple’s. It was a nice touch.
We had a large table for all of us, and the guys made some pleasant conversation while we girls chatted. There was plenty of dancing, and I was happy that I could be so comfortable in such high heels. Someone took our picture, and it turned out to be for the yearbook.
At one point, we were slow dancing, and Mike said to me, “So, have I met your expectations, my lady?”
I laughed and asked him what he meant.
“In not moving too fast.”
“Oh, yes. Definitely. And I really appreciate it.”
We danced a while longer, and he held me a little more tightly.
“So, you think maybe we might be ready to advance a little bit?”
I thought it was a strange question, but especially there on the dance floor at my senior prom. At the same time, I didn’t want to ruin anything. So, I told him that I only knew that I liked him very much, enjoyed the time we had together, and that I thought we should just see where that led us.
“Sounds good to me,” he replied happily.
When the dinner and dance were over, we got back to our limo and headed for our first stop, the Persian Room at the Plaza Hotel. We couldn’t get a table for 16, so we settled for two tables. Gina and Carol, who were sharing a limo, sat at our table.
“Everyone here is 18, right?” asked the waiter, and then he took our drink orders without waiting for an answer. I ordered a rye and ginger, which I had decided I almost liked. Peggy ordered a martini, which got everyone’s attention, and Mike ordered a double bourbon.
I had to admit, Peggy looked very sophisticated sipping her martini, although it looked strange, considering that she was still so petite. I asked her when she had first started drinking them, and she giggled a little and said this was her first. I suggested she go easy.
Mike wasn’t going easy, though, and I was alarmed to see him order a second drink during the show. He urged me to have another, and I declined, although I surprised myself by finishing the one I’d had. The first indication I’d had that he’d ordered another one for me was when the waiter set it down in front of me, and it irritated me.
We stayed for a while after the show was over, then went to our next destination, a smaller club called the Living Room. On the way, Mike and I did a little making out, but he smelled of alcohol and that really turned me off. I used keeping my makeup presentable as an excuse to stop.
We arrived at the club and were immediately disappointed. The acts there weren’t as good, and it definitely wasn’t a usual stop for the prom crowd, but we had a good time, anyway. Peggy decided to order a Manhattan this time.
“Peg,” I said quietly, “Haven’t you ever heard that you’re not supposed to mix different kinds of liquor?”
“No,” she said, already showing signs of being tipsy. She giggled again.
“You’ll get sick if you’re not careful.”
But she kept sipping happily away. To my left, Mike had downed a couple more double bourbons, and they were starting to show their effects. He was becoming louder, and I had to quiet him down.
A band was playing, and Gina and Carol were both having a good time, as were the other couples. Mike ordered another drink for both of us, and this time I caught it and told the waiter, “Not for me.”
“Maybe you should,” Mike said in my ear. “Might help ya loosen up a little.”
From across the table, Gina gave me her most sympathetic gaze, and to my right, Peggy had lost some of her sparkle.
It was a little before four in the morning when we decided to leave in order to get out to the airport in time for sunrise. As we walked to the front of the club, neither Mike nor Peggy were very steady on their feet. We were walking down the block to where our limo was parked, when all of a sudden, Peggy threw up.
I managed to point her to the gutter, making sure I didn’t catch any and neither did she. I immediately pulled some tissues out of my purse to clean off her face, and Cookie came over with some packaged wipes.
“Trust me,” she said. “I’ve had lots of practice with this.”
Peggy got sick a few more times, and then her stomach finally settled.
“Good thing she didn’t have too much,” Rick said with a grin. We moved her toward the limo and went to put her in the back seat, when we saw to our surprise that Mike was already sitting there, sound asleep.
“Mr. Tough Guy,” Rick said. We decided to put Peggy in the back with Mike, and Rick and I sat up front in the jump seats.
“Airport?” the driver asked.
“Give us a minute,” Rick said. “Somehow,” he said, turning to me, “I don’t think you have a burning desire to see the sun come up.”
“Not especially,” I admitted.
“I also don’t want to take the chance on either of their stomachs chiming in.”
“Eeeewww!” I said softly, and he laughed.
“Let’s do this: we’ll get Sleeping Beauty and Prince Charming home, and then we’ll see what we can do to salvage the remainder of the night.”
I nodded. Rick gave the driver Mike’s address. I was surprised he wanted to drop Mike off first.
“Peggy’s stomach has already rebelled. But Mike drank considerably more than she did, so for him, the worst is yet to come.”
We chatted – not the usual getting-to-know-you chat, but more like we’re-in-this-together-so-let’s-make-the-best-of-it. We joked a little about what had happened and then we pulled up to Mike’s house.
The driver and I had to help Rick get Mike out of the back seat. Rick half guided, half hauled him to the front door and rang the bell. The sky was just getting light when the door opened and a very irritated father answered, regarded his son for a moment, and then with one furious yank pulled him inside.
“One down, one to go,” Rick said to me as he got back in. It wasn’t all that far to Peggy’s house, and we were there in just a short while. This time, I went with Rick to the door, and when Peggy’s mother answered, looking terrified, then relieved, then angry, I explained what had happened.
Mrs. Klassen listened, then nodded, and then wordlessly took Peggy inside.
“Thanks,” Rick said as we got back into the limo. “You handled that with dignity and grace.”
I smiled at that.
“Something that was in short supply tonight, I’m afraid,” I said.
“Oh, I don’t know. Depends on where you looked.”
The driver asked where to next. I said that I just wanted to go home, but Rick suggested that we go out to breakfast, just the two of us. I wasn’t really in the mood, but he said, “If you just go home now, it will be the night that idiot Mike ruined your senior prom. If we go and have breakfast and laugh at it, then it will become something else.”
We found a diner, and he was right.
“It’s funny,” he said after we’d ordered. “Both Mike and Peggy wanted so badly to show how grown up they were, and they wound up acting like spoiled children. It’s always that way. You and I ended up cleaning up after their messes.”
“Literally,” I groaned, taking a sip of coffee. The coffee tasted very good. He laughed heartily.
“I like you,” he said suddenly. “We were still heading into the city when I realized that I was wishing I was with you instead of Peggy tonight.”
“So,” I said, mildly accusingly, “This was all a plot on your part!”
He laughed and said, “Oh, if only I could plan that well! No, I’m afraid not. But I do like you, and I would like to see you again. That is, if the associations from tonight aren’t too painful.”
“I’d like that,” I replied, surprised. I gave him my phone number.
He brought me home, and walked me up the driveway to the side door. The sun was up, and it was a little before seven in the morning. I could hear Grandma puttering around inside.
“Thank you, Rick,” I said to him, kissing him on the cheek. “You really did help me salvage what could have been an awful night.”
He kissed me on the forehead, then on the bridge of the nose, which made me giggle.
“We’ll leave it there for now,” he said. I was still watching him walk down the driveway to the limo when the side door opened.
“You comin’ in or not?” Grandma wanted to know. When I came into the kitchen, Mom was up, too.
“Erin,” she asked, “Wasn’t that Peggy’s date?”
“What?” I asked. “Oh. Yeah. Peggy had too much to drink and got sick.”
“Where’s Mike?”
“He had too much to drink and passed out. Rick and I took them both home, then Rick took me out to breakfast. Well, goodnight!” I finished cheerily.
I went upstairs and got undressed. I hung up the gown and the cape, put my shoes away, and then put my stockings and under-things in a pile on my bed. I slipped into a flannel nightgown and slippers and brought the pile down to the hamper in the bathroom, washed up and brushed my teeth.
When I came out, Mom and Grandma were having breakfast in the dining room.
“One favor,” I said. “If Mike calls, I’m not here.”
“We figured that,” Mom said with a smile.
Mom had great news for us right after the new year. She and Fred were going to get married. Grandma and I weren’t surprised, and Diane, Fred’s daughter who would be my younger step-sister, and I were thrilled.
Rick and I dated for the next few months. It never got very intense, and after a while we just decided it wasn’t going anywhere. Mike called me a few times, and I hung up on him each time.
I was accepted at Fordham University, and I decided to double-major in music and English Lit. With graduation approaching, I was getting ready to say goodbye to Mary Louis, and I knew I was going to miss it. More to the point, I was going to miss the girls.
Peggy refused to talk to me after the prom, blaming me for having stolen her boyfriend. The rest of the girls thought that was pretty funny. I thought so, too.
Terri was going to Boston College, Laura to Villanova, and Cookie was going to Stonybrook. There was a story that the eagle on the flagpole at Stonybrook would fly away if a virgin every graduated from the school, and Cookie said she was glad the eagle had nothing to fear from her.
Gina and Carol were both going to St. John’s. Our friend, Diane, was going to Ohio State, and would be the first one to lose touch with the rest of us, other than Peggy.
Mom and Fred were married in late June, a week after my 18th birthday and graduation. My new sister was 13, and clearly looking up to me, which was nice. We hit it off immediately, which made both Mom and Fred feel really good.
They honeymooned for a week out in eastern Long Island, taking a house. The second week, Diane and I went out to join them. Also with us was Heidi, Fred’s two year old dachshund.
Heidi was the crankiest, most ornery dog I’d ever met. The first time I met her, Fred told me in the car that he had told Heidi I was coming, so everything would be all right. I thought that was funny, until we got to the house and he actually introduced me to the dog, and she just kind of looked me up and down.
We were on the beach one afternoon – on Peconic Bay, with its awful, rocky bottom – when Fred heard a voice calling to him. It was a friend of his from the police department, who had a summer house a few blocks away from us, right on the water. He invited us to a big barbecue the following night.
When we got there, the place was packed. It seemed he had invited everyone he knew. Diane’s eyes went wide when she saw all the guys: Fred’s friend had three sons, aged 20, 19 and 17, and they had lots of friends.
They were serving White Russians, and I decided to try one. These, I liked, but I was careful. I also stayed close to Diane, not wanting to leave her alone in such a group.
That didn’t mean that I wasn’t open to some good healthy flirting, and a couple of the guys really interested me. When a bunch of us decided to head down to the beach late that night, I was aware of some interest. But then Jack, the oldest son, got a dune buggy fired up, and a bunch of us went for a ride on the beach.
We sped down the beach, sending plumes of sand skyward. At the first sharp turn to the left, I landed in the arms of a boy whose name I didn’t even know. I thought that was funny and so I stayed there.
We careened all over the beach, but he held me firmly in his arms. When we finally got back to the house, he jumped down and then pulled me down, cradling me in his arms. I laughed at first, but then said, “Okay, you can put me down, now.”
“Do I hafta?” he asked, and I said he did. Just then, Fred called and said it was time to go.
The last couple of days, every time we went to the beach, I looked for those guys but they were never there.
When we got home, Mom and I moved into the house in Bethpage. Heidi seemed extremely vexed at the prospect of two new residents in the house. The plan was for us to move in immediately, and then for Grandma to sell her house and join us later.
In the meantime, there was work to do. For the moment, I moved into Fred’s room which was on the first floor: once again, I was thrown into a room with not a shred of femininity. I didn’t bother to add any, since I knew I wouldn’t be there long.
Fred had the basement finished, with baseboard heating added and a dehumidifier for the summer. Once corner of it became my bedroom, while the rest became my unofficial living room; it was like having my own suite. There was plenty of room for my amp and guitars, as well as to host any jam sessions.
I worked full time the rest of the summer, and was able to save up enough for a car. It was a slightly used white Chevy Nova, and I loved it. Fred really grilled the dealer before he agreed to let me take it.
I also spent part of the summer reaching an accommodation with Heidi. She had nipped me a few times, and finally, I yelled at her, calling her a very bad dog, and telling her to stay away from me. She avoided me for a couple of days, and then one night when I came home from work and was sitting at the kitchen table while Mom made dinner, she came over holding one of her rubber chew toys and nudged me to play with her.
I grabbed hold of the toy, and while I carried on a conversation with Mom, Fred and Diane, she pulled and yanked on the toy, growling up a storm. She began to chew her way up the toy to get a better grip, until she was very close to my hand. At that point, I stopped talking and looked down at her and said, “Heidi!” in a very threatening tone of voice, and she immediately dropped the toy and started vigorously licking my hand.
“Looks like she got the message,” Diane said.
After dinner, if we didn’t have anything else to do, Diane and I would often take Heidi for a walk. These were nice times for us, because she was filled with questions about everything from boys to makeup to menstrual cycles. One night, I told her about Jeff and about how we broke up.
