Our "Girl Autobiographies"

[Erin L]

Unfashionable?? Good Lord, no! And please don't forget the incomparable Robert Johnson, Lightning Hopkins, B.B. King, and the bold souls who kept one foot in the blues and another in that wonderfully decadent new music, rock'n'roll. I'm talkin' Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Bo Diddley.

And then there are the more recent practitioners of the art - John Mayall, Buddy Guy, Robert Cray, Robbie Robertson and, of course, Eric Clapton. Oh, and don't forget that marvelous pioneer who dares to play blues on the pedal steel - Robert Randolph.

Does all that make me a bad girl?

[Leeza]

Your mention of some of the old artists makes me wonder where I was. Oh yes, it was gospel only in my house. I didn't know what Rock n Roll was till 7th grade when some would play over the lunch hour at school and 8th grade when I would go to my best friends room (a PK - preachers kid) and listen to KOMA.

Country came while in service and Jazz later. Some place in there was a little classical.

Over the years I have done some playing (accordian and piano) in nursing homes and and dance bands and have come to realize that we tend to enjoy the music of our youth the most.

Enough from me this time.

Leeza

[Robyn Katie]

Hi Erin,

Unfashionable only in that nearly all of my biggest influences recorded and performed before 1940, not after. Makes me sort of a retro girl.

Love, Robyn Katie

[Absaroka]

Last fall I saw Koko Taylor, Shemika Copeland, Bob Margolin, and Pine Top Perkins. Pine Top is 93 now and Koko is 80. Still put on a good show. A few months earlier I saw Buddy Guy and he is utterly amazing. Of course he is a lot younger, only in his 70's, so he has a lot more energy. But if you can't sing the blues when you're old and tired and on your way out, what good are the blues anyway?

Thursday night, for those in the NYC area, on 89.5 WPKN is a show that varies between blues and doo wop. It's on from 6 or so till 10 I think. Maybe it starts later I'm not sure. They play lots of very obscure people, most of whom I've never heard of. It's great. You could probably stream it too.

Ike and Tina Turner had a pretty good blues band before they started playing rock and roll. Ike played on what some consider the first "official" rock and roll record, which was Rocket 88. Why that was the first rock and roll song as opposed to some other rhytym and blues recording escapes me, but people who decide these things are of that opinion.

Absaroka

[Erin L]

I strongly recommend the DVDs that are out on Clapton's Crossroads Festivals in 2005 and 2007. Lots of really good performances, and some jams that are fun to watch.

[Robyn Katie]

Hi sisters,

A new installment in the Adventures of Robyn ... she's just gotten to high school. A new epoch dawns! This is a long one, hope not too long. Hope it will take you "boarding school girls" back ... it sure did me. Enjoy!

Love, Robyn Katie

***

Bright and pink-cheeked, I run in at the dormitory door. I’ve been dashing all over campus, skirt and hair flying, legs sweating in these darn black knee socks, I can’t wait to get them off. Today is so much warmer than was forecast!

It’s the opening day of school. This morning Mom and Daddy abandoned me here with my suitcases in my new hat with a rose brim, red hair ribbon, chiffon sash at my waist. My eyes felt like they were stretching to fill my whole face, my heart was in my shoes, Gerrold School is so big, so bustling, I don’t know anybody, don’t know where anything is …

Well, I’ve been out trying to remedy that, bumping into people, asking which buildings are what, gadding down this or that path, staring my fill. My surroundings are so important to me; surroundings were my friends when I hadn’t any others, so now I make myself acquainted with the neat lawns, the shapes of the buildings, the nooks and crannies. With surroundings I’m bold. With people I’m much more cautious.

Now, indoors, I’m so hot from running! A big drop of perspiration rolls down between my breasts. Panting I dash up the stairs into the second-floor corridor of East Main, where my assigned room is. More decorously I walk toward my open door, making myself remember to keep my heart from sinking knowing I’m all alone here, at the mercy of my new school. I must not be coltish and little-girlish, ‘cause I’m different now.

I just met my roommate, Alison Simms. At first glance she is still very much a little girl, slim, darkhaired, “flat as a board” (as the boys would say) and quite tiny, probably about five feet to my five-four. But she is evidently very smart—the first words out of her mouth tell me that much.

“What subjects do you like best?” she asks.

“Um, I don’t know yet. I guess I’ll have to try them all and see—”

“I want to do languages,” choosing her words with nervous care. “Languages more than anything.”

Languages are Greek to me. “Like—Latin, or—?”

“Latin. French. Spanish. German most of all I think, it’s a very important language for international science, and science is extremely important to me! I wish they taught Russian,” sighing, “but I checked. They don’t.”

I stand there like a stump. German? Russian? Science is extremely important to her. What subject is important to me? Is there one? Not that I can think of.

I feel like a dummox.