“Oh, God!” she said. “That’s awful! Didn’t you ever want to get back together with him?”
“I used to think about it all the time,” I said. “But then I realized at some point that he was never going to call, and it was too late for me to call him. It took a long time, but I think I’ve really put it behind me.”
“But,” she pointed out, “You haven’t had a really serious boyfriend since then.”
“True. But I was way too young to have that serious a boyfriend at that age; I was only 15. For a while, I thought Mike was going to develop into something, but then he acted like such a jerk at my senior prom, getting totally drunk, and another guy brought me home.”
“So, what happens now?” she asked me.
“I’m starting a new school, in a new place, with all new people,” I replied with a laugh. “I’ll be happy just to see where it all leads.”
After a while, I was convinced it led nowhere. I had gone to the dean and asked permission to carry 21 credits, because I knew I wanted to double-major. I hadn’t thought seven classes would be much, but one of them was French, and that meant a language lab on top of everything else.
Among the music majors, there was a divide between the musicians who tended toward classical music and everyone else. Since I wanted to learn as much as I could, I knew I had to take classical music seriously. Besides, I had loved classical music from when I was very young, a gift to me from Dad and from Grandpa.
But I also wanted to play guitar, and the classical music kids wanted no part of that. What’s more, because I was identified as a classical musician, the other kids didn’t take me seriously, either. I finally complained to my faculty advisor about it.
“Why is it that wherever you turn, people want to exclude somebody or something they don’t like?” I asked him. He laughed at that.
“That’s a problem that goes way beyond music,” he said. “That’s a problem inherent in the human condition.”
“Yes, but isn’t music supposed to be a way to communicate beyond such things? Isn’t it supposed to be so that we can express in music what we can’t express in words?”
“Yes, but even with non-classical music, look at all the walls we put up. I’ll bet if you go into any of the student lounges tonight, or into the rathskellar, you’ll hear arguments about rock versus blues versus folk versus pop. I know you like Dylan, and so I’m sure you know that when he first took the stage with an electric guitar in 1965, they almost booed him off.
“Musicians like to think of themselves as possessing a special gift of introspection and insight, but the truth, my dear Erin, is that they are as screwed up as any other member of the human race.”
A few guys reached across the various divides and asked me out, and I went with some of them. Some were egoists interested only in a cheering section for themselves; some were painfully insecure, looking for someone to support them and prop them up; and some just wanted to get me into bed. By midyear, I was almost lonely enough to give in, but I didn’t.
My new little sister tried to help. Her best friend, Claire, lived across the street, and she had a brother, Todd, who was twenty. In January, we had a heavy snowfall, and Diane and I were helping Fred with the shoveling when we saw Todd and Claire working across the street.
Claire came over to chat with Diane, and after a few minutes, Todd called to her to come back and help. She ignored him. He called again, and again she ignored him.
Finally, he came storming across the street.
“Claire, come on!” he snapped. “I’m not going to do this all by myself.”
I had the sense that Diane was keeping Claire there, so I went over to tell her that they could get together later on. But as I did, Claire turned to face her brother, and with the sweetest smile, said, “Sure, Todd. Oh, by the way, have you met Diane’s step-sister, Erin?”
With that, the two girls turned and walked away.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi. Claire’s actually told me quite a lot about you.”
“Really? I haven’t talked to her that much.”
“I’m sure she has other sources,” he said with a grin. He seemed like a nice guy, and we chatted for a few more minutes before deciding we had to get back to work.
When we’d finished, Claire came back over to tell Diane that Todd had offered to drive them over to Bethpage State Park for some sledding.
“You’re invited, too, Erin,” she said to me. I was about to decline when Diane said that of course I’d come. Claire ran out of the house before I could say anything to the contrary.
“What are sisters for?” Diane said to me as the door slammed shut.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “But I have a feeling I’m going to find out.”
I thought about putting on a little makeup, but decided against it, because I didn’t want Diane to get the wrong idea. Besides, if she and Claire were so determined to play matchmaker, I figured I’d make it as challenging for them as possible. So, I put on my white parka, pink scarf and pink tam and gloves, and ventured out into the elements.
The park was beautiful. Home to a famous golf course, in winter it just overwhelmed me with its beauty. After a short walk, we found a hill that earlier sledders had already packed down, and the girls ran off to join some of their friends from school.
“So,” he said. “Do you have any other brothers or sisters?”
“No, it’s been just me up until now,” I replied.
“That must be weird. I mean, one day, you’re an only child, the next you have a 13 year old sister.”
“I suppose. We tease each other a lot, but then we’re close, too. I think it’s because we were both ‘only children’ – it’s like we’re trying to catch up on what we missed.”
He had graduated from Farmingdale, an agricultural and technical school, with a two-year degree, and was now going to New York Tech.
“It’s not exactly MIT,” he said, somewhat abashedly, “But I think I can learn enough there to get a decent job when I’m out.”
“Hey!” Claire yelled from the crest of the hill. “When are you two gonna try it?!”
“Right now!” Todd yelled. “C’mon,” he said to me. “You’ll love it.”
Before I knew it, we were standing at the top of what was actually a very long hill. The path down had been smoothed by other sledders, and I noticed that it turned to the right near the bottom. Claire gestured to the sled, and he sat on it with his feet braced against the steering rod.
“Okay, Erin, come on,” he said.
“You mean we’re going down together?” I asked, incredulously.
“Sure.”
With mounting doubts, I climbed onto the sled in front of him, and he closed his legs against me. Just then, I saw another couple going down together, and I was appalled at how quickly their sled gathered speed.
“Can we take this slowly the first time down?” I asked.
“I don’t think so,” he replied, and with a shove we were suddenly moving forward. The grade of the hill increased after about ten feet, and we picked up speed quickly. I was suddenly terrified, but also thrilled, as we plummeted down. As we neared the bottom, where the path turned to the right, his foot slipped, and instead of turning right, we turned left, into a rather large mound of soft snow that billowed out (Diane later explained) as we hit it.
We lurched to a stop so suddenly that we were both thrown from the sled and deeper into the mound of snow. My tam flew off and I had to dig it out of the snow. He was laughing heartily, but stopped when he saw how upset I was.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, serious now.
“I’m a musician,” I said, a little heatedly. “I could have broken a finger!”
“Oh, hey, I’m really sorry. Are you okay?”
“Yes.”
I picked up my tam and dumped the snow out of it, and he had to stifle a laugh. He again asked me if I was all right, and I assured him I was. He then gestured to the small, narrow footpath that ran alongside the course we had just come down, and he picked up the sled as we began our climb back to the top. Twice, along the way, I slipped and fell, and the second time he burst out laughing.
By the time we got to the top, I had to laugh, too. We both looked ridiculous, covered with snow from head to toe. Claire and Diane laughed hysterically when they saw us, and that was enough for me – we retreated to the car, which he started, and the heater soon warmed me.
“I guess this would be the wrong time to ask you out,” he said.
“Yes, it would,” I said.
But he did, anyway, and I said yes.
I'm not that kind of girl.
-
Absaroka
- Miss Diamond Goddess
- Posts: 3344
- Joined: Fri Feb 04, 2005 8:30 am
Wonderful Robyn.
I liked the folk song style blues lyrics. Sort of like a white school girl, romantic and rather than gritty but still have stuff only implied in the imagery. Very subtle.
You write convincingly about the self mutilation- cutting and burning.
Reading this I would almost think you were a teenage lesbian.
Erin:
Beth's pregnancy or lack of it reminded me of something a few years ago. The girl who lived across the street from us 9former babysitter for my kids) got pregnant. She never did tell her mom, and didn't show a whole lot. The first her mom knew was when she delivered the baby prematurely right in the doctors office. At least the girl had been going to the doctor even if she didn't tell her mom.
The sledding also brought back memories. My first date with my wife was dinner at my house and then sledding. She played the cello among other things. The sled turned over and whacked her on the elbow which upset her greatly as she had a performance the next day.
The drinking and being a COA brought back lots of memories. You would have thought I knew better but I thought I had finally discovered THE ANSWER. So far your character is playing it a lot safer.
Keep it up!!!
Absaroka
I liked the folk song style blues lyrics. Sort of like a white school girl, romantic and rather than gritty but still have stuff only implied in the imagery. Very subtle.
You write convincingly about the self mutilation- cutting and burning.
Reading this I would almost think you were a teenage lesbian.
Erin:
Beth's pregnancy or lack of it reminded me of something a few years ago. The girl who lived across the street from us 9former babysitter for my kids) got pregnant. She never did tell her mom, and didn't show a whole lot. The first her mom knew was when she delivered the baby prematurely right in the doctors office. At least the girl had been going to the doctor even if she didn't tell her mom.
The sledding also brought back memories. My first date with my wife was dinner at my house and then sledding. She played the cello among other things. The sled turned over and whacked her on the elbow which upset her greatly as she had a performance the next day.
The drinking and being a COA brought back lots of memories. You would have thought I knew better but I thought I had finally discovered THE ANSWER. So far your character is playing it a lot safer.
Keep it up!!!
Absaroka
everything under the sun is in tune
but the sun is eclipsed by the moon
but the sun is eclipsed by the moon
-
Absaroka
- Miss Diamond Goddess
- Posts: 3344
- Joined: Fri Feb 04, 2005 8:30 am
Here's the next chapter. Stage setting today, action tomorrow. This was actually the first part that I wrote, but it didn't go where I wanted it to so I wrote the previously posted parts and put them in the beginning and then modified this part.
Andy glared gloomily at the mountains silhouetted against the moon, trying to cheer himself up with their beauty. Years, he thought. It had been years now. Years since he and Vickie had become friends. Best friends, a friend he had always dreamed of having. Years. And still, he and his parents had had the same argument this summer that they had every summer. Why couldn’t Vickie come on the family vacation with them?
As far as he was concerned she was family. In fact, the way he felt right now, she mattered a lot more to him than his parents did. It wasn’t a feeling he liked. His parents were nice people. People he could talk to and yet people he could keep secrets from. The last few years he’d acquired a lot of secrets that he kept from them, mostly having to do with Vickie. But this was different.
He’d accepted their verdict without question the first summer he spent with Vickie. She was new to them and not really family. He’d asked them if she could come with them and they had said it was a family vacation and that was the end of it. He’d missed her but when he returned he saw that she had spent quite a few nights on his upstairs porch and felt like they’d almost been together after all. And the very night they’d returned she’d stolen into his room and they’d spent hours together telling each other of the adventures they’d had the last two weeks. She hadn’t felt left out at while his family was away. The idea of spending two weeks with his family scared her to death, and Andy had known this anyway.
He’d tried harder the next year to convince his parents to let Vickie come along, and Vickie had actually wanted to come with them. His parents had advanced the argument that it was a family vacation and he had straight out told them that she was family. They hadn’t disagreed with him and he thought for an instant that he had won. Then his father had said it would be okay, as long as they could talk to Vickie’s parents about this. His mother had interrupted, saying that her husband would have to be the one to do this. She wanted nothing to do whatsoever with Vickie’s family in any way, shape, or form. But Andy knew in his heart that Vickie would not be coming this year. How could his father be so stupid? No one was going to talk to Vickie’s family. Not about this. Not about anything.
He kept trying. And always the answer was the same. Fine, as long as they could discuss it with Vickie’s family.
The worst thing about it was how much he loved their yearly vacation. It was always to the same place. A little campground in the mountains a few hours away; the same place he liked to think about when he saw the little goats painted on the sides of the boxcars he so loved to watch. It was right on the edge of true wilderness, a place of deep piney lakes in mountains that quickly discouraged all but truly dedicated exploration. A place to spend nights deep in the woods on two or three day long hiking trips with his parents and younger brother. Or a place to fish and swim and sit beneath a tree reading. He thought it was the most beautiful place in the world, more special to him than even his private little hideaway where he and Vickie would watch the trains and swim and talk forever. Why couldn’t she be here?
He missed her terribly. But he was at the same time having a wonderful time. And then on the fourth evening of their stay he had been lying awake in his tent with his brother and sister, unable to sleep because of the sheer excitement of the hike through the mountains they had had that day. Not wanting to disturb his siblings he had bundled himself up and crept out of the tent to sit in a chair staring up at the stars and feeling a peace like he sometimes felt with Vickie, as if they were both home together beneath the night sky no matter how far apart they were. All would always be well. He sat and stared at the sky, thinking about all the stars overhead, wondering which of them were in the science fiction book had been reading early that evening. Then without warning he felt the anger he had about his parents and their unreasonableness wash over him again. Why wouldn’t they listen to him? He was a good kid. He did well in school, he listened to them, he didn’t get into trouble, at least not very often. As for all of his secret adventures, they couldn’t hold that against him since they didn’t know anything about them. He stared at the mountains in the distance and the stars for awhile more imagining he was on some other planet around some other star where things could be the way he wanted. And then he woke with a start.
The moon had moved, quite a bit. He must have been asleep for a long time. It was that magical time of night when he and Vickie would have all their adventures. He thought about her some more, no longer angry. It was as if by coming here he had brought her with him in a way, and as if he was still at home in a way with her too. More of that weird way of thinking about things he sometimes had that he couldn’t really explain to anyone except Vickie, who didn’t need to have it explained in the first place.
He was still staring at the mountains when he saw a figure about his own size slowly detach itself from the trees and venture noiselessly across the field. For a moment he had the thought that this was Vickie, that she had somehow come to visit him. But the persons movements, size, everything about it were all wrong for Vickie. True, the movements were stealthy, like a carnivore stalking its prey, and when he blinked it took a moment for him to distinguish it from the surroundings. But even with the predatory grace that it shared with Vickie it wasn’t her. It was probably just as well.
He watched as it approached the cooler and lifted one of the rocks his father had put on it to discourage the critters. Then Andy sneezed and the figure gave a frightened look at him and ran incredibly swiftly back into the woods empty handed. He heard a cough in the woods and then silence.
Andy thought for while. Food had been disappearing from their cooler at night since the day they got here. His father had accused him of carelessness, of leaving the cooler unsecured and prey to various critters, but Andy had known better. He’d thought someone was stealing their food. But he hadn’t considered the nature of the thief, he’d just been mad that someone might be stealing from them.
He thought about it a bit more. A child his own age stealing food must be terribly hungry. He thought about Vickie and how much of everything she had had been stolen, both by her and from her. Then he thought of all the stories he had heard in Sunday school about doing the right thing. He took his lunch for tomorrow, packed and ready, out of the cooler and quietly walked to where the figure had disappeared into the woods He took a little piece of string and hung it from a branch of a tree to keep it from most of the animals and then went back into his tent. He lay awake a while longer wondering about what would happen before he fell asleep for the rest of the night.
He woke to another beautiful morning, one that wanted to make you scoop up a handful of dew from the grass and rub the sleep from your eyes with it No one else was awake yet and the campground was silent. He took a little detour on his way to the latrine and found that of course the food was gone. Scratched into the dirt at the base of the tree was a barely legible thank you. He beamed with pride at having so clearly done the right thing.
On the hike that day he managed to share his brother’s lunch with him. Dad always packed too much food anyway on the grounds that with kids you never knew how long the hike would be. Late that afternoon they drove into town for some more food and on a whim he bought some more gorp and a couple of candy bars with his own money. That night he set some of it out in the same place and again in the morning there was a newly scrawled thank you.
A week went by. Every night and every morning he had repeated the same routine. Today they were going to have an overnight hike up to a place called Misty Moon Lake. The name carried with it enchanting visions of unforeseen adventures in a mystical setting and Andy couldn’t wait to get there, imagining an impending set of memories that he would carry with him forever. The packs were packed and the 2 little backpacking tents attached to them while the big car camping tent stayed on their site with his Aunt and little sister Emmy. Auntie was too old for this sort of thing and Emmy was too young so it was just him, his brother, and mom and dad.
Andy glared gloomily at the mountains silhouetted against the moon, trying to cheer himself up with their beauty. Years, he thought. It had been years now. Years since he and Vickie had become friends. Best friends, a friend he had always dreamed of having. Years. And still, he and his parents had had the same argument this summer that they had every summer. Why couldn’t Vickie come on the family vacation with them?
As far as he was concerned she was family. In fact, the way he felt right now, she mattered a lot more to him than his parents did. It wasn’t a feeling he liked. His parents were nice people. People he could talk to and yet people he could keep secrets from. The last few years he’d acquired a lot of secrets that he kept from them, mostly having to do with Vickie. But this was different.
He’d accepted their verdict without question the first summer he spent with Vickie. She was new to them and not really family. He’d asked them if she could come with them and they had said it was a family vacation and that was the end of it. He’d missed her but when he returned he saw that she had spent quite a few nights on his upstairs porch and felt like they’d almost been together after all. And the very night they’d returned she’d stolen into his room and they’d spent hours together telling each other of the adventures they’d had the last two weeks. She hadn’t felt left out at while his family was away. The idea of spending two weeks with his family scared her to death, and Andy had known this anyway.
He’d tried harder the next year to convince his parents to let Vickie come along, and Vickie had actually wanted to come with them. His parents had advanced the argument that it was a family vacation and he had straight out told them that she was family. They hadn’t disagreed with him and he thought for an instant that he had won. Then his father had said it would be okay, as long as they could talk to Vickie’s parents about this. His mother had interrupted, saying that her husband would have to be the one to do this. She wanted nothing to do whatsoever with Vickie’s family in any way, shape, or form. But Andy knew in his heart that Vickie would not be coming this year. How could his father be so stupid? No one was going to talk to Vickie’s family. Not about this. Not about anything.
He kept trying. And always the answer was the same. Fine, as long as they could discuss it with Vickie’s family.
The worst thing about it was how much he loved their yearly vacation. It was always to the same place. A little campground in the mountains a few hours away; the same place he liked to think about when he saw the little goats painted on the sides of the boxcars he so loved to watch. It was right on the edge of true wilderness, a place of deep piney lakes in mountains that quickly discouraged all but truly dedicated exploration. A place to spend nights deep in the woods on two or three day long hiking trips with his parents and younger brother. Or a place to fish and swim and sit beneath a tree reading. He thought it was the most beautiful place in the world, more special to him than even his private little hideaway where he and Vickie would watch the trains and swim and talk forever. Why couldn’t she be here?
He missed her terribly. But he was at the same time having a wonderful time. And then on the fourth evening of their stay he had been lying awake in his tent with his brother and sister, unable to sleep because of the sheer excitement of the hike through the mountains they had had that day. Not wanting to disturb his siblings he had bundled himself up and crept out of the tent to sit in a chair staring up at the stars and feeling a peace like he sometimes felt with Vickie, as if they were both home together beneath the night sky no matter how far apart they were. All would always be well. He sat and stared at the sky, thinking about all the stars overhead, wondering which of them were in the science fiction book had been reading early that evening. Then without warning he felt the anger he had about his parents and their unreasonableness wash over him again. Why wouldn’t they listen to him? He was a good kid. He did well in school, he listened to them, he didn’t get into trouble, at least not very often. As for all of his secret adventures, they couldn’t hold that against him since they didn’t know anything about them. He stared at the mountains in the distance and the stars for awhile more imagining he was on some other planet around some other star where things could be the way he wanted. And then he woke with a start.
The moon had moved, quite a bit. He must have been asleep for a long time. It was that magical time of night when he and Vickie would have all their adventures. He thought about her some more, no longer angry. It was as if by coming here he had brought her with him in a way, and as if he was still at home in a way with her too. More of that weird way of thinking about things he sometimes had that he couldn’t really explain to anyone except Vickie, who didn’t need to have it explained in the first place.
He was still staring at the mountains when he saw a figure about his own size slowly detach itself from the trees and venture noiselessly across the field. For a moment he had the thought that this was Vickie, that she had somehow come to visit him. But the persons movements, size, everything about it were all wrong for Vickie. True, the movements were stealthy, like a carnivore stalking its prey, and when he blinked it took a moment for him to distinguish it from the surroundings. But even with the predatory grace that it shared with Vickie it wasn’t her. It was probably just as well.
He watched as it approached the cooler and lifted one of the rocks his father had put on it to discourage the critters. Then Andy sneezed and the figure gave a frightened look at him and ran incredibly swiftly back into the woods empty handed. He heard a cough in the woods and then silence.
Andy thought for while. Food had been disappearing from their cooler at night since the day they got here. His father had accused him of carelessness, of leaving the cooler unsecured and prey to various critters, but Andy had known better. He’d thought someone was stealing their food. But he hadn’t considered the nature of the thief, he’d just been mad that someone might be stealing from them.
He thought about it a bit more. A child his own age stealing food must be terribly hungry. He thought about Vickie and how much of everything she had had been stolen, both by her and from her. Then he thought of all the stories he had heard in Sunday school about doing the right thing. He took his lunch for tomorrow, packed and ready, out of the cooler and quietly walked to where the figure had disappeared into the woods He took a little piece of string and hung it from a branch of a tree to keep it from most of the animals and then went back into his tent. He lay awake a while longer wondering about what would happen before he fell asleep for the rest of the night.
He woke to another beautiful morning, one that wanted to make you scoop up a handful of dew from the grass and rub the sleep from your eyes with it No one else was awake yet and the campground was silent. He took a little detour on his way to the latrine and found that of course the food was gone. Scratched into the dirt at the base of the tree was a barely legible thank you. He beamed with pride at having so clearly done the right thing.
On the hike that day he managed to share his brother’s lunch with him. Dad always packed too much food anyway on the grounds that with kids you never knew how long the hike would be. Late that afternoon they drove into town for some more food and on a whim he bought some more gorp and a couple of candy bars with his own money. That night he set some of it out in the same place and again in the morning there was a newly scrawled thank you.
A week went by. Every night and every morning he had repeated the same routine. Today they were going to have an overnight hike up to a place called Misty Moon Lake. The name carried with it enchanting visions of unforeseen adventures in a mystical setting and Andy couldn’t wait to get there, imagining an impending set of memories that he would carry with him forever. The packs were packed and the 2 little backpacking tents attached to them while the big car camping tent stayed on their site with his Aunt and little sister Emmy. Auntie was too old for this sort of thing and Emmy was too young so it was just him, his brother, and mom and dad.
everything under the sun is in tune
but the sun is eclipsed by the moon
but the sun is eclipsed by the moon
-
Robyn Katie
- Miss Platinum Goddess
- Posts: 380
- Joined: Thu Oct 02, 2008 5:02 pm
Hi sisters,
In the interests of accuracy—
Robyn will eventually become a songwriter, but that's four years in the future. Till then, all the songs she sings are traditional or composed by others. She doesn't want you to think she's claiming anything not of her own making!
The blues verses she sang in the last episode come from 1920s blues records she's been listening to. The first was by Blind Lemon Jefferson. The second is her clumsy personalization of a verse by Blind Willie McTell. (She never "bent" a lyric before, and only did so under the stress of grief.)
She hopes to get less clumsy as she goes along, but the clumsiness, naiveness and embarrassing moments are part of telling her story the way it really was.
Love, Robyn Katie
In the interests of accuracy—
Robyn will eventually become a songwriter, but that's four years in the future. Till then, all the songs she sings are traditional or composed by others. She doesn't want you to think she's claiming anything not of her own making!
The blues verses she sang in the last episode come from 1920s blues records she's been listening to. The first was by Blind Lemon Jefferson. The second is her clumsy personalization of a verse by Blind Willie McTell. (She never "bent" a lyric before, and only did so under the stress of grief.)
She hopes to get less clumsy as she goes along, but the clumsiness, naiveness and embarrassing moments are part of telling her story the way it really was.
Love, Robyn Katie
-
Robyn Katie
- Miss Platinum Goddess
- Posts: 380
- Joined: Thu Oct 02, 2008 5:02 pm
And now, on with the show. Briefer this time, but momentous! And not a weeper this time, hip hooray. Enjoy!
Love, Robyn Katie
***
Hair in cascading curls, brushing my bangs out of my eyes, I am intent upon knowledge. It has taken me some while to realize not every girl in school lies in picturesque ruins following what the magazines call a torrid love affair—in fact most of them don’t even know what one is. Some of the girls in my junior class are only barely maturing at sixteen. Many are naïve, inexperienced, have yet to date.
As for sex, they might as well be nuns. All so innocent, so goody-goody, frowning at the mention of girls who are so foolish as to “let themselves go,” “be promiscuous,” who neglect to “save themselves for marriage,” who “have lost their self-respect.” All of which, I gather, is intended to apply to me. I am still technically a virgin, by the skin of my teeth, despite Lainey, despite Karl …
Never mind that. The point is, the majority of girls my age, girls in my class, are pure as the driven snow etc. and all that I’ve felt, and feared, and been through is as strange to them as if I really did live on Mars in diaphanous clothes and a fertility girdle and laid eggs.