Will I like Alison? I want to. She is quite strange, her eyes are severe like a grown person’s, yet her handclasp was friendly (cold hands, warm heart) and she seemed so glad to meet me. I think she is a bit of a loner like me. But friendship will take some doing. I’m such a solitary sort, I have no idea how to manage myself around other girls. Am I really willing to work on being friends with people? Time will tell, I guess.

“Gosh, there are so many students here!” I say.

“About four hundred in the school as a whole,” she says in her precise way. “One hundred and eighteen of us in the freshman class. You notice that means quite a few girls and boys drop out as they go on. Simple arithmetic. I plan to work hard.”

Okay, I like her. But her determination fills me with dread, because I know I haven’t got any determination of my own.

“Better unpack your steamer trunk—they’re waiting to cart it to the basement.”

The single closet is very small, but that’s fine ‘cause I haven’t got a lot of clothes. Especially compared to some on this hall! Sue Cadmon, she’s from the Main Line in Philadelphia, arrived like a storybook princess, bags, bundles, trunks, everything but a magic wand and a coach and four. She’s sort of stuck up I think. So glad Alison is a plain person!

First thing I take off this dress, Victorian style, all gauzy and chiffony. Carefully I lift it over my head.

“That’s pretty,” Alison said wistfully. “I’ve never had a dress like that.”

I look at her in surprise, as she doesn’t look the dressy type. “I saved up my allowance for it specially.” I don’t tell her it makes me feel like the heroine I know I could be, if anybody would give me half a chance. “But it’s strictly for arriving in!” hanging it in the closet and putting on a plain skirt and blouse. “I could easily have torn it dashing around those prickly hedges in front of Main!”

“Looking at the other girls in their smart clothes, I realize how out of style I am. Well, a girl can’t do everything!” She arranges her books in the little shelf over her miniature desk, all there’s room for. They’re about things like Chemistry. I begin to feel ashamed of my flossy arrival dress. I don’t want to seem to be dressier and put her out of countenance! I stick the dress in my narrow closet, resolved to wear the school clothes Mom bought me and sort of blend in.

Later, Alison gone off somewhere, I feel hot on this balmy autumn day, so off comes the blouse again, skirt too. Cooler in bra, slip and the stockings and garter belt I am struggling to get used to, I fling up the window for some air. Taking care not to show myself below the chin (who knows what hullabaloo would ensue if anyone saw my shoulder straps), I stare out at the main path between the two big classroom buildings, drinking in great gulps of fresh air. I could breathe it and breathe it.

To my surprise I see a boy staring back at me from an open window in the boys’ dorm. I would wave but I’m too bashful. He waves. I duck back out of sight.

Taking stock, I wonder if I look as different as I feel. I’m a freshman (what a silly word) at Gerrold School. My whole life has suffered a revolution and I’m not sure I’m ready. Everyone else seems so self-assured, I’m the only one that’s a nervous wreck.

“Where’s my sweater?” yells Julia in the corner room next door. I’ve barely met Julia Kirkus, a doll-like girl who is ultra certain about everything. She rooms with Pauline Bigelow, who is tall, heavy-lipped and sort of athletic-looking, I imagine she is very good at hockey and things like that. Pauline shares a double-decker bunk with Connie Glozel, while Julia has the single cot in the corner. I’m glad I’m not in a triple room; one roommate is enough to worry about!

Pauline and Julia are very strange and different from me, I don’t know what to think of them. Connie I haven’t seen yet. In comes Alison. Saying nothing, she sits on her bed and fiddles with her book bag. Silence reigns. I’m having a qualm. High school is so different, everything new, scary, unfamiliar, it pulls me out of myself, that’s a fearful feeling, like a clam that’s been pried open. I whisper to myself: “It’s awful, I don’t know anything.”

“Beg pardon?” Alison looks up inquiringly from whatever it is she’s doing: fixing the strap, I think.

“Nothing.”

I sit feeling desperate. I know I’d better think of something more to say, but I have my usual difficulty keeping up a conversation. Some girls can chatter like all getout about anything under the sun, scarves, hair, magazines, TV, tatting—what on earth is tatting? Try as I may, I can’t seem to “go thou and do likewise.” I have all the qualifications to be a wet blanket but I don’t want to!

The school must have figured we might feel like lost waifs on arrival, for they’ve assigned me a sophomore Big Sister, Roberta Friedman. Apparently she is to teach me the ropes, show me around, be there if I have questions or need help. But Roberta is a little off-putting, with her leering smile. She means well but it’s very hard for me to admit any weakness or failing to her. First thing she said on introducing herself was about the importance of good grooming. As if I was a horse!

Even a horse would choke, the way some of these girls carry on. Hair to be ratted. Nail polish to be top-coated. Finicky little points of etiquette, as in: If a boy’s grandmother insists on you talking to her when you’d much rather talk to him, what is the correct type of remark to put her at her ease beforehand? What made that suddenly so important?