They, bless them, are full of plans as to what they will be on leaving school (I have no idea of the future and can’t even think about it), are brightly studying (I still have trouble paying attention in class), are in every way model citizens (while I think about sex all the time), and … well …
I have taken a vow not to think about sex all the time. In fact not ever. I am going to be a sweet, naïve little pupil and aim at academic excellence and have nothing else in my mind but that.
I am taking English and History and second-year Algae-bra (I don’t expect to pass) and third-year French and first-year Spanish, and Typing, and I am getting A and B grades in most of it. (C minus in Algebra, but that’s because I despair of ever understand the first thing about it, no matter how Mr. Groenwald explains and explains and explains it to me till he's blue in the face and I'm half suffocated with undigested equations.)
I get a catch in my throat and a twist in my tummy on seeing Lainey. She says Hi, very cool. I say Hi, very gone-goosish.
It occurs to me that I am exactly in the position with respect to Lainey that my discarded summertime pickup Sally Enders is with me. No, not quite. For Lainey isn’t deliberately using me for her pleasure, but just withholding herself. It comes to the same thing, though, as far as my heart is concerned.
Poor heart. It does take such a beating. My fault, of course. That’s why I’m paying attention strictly to my studies. I also work in the library for my co-op job along with Carolyn, a mutual friend who takes great satisfaction in informing me that Lainey now has a steady boyfriend. Does all the world know that Lainey and I enjoyed the forbidden Pleasures of Lesbia (as I gather it’s called)? They seem to. And every eye condemns me, whereas Lainey seems to have rehabilitated herself by going over to boys—gee, isn’t that just like the people who rat before the House Unamerican Activities Committee!
But I don’t care. I’m over Lainey, and it’s fine if she doesn’t want to see me or be reminded of what we did together last year. Beyond an embarrassed Hi in the halls we never see each other. Good riddance. I’m too busy studying.
It’s surprising how great a range between old and young there is among us. In contrast to all those ignorant virgins barely out of childhood, look at Barbara Heidt, so dauntingly grown up. Every weekend she disappears into Philadelphia with a weekend pass. It is made out in her parents’ name but, come to find out, she spends Friday and Saturday nights at the apartment of an older man. She is his mistress! I’m so curious! What must it be like? But Barbara is aloof, not the sort of girl you can ask.
Alison Simms and I have drifted apart since I became a day student. It’s a great shame, but she was already deep in disapproval of me over Lainey’s and my affair. (How strange that I can quite calmly call it that, and not break into tears as I once would have.) Alison, late in maturing, still doesn’t know anything about sex except from studying biology, and furthermore she doesn’t want to. She still doesn’t go out with boys at all, and doesn’t care if she never does. She really will end up a scientist, apparently, a fate that seems to me worse than death. But I do like her, and it hurts that we aren’t close any more.
How vividly I remember, early in our rooming together, her saying “I’m not going to give up my virginity until I’m twenty-one, if ever.”
“I won’t either,” I replied at once, though privately I wondered how I was going to manage that, considering how close I’d come up till then. (And utterly oblivious as usual to Daddy and my actual lack of a hymen since I was eight.)
“Oh, you—you’ll lose yours before you know what hit you. You’re the type.”
“I’m the *type*?”
“You know, the sort of person who’s played around with boys a lot. Whereas me,” with a little shiver, “really I haven’t, you know. There wasn’t the chance—thank goodness! I can’t imagine what I’d do if one of them tried to touch me. Gulp!” comically. “I’m afraid I’m just not cut out for the sexual life, can you picture me swooning in the arms of Rhett Butler or some such—absurd!”
I stare at suddenly dramatic Alison. “You think that?”
“I know—I’m not normal.”
“I thought it was me that wasn’t normal.”
Then we’d wrangle over what was or wasn’t normal, and marvel over the little veil of flesh we all start with, whose loss is such an enormous matter. I ask why it’s not considered a gain.
Alison was judicious. “Well, it is, by some people.”
“Then why do they say ‘lost her virginity?’”
“Figure of speech, I don’t know, why does it matter? It’s of no concern whatever to me.” Alison, arms crossed over her flat chest, looked momentarily like a ten-year-old though she’d had her period half a year by then. She utterly didn’t grasp the whole issue of sex, any more than I grasp algebra. It was a foreign language to her; she was much more comfortable with a trigonometry problem or the composition of H2SO4.
Sixteen. I finally got my driver’s license. I didn’t have any trouble passing it, ‘cause last summer Daddy taught me to drive on the Welches’ big upper meadow. That he insisted at one point on holding me by my breasts to show me which way to burn, I mean turn, is a thing I am trying to forget. It was the first time in nearly two years he had touched me in this way, so I suppose I was expecting it, or thought I deserved it, or something, for I didn’t protest or wriggle, just let him do it to me, as he obviously felt he had a right to. But for some reason didn't forget it afterward, on cue, as I normally would.
Instead, face burning with unsheddable tears, I flung away from him, refusing to speak to him the whole rest of the day.
Finally at dinner Mom asked, “Darling, why are you acting so rude?” Acting, you note. It’s all an act, according to her.
“Got my period,” I snapped.
“Well! Hardly a subject for the dinner table!” she criticized. But I needed to stop the conversation in its tracks, didn’t I, and guess what, that did it.
Sweet sixteen. How everyone does go on about it. Having your license (freedom, sweet freedom) is supposed to be the least of the attractions. A girl my age is thought to possess the utmost deliciousness she will ever have in her life—“sweet sixteen,” you know. Well, that’s me, sixteen, sweet as I can manage, and—oops, though, can’t say never been kissed, can I. In fact I’ve been kissed just about head to toe, and rather thoroughly mauled too. Though I’ve mostly enjoyed it, especially when the hands were Lainey’s, to the strains of that record she was forever playing on her 45 rpm changer,
Getting to know you, getting to feel free and easy,
Getting to like you, getting to hope you like me,
Yes, and very well indeed. Thoroughly, too, yum. Intimately. Repeatedly. Oh Robyn would you stop.
But the people who yack on and on about sweet sixteen seem to have gotten it all out of dry dusty old books, for it has no resemblance to my life at all. Nothing I’ve read, nothing on TV, nothing anywhere has any use in my day-to-day existence. It all seems to be about nobody I know or can imagine. Oughtn’t there to be some guide, some blueprint to keep me from being utterly at sea? Am I really meant to be making it up as I go along? Well if I must, I must—but nobody better complain if I get it completely wrong.
For instance, what am I to do when I am sought after? For example, without any warning or preparation I got roped into singing on stage. It started with persons random and unfamiliar stopping me in the hall.
“Understand you sing.”
“Um—well, sort of.”
“Play guitar, too?”
“And banjo!” Always I’m protective of my five-string banjo, ‘cause for one thing half the people think it’s a guitar, the other half don’t want to listen and would just as soon forget it exists. But I think it’s my most beautiful instrument with its brilliant starlike notes. Besides, it fits so nicely in my lap (though I have to be careful the brackets don’t tear my skirt).
“What do you say to performing in assembly?”
“Huh?”
“You know, every morning somebody does something, a skit, a speech—why don’t you do a song.”
“Oh—I don’t think I would be good at that. For one thing, nobody likes the kind of music I play.” I have only to think of Johnny Welch up in my room trying to kiss me when I made him sit on my bed and listen to me play banjo. Boy, was he ever unimpressed. “I don’t know about that, it sounds like killing a pig,” was his reaction.
Yet here I am on stage this minute, with my guitar. (They said don’t try the banjo yet, start with the guitar and see how that goes.) Well, I play some notes. Have to play and sing loud, ‘cause there’s no microphone, though the auditorium is big, holds four hundred people. I don’t know if they can hear me in the back rows. Maybe I should hope they don’t—all of them out there seeing me, sizing me up, me trying to sing; and am I holding them spellbound? probably not.
On Springfield Mountain there did dwell
A lovely youth, I knowed him well.
He had not mowed half round the field,
A pesky serpent bit his heel.
Oh Johnny dear, why did you go
Down in your father’s field to mow?
Frightened and shamed I stand warbling here, hands gripping the guitar like a safety bar, wilting inside knowing this is it, I am turning out my insides, now everyone can see exactly what a terrible girl I am. After all they know everything, don’t they: all about me letting Karl do those things to me that we could both have been suspended for. Then in the secrecy of our room I did those awful things to Lainey. Now I’m shamelessly pretending to be a musician?
I maunder on to the lugubrious finale, in which Molly Dear tries to suck out the poison from her Lovely Youth’s heel, but as she has a rotten tooth, she is poisoned too. Bye-bye Molly Dear. (I myself have very good teeth, they’re one of my best features.) Astonishingly, they do clap. I smile. I curtsy (not easy with a guitar, try it sometime) and take my dainty self off into the wings as quick as decently possible without seeming to flee in disorder.
Leaving school (if only at specified times) is one nice part of being a day student and driving myself. Freedom! Here I am in Naventown shopping, practically an impossibility for boarders on a weekday. I need a new bra, as my present cups are getting, well, a little tight. But just as I find a nice store I am stopped in my tracks on the sidewalk by the mannequin in its window. She just now hasn’t anything on. I wonder they dare leave her in the window so naked, so revelatory, so neatly obscene, revealing so devastatingly the skin beneath the skin.
My skin?
Is this mannequin me, the likeness of me, as I know I am supposed to see it? Crude, pale, expressionless, so different from living, breathing, perspiring me in my ordinary plaid dress, my least favorite but practical, especially on a warm day like this, it is like a parody of my face and body, yet somehow too near the bone for comfort.
I eye her nervously, as if she is my superior in some way I can never overcome. My soles feel the heat of the sidewalk through my black flats—rarely worn now; I’ve been getting used to heels, two-inch and three ...
How, till now, have I managed to escape seeing, truly seeing, these fearful shapes of womanhood? I’ve always just walked unheeding past mannequins; now I’m riveted to the sidewalk almost as if I were a mannequin myself, a noticeable seam at my shoulder joint, another joining thigh to hip, elbow cocked so, frozen at this angle forever, caught, pinned, fastened to the street as surely as if I had a rod up my belly just like hers.
Well, Miss Mannequin, what do you think of me, sweet sixteen? Has sixteen made me different? Am I made over new? Must say I don’t feel especially sweet, more like tart. (Occasionally tangy.) Are you wishing you didn’t have to stand there and be stared at?
I blow a quiet little kiss to the indecently exposed mannequin and go in and buy my new bra. She gazes past me at the street, sightless as a Greek statue, implying goodness knows what.
Seems I am being forced out of my shell. People speak to me unasked. Even avoiding their eyes doesn’t deter them. They seem set on changing my life whether I like it or not. Next afternoon I’m walking in front of the school when out of the window of the boys’ day student locker room a voice says, “Well, Robyn Katherine in person, how is yourself, may I ask.”
Closing my eyes for a second, I open them upon a windowframe with Marty Jenkins in it. “You know my middle name?”
“I know heaps of things about you.”
My heart turned to lead: another jeering boy, trying to get my goat? Yet something in me wanted to act pert and flirty and tease back. “Oh do you now.”
“All good, believe me!”
“Now that is hard to believe.” My brain is ricocheting. Is he referring obliquely to Lainey? He knows! stings my mind, drenching itself in the usual shame. (Yet later on, nudging cautiously around the subject, it will turn out he didn’t know, or at least had the grace to pretend not to.)
“Oh. Well,” turning to walk on, “see you—”
“Wait a second, young damsel.”
I whirl, half in fun. “Young damn what? Besides I’m as old as you are, sir, I’ll have you know.” Never before have I even thought of attempt the silly sort of banter so common among the older girls, and I guess my inexperience shows.
“Unh-uh-uh,” playfully, making me madder, “not so fast, my girl.”
His girl? How dare he say that to me? Flushed, I open my brightly lipsticked lips to sass him back when he floors me with—
“How’d you like to go to the dance with me Saturday?”
“Serve you right if I said yes.”
“Is that an acceptance?”
My defiance is leaking air. “If you think so, then I guess—well ... sure, why not?”
And just like that, in this very public way, before I’ve half figured out what I’m doing talking to him at all, he’s gotten me to agree to a date.
“Did you plan this?” I ask him during the dance, cheek to cheek, his gardenia at my bodice nearly suffocating us both with sweetness.
“You could say that.”
“For how long?”
Shrug.
Charmed, mystified in spite of myself, I dance closer, in fact I am now plastered against him, he can feel every least contour of me, and it’s mutual.
“You have been lying in wait for me? Why?” I know the answer: having recently broken up with Sue Moon, he’s between girlfriends, and I, it seems, am next. But maybe it’s not quite that crass, because he seems really nice, and very sweet to me. And the reason he gives is still sweeter.
“Couldn’t resist you any longer.”
“Oh pooh.”
But before it can leave my half-open mouth my pooh gets kissed. The first of many. I stopped counting after, well, I think it was twenty, or …? We’re old hands at kissing before the song is over, and I’m upset to find my body yielding to his in every way that’s possible with a screen of slowly dancing couples between us and the chaperones’ watchful eye. Suddenly I understand why, as I heard Chrissie Miller say one night last year, they call dancing upright f— Well, that’s not a word I use, but you get the idea.
We date the next weekend too, and the one after that. This Marty person has three sisters, I've learned, Barb, Liz and Dot, and they all dote on him and make much of him. Result: making any headway is hard. I don't compare.
Of course there's one thing his sisters can't give him, but I can. So it's unfair of me, I suppose, not to. But I am holding out (mostly). They are undisguisedly jealous of all I do give him, but there's not a thing they can do about it. Barring occasional snide comments, I reign supreme.
Lately I’ve been picking him up at his doorstep in Naventown on my way to school. He’s impressed that I’m a girl with a car, and he seems quite stricken with me, and I—well, I did vow to leave off girls, didn’t I? And the “stricken” aspect does seem to work both ways, enough to worry me quite a lot.
Am I this susceptible?
We spend innumerable hours kissing in front of his parents’ house. He bears me down on the seat, stretches me out, plays symphonies on my body. I'm hardly blameless, wildly rubbing myself on him till we are both moaning. Anyone with any brain in their head would predict this can only end in one way. Is that what I predict too? Oh I have no idea what to predict, but I am so aroused by the marvel of what we do together …
Very apropos, as I have supposedly vowed to be boy-crazy! So I guess this can’t help but put me on the straight and narrow! But oh, his straight and narrow is coming to dwell in my marrow, taking me by storm, propelling me headlong to the brink, and seems I am not slow in propelling myself to the brink either, just as headlong ...
***
Next Time: How Do You Be a Girlfriend?
Love, Robyn Katie
***
Hair in cascading curls, brushing my bangs out of my eyes, I am intent upon knowledge. It has taken me some while to realize not every girl in school lies in picturesque ruins following what the magazines call a torrid love affair—in fact most of them don’t even know what one is. Some of the girls in my junior class are only barely maturing at sixteen. Many are naïve, inexperienced, have yet to date.
As for sex, they might as well be nuns. All so innocent, so goody-goody, frowning at the mention of girls who are so foolish as to “let themselves go,” “be promiscuous,” who neglect to “save themselves for marriage,” who “have lost their self-respect.” All of which, I gather, is intended to apply to me. I am still technically a virgin, by the skin of my teeth, despite Lainey, despite Karl …
Never mind that. The point is, the majority of girls my age, girls in my class, are pure as the driven snow etc. and all that I’ve felt, and feared, and been through is as strange to them as if I really did live on Mars in diaphanous clothes and a fertility girdle and laid eggs.
They, bless them, are full of plans as to what they will be on leaving school (I have no idea of the future and can’t even think about it), are brightly studying (I still have trouble paying attention in class), are in every way model citizens (while I think about sex all the time), and … well …
I have taken a vow not to think about sex all the time. In fact not ever. I am going to be a sweet, naïve little pupil and aim at academic excellence and have nothing else in my mind but that.
I am taking English and History and second-year Algae-bra (I don’t expect to pass) and third-year French and first-year Spanish, and Typing, and I am getting A and B grades in most of it. (C minus in Algebra, but that’s because I despair of ever understand the first thing about it, no matter how Mr. Groenwald explains and explains and explains it to me till he's blue in the face and I'm half suffocated with undigested equations.)
I get a catch in my throat and a twist in my tummy on seeing Lainey. She says Hi, very cool. I say Hi, very gone-goosish.
It occurs to me that I am exactly in the position with respect to Lainey that my discarded summertime pickup Sally Enders is with me. No, not quite. For Lainey isn’t deliberately using me for her pleasure, but just withholding herself. It comes to the same thing, though, as far as my heart is concerned.
Poor heart. It does take such a beating. My fault, of course. That’s why I’m paying attention strictly to my studies. I also work in the library for my co-op job along with Carolyn, a mutual friend who takes great satisfaction in informing me that Lainey now has a steady boyfriend. Does all the world know that Lainey and I enjoyed the forbidden Pleasures of Lesbia (as I gather it’s called)? They seem to. And every eye condemns me, whereas Lainey seems to have rehabilitated herself by going over to boys—gee, isn’t that just like the people who rat before the House Unamerican Activities Committee!
But I don’t care. I’m over Lainey, and it’s fine if she doesn’t want to see me or be reminded of what we did together last year. Beyond an embarrassed Hi in the halls we never see each other. Good riddance. I’m too busy studying.
It’s surprising how great a range between old and young there is among us. In contrast to all those ignorant virgins barely out of childhood, look at Barbara Heidt, so dauntingly grown up. Every weekend she disappears into Philadelphia with a weekend pass. It is made out in her parents’ name but, come to find out, she spends Friday and Saturday nights at the apartment of an older man. She is his mistress! I’m so curious! What must it be like? But Barbara is aloof, not the sort of girl you can ask.
Alison Simms and I have drifted apart since I became a day student. It’s a great shame, but she was already deep in disapproval of me over Lainey’s and my affair. (How strange that I can quite calmly call it that, and not break into tears as I once would have.) Alison, late in maturing, still doesn’t know anything about sex except from studying biology, and furthermore she doesn’t want to. She still doesn’t go out with boys at all, and doesn’t care if she never does. She really will end up a scientist, apparently, a fate that seems to me worse than death. But I do like her, and it hurts that we aren’t close any more.
How vividly I remember, early in our rooming together, her saying “I’m not going to give up my virginity until I’m twenty-one, if ever.”
“I won’t either,” I replied at once, though privately I wondered how I was going to manage that, considering how close I’d come up till then. (And utterly oblivious as usual to Daddy and my actual lack of a hymen since I was eight.)
“Oh, you—you’ll lose yours before you know what hit you. You’re the type.”
“I’m the *type*?”
“You know, the sort of person who’s played around with boys a lot. Whereas me,” with a little shiver, “really I haven’t, you know. There wasn’t the chance—thank goodness! I can’t imagine what I’d do if one of them tried to touch me. Gulp!” comically. “I’m afraid I’m just not cut out for the sexual life, can you picture me swooning in the arms of Rhett Butler or some such—absurd!”
I stare at suddenly dramatic Alison. “You think that?”
“I know—I’m not normal.”
“I thought it was me that wasn’t normal.”
Then we’d wrangle over what was or wasn’t normal, and marvel over the little veil of flesh we all start with, whose loss is such an enormous matter. I ask why it’s not considered a gain.
Alison was judicious. “Well, it is, by some people.”
“Then why do they say ‘lost her virginity?’”
“Figure of speech, I don’t know, why does it matter? It’s of no concern whatever to me.” Alison, arms crossed over her flat chest, looked momentarily like a ten-year-old though she’d had her period half a year by then. She utterly didn’t grasp the whole issue of sex, any more than I grasp algebra. It was a foreign language to her; she was much more comfortable with a trigonometry problem or the composition of H2SO4.
Sixteen. I finally got my driver’s license. I didn’t have any trouble passing it, ‘cause last summer Daddy taught me to drive on the Welches’ big upper meadow. That he insisted at one point on holding me by my breasts to show me which way to burn, I mean turn, is a thing I am trying to forget. It was the first time in nearly two years he had touched me in this way, so I suppose I was expecting it, or thought I deserved it, or something, for I didn’t protest or wriggle, just let him do it to me, as he obviously felt he had a right to. But for some reason didn't forget it afterward, on cue, as I normally would.
Instead, face burning with unsheddable tears, I flung away from him, refusing to speak to him the whole rest of the day.
Finally at dinner Mom asked, “Darling, why are you acting so rude?” Acting, you note. It’s all an act, according to her.
“Got my period,” I snapped.
“Well! Hardly a subject for the dinner table!” she criticized. But I needed to stop the conversation in its tracks, didn’t I, and guess what, that did it.
Sweet sixteen. How everyone does go on about it. Having your license (freedom, sweet freedom) is supposed to be the least of the attractions. A girl my age is thought to possess the utmost deliciousness she will ever have in her life—“sweet sixteen,” you know. Well, that’s me, sixteen, sweet as I can manage, and—oops, though, can’t say never been kissed, can I. In fact I’ve been kissed just about head to toe, and rather thoroughly mauled too. Though I’ve mostly enjoyed it, especially when the hands were Lainey’s, to the strains of that record she was forever playing on her 45 rpm changer,
Getting to know you, getting to feel free and easy,
Getting to like you, getting to hope you like me,
Yes, and very well indeed. Thoroughly, too, yum. Intimately. Repeatedly. Oh Robyn would you stop.
But the people who yack on and on about sweet sixteen seem to have gotten it all out of dry dusty old books, for it has no resemblance to my life at all. Nothing I’ve read, nothing on TV, nothing anywhere has any use in my day-to-day existence. It all seems to be about nobody I know or can imagine. Oughtn’t there to be some guide, some blueprint to keep me from being utterly at sea? Am I really meant to be making it up as I go along? Well if I must, I must—but nobody better complain if I get it completely wrong.
For instance, what am I to do when I am sought after? For example, without any warning or preparation I got roped into singing on stage. It started with persons random and unfamiliar stopping me in the hall.
“Understand you sing.”
“Um—well, sort of.”
“Play guitar, too?”
“And banjo!” Always I’m protective of my five-string banjo, ‘cause for one thing half the people think it’s a guitar, the other half don’t want to listen and would just as soon forget it exists. But I think it’s my most beautiful instrument with its brilliant starlike notes. Besides, it fits so nicely in my lap (though I have to be careful the brackets don’t tear my skirt).
“What do you say to performing in assembly?”
“Huh?”
“You know, every morning somebody does something, a skit, a speech—why don’t you do a song.”
“Oh—I don’t think I would be good at that. For one thing, nobody likes the kind of music I play.” I have only to think of Johnny Welch up in my room trying to kiss me when I made him sit on my bed and listen to me play banjo. Boy, was he ever unimpressed. “I don’t know about that, it sounds like killing a pig,” was his reaction.
Yet here I am on stage this minute, with my guitar. (They said don’t try the banjo yet, start with the guitar and see how that goes.) Well, I play some notes. Have to play and sing loud, ‘cause there’s no microphone, though the auditorium is big, holds four hundred people. I don’t know if they can hear me in the back rows. Maybe I should hope they don’t—all of them out there seeing me, sizing me up, me trying to sing; and am I holding them spellbound? probably not.
On Springfield Mountain there did dwell
A lovely youth, I knowed him well.
He had not mowed half round the field,
A pesky serpent bit his heel.
Oh Johnny dear, why did you go
Down in your father’s field to mow?
Frightened and shamed I stand warbling here, hands gripping the guitar like a safety bar, wilting inside knowing this is it, I am turning out my insides, now everyone can see exactly what a terrible girl I am. After all they know everything, don’t they: all about me letting Karl do those things to me that we could both have been suspended for. Then in the secrecy of our room I did those awful things to Lainey. Now I’m shamelessly pretending to be a musician?
I maunder on to the lugubrious finale, in which Molly Dear tries to suck out the poison from her Lovely Youth’s heel, but as she has a rotten tooth, she is poisoned too. Bye-bye Molly Dear. (I myself have very good teeth, they’re one of my best features.) Astonishingly, they do clap. I smile. I curtsy (not easy with a guitar, try it sometime) and take my dainty self off into the wings as quick as decently possible without seeming to flee in disorder.
Leaving school (if only at specified times) is one nice part of being a day student and driving myself. Freedom! Here I am in Naventown shopping, practically an impossibility for boarders on a weekday. I need a new bra, as my present cups are getting, well, a little tight. But just as I find a nice store I am stopped in my tracks on the sidewalk by the mannequin in its window. She just now hasn’t anything on. I wonder they dare leave her in the window so naked, so revelatory, so neatly obscene, revealing so devastatingly the skin beneath the skin.
My skin?
Is this mannequin me, the likeness of me, as I know I am supposed to see it? Crude, pale, expressionless, so different from living, breathing, perspiring me in my ordinary plaid dress, my least favorite but practical, especially on a warm day like this, it is like a parody of my face and body, yet somehow too near the bone for comfort.
I eye her nervously, as if she is my superior in some way I can never overcome. My soles feel the heat of the sidewalk through my black flats—rarely worn now; I’ve been getting used to heels, two-inch and three ...
How, till now, have I managed to escape seeing, truly seeing, these fearful shapes of womanhood? I’ve always just walked unheeding past mannequins; now I’m riveted to the sidewalk almost as if I were a mannequin myself, a noticeable seam at my shoulder joint, another joining thigh to hip, elbow cocked so, frozen at this angle forever, caught, pinned, fastened to the street as surely as if I had a rod up my belly just like hers.
Well, Miss Mannequin, what do you think of me, sweet sixteen? Has sixteen made me different? Am I made over new? Must say I don’t feel especially sweet, more like tart. (Occasionally tangy.) Are you wishing you didn’t have to stand there and be stared at?
I blow a quiet little kiss to the indecently exposed mannequin and go in and buy my new bra. She gazes past me at the street, sightless as a Greek statue, implying goodness knows what.
Seems I am being forced out of my shell. People speak to me unasked. Even avoiding their eyes doesn’t deter them. They seem set on changing my life whether I like it or not. Next afternoon I’m walking in front of the school when out of the window of the boys’ day student locker room a voice says, “Well, Robyn Katherine in person, how is yourself, may I ask.”
Closing my eyes for a second, I open them upon a windowframe with Marty Jenkins in it. “You know my middle name?”
“I know heaps of things about you.”
My heart turned to lead: another jeering boy, trying to get my goat? Yet something in me wanted to act pert and flirty and tease back. “Oh do you now.”
“All good, believe me!”
“Now that is hard to believe.” My brain is ricocheting. Is he referring obliquely to Lainey? He knows! stings my mind, drenching itself in the usual shame. (Yet later on, nudging cautiously around the subject, it will turn out he didn’t know, or at least had the grace to pretend not to.)
“Oh. Well,” turning to walk on, “see you—”
“Wait a second, young damsel.”
I whirl, half in fun. “Young damn what? Besides I’m as old as you are, sir, I’ll have you know.” Never before have I even thought of attempt the silly sort of banter so common among the older girls, and I guess my inexperience shows.
“Unh-uh-uh,” playfully, making me madder, “not so fast, my girl.”
His girl? How dare he say that to me? Flushed, I open my brightly lipsticked lips to sass him back when he floors me with—
“How’d you like to go to the dance with me Saturday?”
“Serve you right if I said yes.”
“Is that an acceptance?”
My defiance is leaking air. “If you think so, then I guess—well ... sure, why not?”
And just like that, in this very public way, before I’ve half figured out what I’m doing talking to him at all, he’s gotten me to agree to a date.
“Did you plan this?” I ask him during the dance, cheek to cheek, his gardenia at my bodice nearly suffocating us both with sweetness.
“You could say that.”
“For how long?”
Shrug.
Charmed, mystified in spite of myself, I dance closer, in fact I am now plastered against him, he can feel every least contour of me, and it’s mutual.
“You have been lying in wait for me? Why?” I know the answer: having recently broken up with Sue Moon, he’s between girlfriends, and I, it seems, am next. But maybe it’s not quite that crass, because he seems really nice, and very sweet to me. And the reason he gives is still sweeter.
“Couldn’t resist you any longer.”
“Oh pooh.”
But before it can leave my half-open mouth my pooh gets kissed. The first of many. I stopped counting after, well, I think it was twenty, or …? We’re old hands at kissing before the song is over, and I’m upset to find my body yielding to his in every way that’s possible with a screen of slowly dancing couples between us and the chaperones’ watchful eye. Suddenly I understand why, as I heard Chrissie Miller say one night last year, they call dancing upright f— Well, that’s not a word I use, but you get the idea.
We date the next weekend too, and the one after that. This Marty person has three sisters, I've learned, Barb, Liz and Dot, and they all dote on him and make much of him. Result: making any headway is hard. I don't compare.
Of course there's one thing his sisters can't give him, but I can. So it's unfair of me, I suppose, not to. But I am holding out (mostly). They are undisguisedly jealous of all I do give him, but there's not a thing they can do about it. Barring occasional snide comments, I reign supreme.
Lately I’ve been picking him up at his doorstep in Naventown on my way to school. He’s impressed that I’m a girl with a car, and he seems quite stricken with me, and I—well, I did vow to leave off girls, didn’t I? And the “stricken” aspect does seem to work both ways, enough to worry me quite a lot.
Am I this susceptible?
We spend innumerable hours kissing in front of his parents’ house. He bears me down on the seat, stretches me out, plays symphonies on my body. I'm hardly blameless, wildly rubbing myself on him till we are both moaning. Anyone with any brain in their head would predict this can only end in one way. Is that what I predict too? Oh I have no idea what to predict, but I am so aroused by the marvel of what we do together …
Very apropos, as I have supposedly vowed to be boy-crazy! So I guess this can’t help but put me on the straight and narrow! But oh, his straight and narrow is coming to dwell in my marrow, taking me by storm, propelling me headlong to the brink, and seems I am not slow in propelling myself to the brink either, just as headlong ...
***
Next Time: How Do You Be a Girlfriend?
-
Absaroka
- Miss Diamond Goddess
- Posts: 3344
- Joined: Fri Feb 04, 2005 8:30 am
Hi Robyn,
Nice interlude of sort of calm. I like a lot of the details in terms of stuff happening in the background.
I Allison going to become a lesbian also? SOme sort of denial going on?
I take it the new song is called Molly Dear.
We should maybe credit the songs if they are other peoples. My understanding of copyright stuff is that if we don't make any money we can quote song lyrics but that if we make money on our stories that's another thing. Of course something as old as you quoted is public domain.
Absaroka
Nice interlude of sort of calm. I like a lot of the details in terms of stuff happening in the background.
I Allison going to become a lesbian also? SOme sort of denial going on?
I take it the new song is called Molly Dear.
We should maybe credit the songs if they are other peoples. My understanding of copyright stuff is that if we don't make any money we can quote song lyrics but that if we make money on our stories that's another thing. Of course something as old as you quoted is public domain.
Absaroka
everything under the sun is in tune
but the sun is eclipsed by the moon
but the sun is eclipsed by the moon
-
Absaroka
- Miss Diamond Goddess
- Posts: 3344
- Joined: Fri Feb 04, 2005 8:30 am
Next part. This was the very first part I wrote and was titled Wolf Girl. I've always wondered what it would be like to spend several days without seeing or speaking to anyone.
I found this chapter frustrating. There was too much about being in the mountains that I couldn't put into words. Sort of like Vickie who can't manage to say what she wants no matter how long she talks.
Vickie's character initially started off as a rehash of Mountain Girl. Together the two girls complete the person that is Andy. In the back of my mind is always the idea that they are just one person.
They were three quarters of the way to the lake with Andy’s excitement unabated when they saw her. A girl about his age, incredibly, alone, sitting on a rock next to the trail. She had a golden brown face and scrambly long hair pulled back into a careless pony tail. His father said hi and she looked at them, unsurprised but shy, and gave a scared little hello. She looked startled at the sound of her own voice and Andy thought her voice sounded like she hadn’t used it in a long time.
“Where are you going?” his mom asked solicitously after saying hello. There was a long moment of silence and then a faraway reply. “Up to the lake?” It was a question more than an answer. “Where are your parents?” was his mom’s next question. A look came over the girls face. Pride and determination along with something else, like defiance but something far deeper. “I’m going up there myself. I go up there a lot. It’s one of my favorite places.” Seeing his mothers alarmed face she added “We live here. It’s okay, my dad lets me go by myself now.”
Both parents looked at her and Andy looked again too. He saw a face that seemed far older than his own years and skin that looked as if the wind and sun were it’s constant companions. He saw clothes that were sewn together again and again and realized that although her face had been freshly washed it still had enough dirt on it to show that it would take a lot more than one attempt to clean it. He thought about how it must be awesome to live here but he wouldn’t want to be as poor as this girl obviously was. “Well why don’t you hike up there with us” his dad suggested and they started back up the trail.
His mom and dad were strong. They jogged several miles most days of the week and they loved hiking. And in spite of Andy’s lack of interest in sports, he and Stu were no slouches either, loving to run all day like most boys and veterans of more mountains than they could count. Andy liked to think that hiking was the one physical activity he was actually good at, but as he watched the girl scampering up the trail he began to feel like he did watching the other kids play ball at recess. A moment later there was a steep part that was obviously going to take a bit of thought, with mom above and dad below waiting anxiously to catch them if they fell. He watched with amazement as the girl flowed up the ascent without even pausing to consider things and thought that after all she did live here. A moment later she stopped to wait for them, a look of surprise on her face as she watched his parents coach them up. He felt a flush of embarrassment on his face and reminded himself that he did this a lot and it really was a hard trail even if this little mountain girl didn’t seem to think so.
They made it to the lake an hour later. She had disappeared ahead of them and when they got there he saw no sign of her. They put up the tents, one for his parents and a tiny one for him and his brother, and began gathering firewood. Suddenly, silently, she reappeared carrying a huge armful of wood, all very dry he noted. “There you are. Thank you” said his dad. “Are you going to stay here or are you going back down? It is getting late to head back down even for a fast little mountain girl like you” “I like to stay up here” she relied, again with that voice that sounded unused. “There’s a nice view at the end of the lake where I stay and the bugs don’t bother me much here” And she turned to go and suddenly melted into the woods.
Dinner time. Andy was beginning to suspect something that he couldn’t quite organize into a thought, let alone words. Somehow he knew she would return the moment they began to eat, and she did. She brought her own supper, two freshly caught fish. She eyed their fire for a moment and his dad asked her if she would like to cook her fish over the fire. Wordlessly she skewered the fish and then placed two forked sticks in the ground to support them. When they were done she began to eat them with her hands. After finishing the first fish she paused and asked if they would like any of the second one. There were plenty more in the lake she said. Andy said he was still hungry and she put some of the fish in his plate. She looked at him for a moment and gave a strange, knowing sort of smile as he ate.
They quieted the fire, which had only been big enough for cooking anyway, and went down to sit by the lake. They watched the sun go down and the stars come out as they talked idly while the girl seemed to listen attentively but mutely and then Andy’s father said it was about time to go to sleep. He asked the girl if she would be okay getting back to her spot and she looked surprised. “I’ll be okay” she replied. His father gave her a measuring look as if he too was deciding something and then replied “I’m sure you will.” Then he asked her name, something that somehow had not come up during the conversation despite several efforts that Andy and his brother had both noticed his parents making. There was a long moment of silence as if an incredibly embarrassing question had just been asked by an adult who should know better. Then she gave a little grin of relief and said “You guessed it before. Mountain Girl.”
“Well goodnight Mountain Girl” his father replied. Will we see you in the morning? Maybe you can have breakfast with us.” Andy recognized the tone in his dad’s voice; one he used when he was trying to persuade them to do something without being obvious. It always failed. Their dad wasn’t unreasonable and they usually did as he asked but they could always see through his efforts at subtlety. “Maybe” she replied and then she was gone.
Andy heard his mom and dad talking a long time in the tent that night. That was unusual; they normally went right to sleep. His tent was only about fifteen feet away but he couldn’t make out what they were saying which was also strange, his parents were not the whispering type. But tonight they were and they seemed to think it was important, whatever it was they were whispering about in the tent for so long. He figured it was about the girl. There was something about her that he still couldn’t wrap his mind around, something so simple that when he knew what it was it would be obvious, just like those math problems in school that were so hard and then when the teacher explained them any fool could see what the answer was.
Of course she was there for breakfast, with five fish, one for each person, as they were getting out of their sleeping bags. She had an ancient looking man’s wool shirt on which was so big that she had to almost wrap it around herself like a blanket, and seemed oblivious as they shivered in the early morning cold. Frost lay on the grass as they sat by the newly started fire and they watched their breath in the air.
They spent the day exploring the lake. She silently accompanied them for most of the day and then asked would they be spending the night. Yes his dad said and she smiled “I’ll see you at dinner. When the sun is just at that mountain top over there” And she disappeared again.
His father had gotten the fire going again. He looked at the mountain for the umpteenth time and it seemed that the sun had just reached the level of it’s peak. He added some more wood to the fire and realized that once more she had silently appeared, just as she had said she would and exactly at the time she had set. He looked at what she was holding in her hands and realized that this time it was not fish but something golden and furry. As he said hi to her his dad appeared with some more firewood. He too said hello and then commented in an unsurprised yet joking voice “of course you brought a marmot for dinner. Fish three times in a row………….why don’t you skin it over by the lake away from camp.” “I was going to. You don’t think I want to attract any varmints do you?” she responded in a tone that let him know she equated this sort of thing with not playing on the thruway, he thought, and then if she even knew what a thruway was.
It rained that night just after they crawled into their sleeping bags. They pulled the fly shut and then it was Stu who finally said something as they were falling asleep that night that finally gave him the leap to understand. Leave it to his little brother to see the obvious when no one else could. “Wolf girl is in her cave I guess” he commented. “What do you mean wolf girl?” asked Andy. At the same time the thought he had been struggling for came to him. She lived here, in the wilderness. “Wolf girl. She ran away and was raised by wolves” repeated his brother. “You’re crazy” replied Andy but he knew. The ease with which she appeared and disappeared, the wild food, her strength and agility. She was a wild child.
They arose at the beginnings of dawn with the smell of frost sharp in their nostrils as steam began to rise from the lake. He and Stu walked quietly a little way from the campground and then he said “she told us that she stays over at the other end of the lake by the rocks. Lets go see. Hurry before mom and dad get up” Leaving a note for just in case they worked around the lake on a faint trail till they came to the flat rocks she had pointed out. They poked around for a while and found nothing and then heard her voice behind them. “I was just going over to your tents. Your mom and dad are getting up.” Sure enough they saw their father emerge from behind some trees from his morning pee and go to their tent. He read the note and looked around. Andy yelled as loud as he could and their father looked around as Andy continued to yell. Finally he saw he three of them and gestured for them to return. “Before we go show us where you stay” demanded Andy. “Stu says that you sleep in a cave with wolves but I don’t believe that.” Wordlessly she lead them to an almost invisible path. A few yards away was a lean to which was unobtrusive to the point of being almost impossible to see. There was a small fire circle in front of it, a blanket laid over some pine boughs, and a pack that was mostly empty. “My father and I made this” she explained. “He lets me come here by myself now”
She considered them for a moment. “Are you going back down today?” “Yes” replied Stu and they saw her smile disappear. They went back to the lake and she picked up some more fish lying on the shore. Next to them was a stick with some fishing line and a little box with some hooks. “I don’t bring much food because it’s so easy to catch here” she said. “But I like your food. I’ll let you have some of my fish for it.” Then they started back.
At breakfast she broached the subject. “You haven’t seen my lake over beyond that mountain. It’s much nicer and no one ever goes there. It doesn’t take long to get there. Why don’t you stay there tonight and go back to the park tomorrow.” His mom objected. “We’re about out of food. We only have enough for the hike out today plus the emergency supply. I don’t really want to use that. You never know” “That’s okay” replied Mountain Girl. They had come to think of her by that name since there was no other one available. “I’ll feed you.” There was a hidden pleading in her voice and Andy thought that she must be lonely, wanting just one more day of their company for her silence. His dad looked at her for a long time. Then he agreed. “It’ll be nice to live off the land for a day. You’re sure that’s all it will take?” She nodded and then his dad said “Well let’s pack up the tents.”
It might have been a short walk for her. For them it was quite a haul. Eventually they got to the lake, identified ominously on their map as Lost Lake. They noted that the map did not show any kind of a trail to the lake although the route she led them on was not too hard to follow with her leading. The afternoon sun was still fairly high up in the sky and they were hungry. She led them to a simple lean to which was once more constructed in such a way as to be nearly invisible. Near it was a clearing with a nice view of the lake. “Puyour tents up there” she said as she shrugged off her pack. “The fish are really good here and there's some nice greens over there.”
She showed them a nice spot to camp and they set up their tents. Then Andy and Stu wandered down to the lake to where they could see her fishing. They knew better than to talk and sat in silence for a half hour or so at which point they had three reasonably good sized fish. She gutted them and tossed the entrails into the pond and they returned to where mom and dad had amassed some fire wood and were about to start the fire.
The rest of the day was a delight of exploration. Mountain Girl was clearly enjoying surprising them with the lakes secrets. They caught some more fish and then she led them a short distance from the lake. "I'll let you have some of the greens and onions growing here" she told them. They began to pick the greens the way she showed them, careful to leave enough for the leaves to grow back quickly. Then she stopped them. "I don't want you to take any more. I need to save some for another day." Andy thought this was a bit rude and weird. It wasn't as if she owned the mountains or something. But still it seemed to be important to this strange girl that they stop, and she had been the one who invited them to come with her here to this lake. Her lake, he remembered she called it. Maybe she lived near here. Who knew? The three of them went back to where his parents had made a fire. After they'd eaten they sat at the fire a long time with his parents attempting to hold a conversation. The girl was silent and eventually so was everyone else. Tired from their day, Andy and Stu feel sound asleep on the ground in the front of the fire.
They awoke in the morning in their tent, hungry. Andy thought that even though he liked fish that he would really rather eat something else for breakfast. He got his wish after an hour later of fruitless fishing- a little gorp and some more greens with this time some wild mushrooms which his mom and dad both examined very carefully before letting them eat any.
The walk back to the trail head was a long one and it seemed with Mountain Girl in the lead they were always hurrying. Halfway down the trail from Misty Moon Lake they came to a faint side trail which was not on their map “I go this way” she informed them. “Goodbye” And before they could say anything she was gone.
By time they got back to the base camp that evening Andy was too tired to do anything but eat and fall asleep as soon as they had the tent set up, thinking that his ideas of a special adventure had taken a stranger turn than he could possibly have reasonably hoped for. Mom and dad didn’t seem much more energetic but they carried on until the camp chores were done and they had answered at least some of Auntie and Emmy’s questions. The little fire they made to sit by died out as soon as it got dark and a short time later everyone else had fallen asleep as well.
A couple more days went by. On his return Andy had resumed his routine of hanging food in the tree wondering if the visitor would still be here. The first morning the food was still there and he considered not bothering but he was curious. The little trip to Lost Lake had taught him something about stealth, he thought, and he half hoped to figure out who it was that they had been feeding for a week. The second night he tried to stay awake and watch from his tent but there was no sign of any visitor till the morning when the scrawled thank you was once more there. It was on the third night that things got more interesting.
He had made a show of going to sleep and then at his sneaky best crawled out of the tent on his belly. Stu had whispered a question to him but he had just said to stay there. Now he was lying on a blanket he had hidden earlier. He was away from the fire but close enough to everyone that if he fell asleep he could convincingly tell his parents that he just wanted to sleep under the stars that night. And fall sleep he did. He awoke to a hand shaking him. The moon had moved only a little bit in the sky and dawn was still hours away. He looked up expecting to see his brother but it was the girl from the trip to the lakes. “Tired of your tent?” she giggled. He looked at her sleepily and confused for a minute thinking that they were in the campground, not the lake, wondering what she was doing here. He started to explain that he liked sleeping under the stars but thought suddenly that she of all people would be able to find the intruder who had been eating the food. “Let me show you something” he said and silently led her to the cache in the tree. It hung there intact. He explained what had happened to her and she commented that they had better leave if he expected the visitor to return. She added that no doubt the visitor had been watching and that they had better pretend to leave the tent site altogether. “Besides, I think I know who it is” she volunteered.
They walked down to a little beach on the lake, about a quarter of a mile from the tent down a dirt road. It must be pretty late he thought-all the other camp fires were out and from the tents he could hear snoring. Forgotten was he reason for sneaking out of the tent. He wondered what to say to this girl who didn't talk more than absolutely neccesary. He suddenly wished vacation was a going to be a lot longer. She was pretty, he thought, as pretty as Vickie. He suddenly wondered about a great many things. “It’s a pretty lake here” she said. “Not as cold as up in the mountains. We can swim if you want.”
Somewhere between puberty and childhood. He was half out of his clothes when he remembered. This was a girl. With his friends or Vickie there were always bathing suits or the shorts that they wore all summer. What to do? Well it was warm out and he would be back to his tent soon. He left his jeans on and jumped into the lake. A moment later she was there also.
I found this chapter frustrating. There was too much about being in the mountains that I couldn't put into words. Sort of like Vickie who can't manage to say what she wants no matter how long she talks.
Vickie's character initially started off as a rehash of Mountain Girl. Together the two girls complete the person that is Andy. In the back of my mind is always the idea that they are just one person.
They were three quarters of the way to the lake with Andy’s excitement unabated when they saw her. A girl about his age, incredibly, alone, sitting on a rock next to the trail. She had a golden brown face and scrambly long hair pulled back into a careless pony tail. His father said hi and she looked at them, unsurprised but shy, and gave a scared little hello. She looked startled at the sound of her own voice and Andy thought her voice sounded like she hadn’t used it in a long time.
“Where are you going?” his mom asked solicitously after saying hello. There was a long moment of silence and then a faraway reply. “Up to the lake?” It was a question more than an answer. “Where are your parents?” was his mom’s next question. A look came over the girls face. Pride and determination along with something else, like defiance but something far deeper. “I’m going up there myself. I go up there a lot. It’s one of my favorite places.” Seeing his mothers alarmed face she added “We live here. It’s okay, my dad lets me go by myself now.”
Both parents looked at her and Andy looked again too. He saw a face that seemed far older than his own years and skin that looked as if the wind and sun were it’s constant companions. He saw clothes that were sewn together again and again and realized that although her face had been freshly washed it still had enough dirt on it to show that it would take a lot more than one attempt to clean it. He thought about how it must be awesome to live here but he wouldn’t want to be as poor as this girl obviously was. “Well why don’t you hike up there with us” his dad suggested and they started back up the trail.
His mom and dad were strong. They jogged several miles most days of the week and they loved hiking. And in spite of Andy’s lack of interest in sports, he and Stu were no slouches either, loving to run all day like most boys and veterans of more mountains than they could count. Andy liked to think that hiking was the one physical activity he was actually good at, but as he watched the girl scampering up the trail he began to feel like he did watching the other kids play ball at recess. A moment later there was a steep part that was obviously going to take a bit of thought, with mom above and dad below waiting anxiously to catch them if they fell. He watched with amazement as the girl flowed up the ascent without even pausing to consider things and thought that after all she did live here. A moment later she stopped to wait for them, a look of surprise on her face as she watched his parents coach them up. He felt a flush of embarrassment on his face and reminded himself that he did this a lot and it really was a hard trail even if this little mountain girl didn’t seem to think so.
They made it to the lake an hour later. She had disappeared ahead of them and when they got there he saw no sign of her. They put up the tents, one for his parents and a tiny one for him and his brother, and began gathering firewood. Suddenly, silently, she reappeared carrying a huge armful of wood, all very dry he noted. “There you are. Thank you” said his dad. “Are you going to stay here or are you going back down? It is getting late to head back down even for a fast little mountain girl like you” “I like to stay up here” she relied, again with that voice that sounded unused. “There’s a nice view at the end of the lake where I stay and the bugs don’t bother me much here” And she turned to go and suddenly melted into the woods.
Dinner time. Andy was beginning to suspect something that he couldn’t quite organize into a thought, let alone words. Somehow he knew she would return the moment they began to eat, and she did. She brought her own supper, two freshly caught fish. She eyed their fire for a moment and his dad asked her if she would like to cook her fish over the fire. Wordlessly she skewered the fish and then placed two forked sticks in the ground to support them. When they were done she began to eat them with her hands. After finishing the first fish she paused and asked if they would like any of the second one. There were plenty more in the lake she said. Andy said he was still hungry and she put some of the fish in his plate. She looked at him for a moment and gave a strange, knowing sort of smile as he ate.
They quieted the fire, which had only been big enough for cooking anyway, and went down to sit by the lake. They watched the sun go down and the stars come out as they talked idly while the girl seemed to listen attentively but mutely and then Andy’s father said it was about time to go to sleep. He asked the girl if she would be okay getting back to her spot and she looked surprised. “I’ll be okay” she replied. His father gave her a measuring look as if he too was deciding something and then replied “I’m sure you will.” Then he asked her name, something that somehow had not come up during the conversation despite several efforts that Andy and his brother had both noticed his parents making. There was a long moment of silence as if an incredibly embarrassing question had just been asked by an adult who should know better. Then she gave a little grin of relief and said “You guessed it before. Mountain Girl.”
“Well goodnight Mountain Girl” his father replied. Will we see you in the morning? Maybe you can have breakfast with us.” Andy recognized the tone in his dad’s voice; one he used when he was trying to persuade them to do something without being obvious. It always failed. Their dad wasn’t unreasonable and they usually did as he asked but they could always see through his efforts at subtlety. “Maybe” she replied and then she was gone.
Andy heard his mom and dad talking a long time in the tent that night. That was unusual; they normally went right to sleep. His tent was only about fifteen feet away but he couldn’t make out what they were saying which was also strange, his parents were not the whispering type. But tonight they were and they seemed to think it was important, whatever it was they were whispering about in the tent for so long. He figured it was about the girl. There was something about her that he still couldn’t wrap his mind around, something so simple that when he knew what it was it would be obvious, just like those math problems in school that were so hard and then when the teacher explained them any fool could see what the answer was.
Of course she was there for breakfast, with five fish, one for each person, as they were getting out of their sleeping bags. She had an ancient looking man’s wool shirt on which was so big that she had to almost wrap it around herself like a blanket, and seemed oblivious as they shivered in the early morning cold. Frost lay on the grass as they sat by the newly started fire and they watched their breath in the air.
They spent the day exploring the lake. She silently accompanied them for most of the day and then asked would they be spending the night. Yes his dad said and she smiled “I’ll see you at dinner. When the sun is just at that mountain top over there” And she disappeared again.
His father had gotten the fire going again. He looked at the mountain for the umpteenth time and it seemed that the sun had just reached the level of it’s peak. He added some more wood to the fire and realized that once more she had silently appeared, just as she had said she would and exactly at the time she had set. He looked at what she was holding in her hands and realized that this time it was not fish but something golden and furry. As he said hi to her his dad appeared with some more firewood. He too said hello and then commented in an unsurprised yet joking voice “of course you brought a marmot for dinner. Fish three times in a row………….why don’t you skin it over by the lake away from camp.” “I was going to. You don’t think I want to attract any varmints do you?” she responded in a tone that let him know she equated this sort of thing with not playing on the thruway, he thought, and then if she even knew what a thruway was.
It rained that night just after they crawled into their sleeping bags. They pulled the fly shut and then it was Stu who finally said something as they were falling asleep that night that finally gave him the leap to understand. Leave it to his little brother to see the obvious when no one else could. “Wolf girl is in her cave I guess” he commented. “What do you mean wolf girl?” asked Andy. At the same time the thought he had been struggling for came to him. She lived here, in the wilderness. “Wolf girl. She ran away and was raised by wolves” repeated his brother. “You’re crazy” replied Andy but he knew. The ease with which she appeared and disappeared, the wild food, her strength and agility. She was a wild child.
They arose at the beginnings of dawn with the smell of frost sharp in their nostrils as steam began to rise from the lake. He and Stu walked quietly a little way from the campground and then he said “she told us that she stays over at the other end of the lake by the rocks. Lets go see. Hurry before mom and dad get up” Leaving a note for just in case they worked around the lake on a faint trail till they came to the flat rocks she had pointed out. They poked around for a while and found nothing and then heard her voice behind them. “I was just going over to your tents. Your mom and dad are getting up.” Sure enough they saw their father emerge from behind some trees from his morning pee and go to their tent. He read the note and looked around. Andy yelled as loud as he could and their father looked around as Andy continued to yell. Finally he saw he three of them and gestured for them to return. “Before we go show us where you stay” demanded Andy. “Stu says that you sleep in a cave with wolves but I don’t believe that.” Wordlessly she lead them to an almost invisible path. A few yards away was a lean to which was unobtrusive to the point of being almost impossible to see. There was a small fire circle in front of it, a blanket laid over some pine boughs, and a pack that was mostly empty. “My father and I made this” she explained. “He lets me come here by myself now”
She considered them for a moment. “Are you going back down today?” “Yes” replied Stu and they saw her smile disappear. They went back to the lake and she picked up some more fish lying on the shore. Next to them was a stick with some fishing line and a little box with some hooks. “I don’t bring much food because it’s so easy to catch here” she said. “But I like your food. I’ll let you have some of my fish for it.” Then they started back.
At breakfast she broached the subject. “You haven’t seen my lake over beyond that mountain. It’s much nicer and no one ever goes there. It doesn’t take long to get there. Why don’t you stay there tonight and go back to the park tomorrow.” His mom objected. “We’re about out of food. We only have enough for the hike out today plus the emergency supply. I don’t really want to use that. You never know” “That’s okay” replied Mountain Girl. They had come to think of her by that name since there was no other one available. “I’ll feed you.” There was a hidden pleading in her voice and Andy thought that she must be lonely, wanting just one more day of their company for her silence. His dad looked at her for a long time. Then he agreed. “It’ll be nice to live off the land for a day. You’re sure that’s all it will take?” She nodded and then his dad said “Well let’s pack up the tents.”
It might have been a short walk for her. For them it was quite a haul. Eventually they got to the lake, identified ominously on their map as Lost Lake. They noted that the map did not show any kind of a trail to the lake although the route she led them on was not too hard to follow with her leading. The afternoon sun was still fairly high up in the sky and they were hungry. She led them to a simple lean to which was once more constructed in such a way as to be nearly invisible. Near it was a clearing with a nice view of the lake. “Puyour tents up there” she said as she shrugged off her pack. “The fish are really good here and there's some nice greens over there.”
She showed them a nice spot to camp and they set up their tents. Then Andy and Stu wandered down to the lake to where they could see her fishing. They knew better than to talk and sat in silence for a half hour or so at which point they had three reasonably good sized fish. She gutted them and tossed the entrails into the pond and they returned to where mom and dad had amassed some fire wood and were about to start the fire.
The rest of the day was a delight of exploration. Mountain Girl was clearly enjoying surprising them with the lakes secrets. They caught some more fish and then she led them a short distance from the lake. "I'll let you have some of the greens and onions growing here" she told them. They began to pick the greens the way she showed them, careful to leave enough for the leaves to grow back quickly. Then she stopped them. "I don't want you to take any more. I need to save some for another day." Andy thought this was a bit rude and weird. It wasn't as if she owned the mountains or something. But still it seemed to be important to this strange girl that they stop, and she had been the one who invited them to come with her here to this lake. Her lake, he remembered she called it. Maybe she lived near here. Who knew? The three of them went back to where his parents had made a fire. After they'd eaten they sat at the fire a long time with his parents attempting to hold a conversation. The girl was silent and eventually so was everyone else. Tired from their day, Andy and Stu feel sound asleep on the ground in the front of the fire.
They awoke in the morning in their tent, hungry. Andy thought that even though he liked fish that he would really rather eat something else for breakfast. He got his wish after an hour later of fruitless fishing- a little gorp and some more greens with this time some wild mushrooms which his mom and dad both examined very carefully before letting them eat any.
The walk back to the trail head was a long one and it seemed with Mountain Girl in the lead they were always hurrying. Halfway down the trail from Misty Moon Lake they came to a faint side trail which was not on their map “I go this way” she informed them. “Goodbye” And before they could say anything she was gone.
By time they got back to the base camp that evening Andy was too tired to do anything but eat and fall asleep as soon as they had the tent set up, thinking that his ideas of a special adventure had taken a stranger turn than he could possibly have reasonably hoped for. Mom and dad didn’t seem much more energetic but they carried on until the camp chores were done and they had answered at least some of Auntie and Emmy’s questions. The little fire they made to sit by died out as soon as it got dark and a short time later everyone else had fallen asleep as well.
A couple more days went by. On his return Andy had resumed his routine of hanging food in the tree wondering if the visitor would still be here. The first morning the food was still there and he considered not bothering but he was curious. The little trip to Lost Lake had taught him something about stealth, he thought, and he half hoped to figure out who it was that they had been feeding for a week. The second night he tried to stay awake and watch from his tent but there was no sign of any visitor till the morning when the scrawled thank you was once more there. It was on the third night that things got more interesting.
He had made a show of going to sleep and then at his sneaky best crawled out of the tent on his belly. Stu had whispered a question to him but he had just said to stay there. Now he was lying on a blanket he had hidden earlier. He was away from the fire but close enough to everyone that if he fell asleep he could convincingly tell his parents that he just wanted to sleep under the stars that night. And fall sleep he did. He awoke to a hand shaking him. The moon had moved only a little bit in the sky and dawn was still hours away. He looked up expecting to see his brother but it was the girl from the trip to the lakes. “Tired of your tent?” she giggled. He looked at her sleepily and confused for a minute thinking that they were in the campground, not the lake, wondering what she was doing here. He started to explain that he liked sleeping under the stars but thought suddenly that she of all people would be able to find the intruder who had been eating the food. “Let me show you something” he said and silently led her to the cache in the tree. It hung there intact. He explained what had happened to her and she commented that they had better leave if he expected the visitor to return. She added that no doubt the visitor had been watching and that they had better pretend to leave the tent site altogether. “Besides, I think I know who it is” she volunteered.
They walked down to a little beach on the lake, about a quarter of a mile from the tent down a dirt road. It must be pretty late he thought-all the other camp fires were out and from the tents he could hear snoring. Forgotten was he reason for sneaking out of the tent. He wondered what to say to this girl who didn't talk more than absolutely neccesary. He suddenly wished vacation was a going to be a lot longer. She was pretty, he thought, as pretty as Vickie. He suddenly wondered about a great many things. “It’s a pretty lake here” she said. “Not as cold as up in the mountains. We can swim if you want.”
Somewhere between puberty and childhood. He was half out of his clothes when he remembered. This was a girl. With his friends or Vickie there were always bathing suits or the shorts that they wore all summer. What to do? Well it was warm out and he would be back to his tent soon. He left his jeans on and jumped into the lake. A moment later she was there also.
everything under the sun is in tune
but the sun is eclipsed by the moon
but the sun is eclipsed by the moon
-
Robyn Katie
- Miss Platinum Goddess
- Posts: 380
- Joined: Thu Oct 02, 2008 5:02 pm
Hi Absaroka,
The traditional songs are very old, dating back in some cases a century, often more. They are indeed public domain—"Springfield Mountain" is a folk song, sung by hundreds of people around the country, and nobody's property.
Even these old blues run over 70 years old, and often can't be traced to a given original.
Good idea, though, to credit where I can. I'll work it in, so it'll be clearer.
Love, Robyn Katie
The traditional songs are very old, dating back in some cases a century, often more. They are indeed public domain—"Springfield Mountain" is a folk song, sung by hundreds of people around the country, and nobody's property.
Even these old blues run over 70 years old, and often can't be traced to a given original.
Good idea, though, to credit where I can. I'll work it in, so it'll be clearer.
Love, Robyn Katie
-
Robyn Katie
- Miss Platinum Goddess
- Posts: 380
- Joined: Thu Oct 02, 2008 5:02 pm
Oh, and about Alison. I can tell you her future, since the story is not going to follow her much further.
Surprisingly enough, given her absence of interest in sex, she will eventually, in her twenties, quite happily become a wife and mother.
Just a very late bloomer. And a good friend and roommate to Robyn, who certainly needed one!
Even if (as isn't clear) she did go along with the attempt to find out Robyn and Lainie, it was only because, driven by her deep disapproval of girl-girl sexual relationships, she seems to have felt it was really best for Robyn. Misguided yes, but well-meaning.
Love, Robyn Katie
Surprisingly enough, given her absence of interest in sex, she will eventually, in her twenties, quite happily become a wife and mother.
Just a very late bloomer. And a good friend and roommate to Robyn, who certainly needed one!
Even if (as isn't clear) she did go along with the attempt to find out Robyn and Lainie, it was only because, driven by her deep disapproval of girl-girl sexual relationships, she seems to have felt it was really best for Robyn. Misguided yes, but well-meaning.
Love, Robyn Katie