Before coming here, I was a world unto myself. Will I still be able to be? I’m going to try, but I feel so scattered and pulled apart by all the girls, each one plucking at my nerve endings with her questions and remarks:

“Have you gotten the books for Social Studies yet?”

“Anyone got a button I can match to this?”

“Frankie Laine is so dreamy.”

“When I was in Coral Gables …”

My first night, in bed, lights out (promptly at nine, with a hall monitor to check on you), I search inside me. There, deep down, is my little world, more or less intact. But it's harder to find than before. Alison rustles in the other bed, is still. How strange to share a room! Some girls grow up sharing with sisters and never have their own room, but this is my first exposure to that sort of sharing. She’s such a curious little wench! Very shy and modest, turning her back to put on her cotton nightgown. By comparison I feel like a siren in my nylon nightie. She probably thinks I’m a worldly wise sophisticate and a candidate for the Home for Wayward Girls. She surely doesn’t realize how innocent-ignorant I feel.

Staggering: I am on my own, I will be boarding at school for the next four years! I can’t picture four years. I can’t even picture one year. I’m homesick already, but not as homesick as some of the girls who are already wandering around forlornly hugging their teddybears and lining up in the foyer downstairs to use the pay phone. I’m comparatively late getting in that line. Using ten whole cents of my very small hoard of money, I phone home, but the voices are pale and distant.

“Oh Mom, I really feel cut off here,” not quite able to cough up the telltale word lonely. I even miss my darn sister, whom I usually can’t stand. “Maybe it would be better if I was a day student?”

“No, honey, it’s too far I’m afraid. Here’s your father.”

Patience. Endurance. Long deep breaths. Try to control my butterflies and not let myself slip into feeling too terrible. I did bring my guitar and banjo, somehow squeezed them under the bed (they’d never fit in that hip-pocket closet). I saw Alison eyeing them. I think she’s terrified I might get them out and play them. Hope she won’t mind if I do, just occasionally, as I’m hooked on my music and have to have it! Tomorrow I’ll sound her out on her feelings about that. Tomorrow.

[Erin L]

Hi, girls. I finally got a chance to breathe and I wanted to post another segment. Like Robyn Katie, I'm at the point of starting high school. But unlike her, I am attending a parochial school not too far from where I live, and most of my closest friends will be with me. As noted in my last segment, Laura and Cookie have made it into the same school, and we will be joined by my best friend from the old neighborhood, Terri.

September, 1967 - December, 1967


Because we lived in Nassau County, Laura, Cookie and I had school bus service to Mary Louis. I was the last one to get on the bus in the morning, but fortunately there were enough seats, so I never had to stand. Tradition dictated that if there weren’t enough seats, freshmen stood.

The Mary Louis uniform was a burgundy plaid skirt, white blouse, and a burgundy blazer. We could also wear either stockings or knee socks, but almost all the girls wore stockings. There other rules about the uniform, too, and Cookie would become an expert in them.

We were getting off the bus that first day when one of the seniors said to Cookie, “You’d better not keep that skirt rolled, or you’ll get in trouble.”

“Thanks for the fashion tip,” Cookie replied, and the senior shrugged and walked away. Only then did I notice that Cookie had rolled the waist of her skirt, causing it to be much shorter. School regulations stated that our skirts could not be more than two inches above the knee. Cookie’s skirt that first day was about eight inches above the knee.

“Cookie,” Laura gasped. “You look like a slut.”

“Moi?” she asked, innocently. We laughed then, but sure enough, Cookie received a stern warning that day, and by Friday had landed in her first detention.

She came in the following Monday with her skirt at full length. In the days that followed, she began to roll her skirt, a little at a time. So, for a few days, it might be three inches above the knee, then four – still too subtle to attract any attention. Then it would go to five; by the time it got to six, she was usually back in detention.

One day, she wore fishnet stockings, and the seniors on the bus laughed. She got sent to the principal’s office during first period and they gave her knee socks to wear for the rest of the day, as well as detention. She didn’t wear fishnets to school again.

“I honestly can’t understand how you could think she’s such a great friend,” Terri said to me on the phone one night, talking about Cookie. “Everything is always about her. She always has to be the center of attention. I really can’t stand her.”

Cookie had rubbed Terri the wrong way almost from the beginning, and Diane wasn’t crazy about her, either. I tried to explain to them just how good a friend she could be, but they just couldn’t see it. The five of us had lunch together every day, and I could see that it was only a matter of time before Terri and Diane broke away.

There were actually a few other girls who joined us. And one afternoon during the third week of school, we were electrified by the news that the school would be holding its first dance of the year. The announcement had been made during homeroom, and had started all of us buzzing.

Because our homerooms were assigned to us in alphabetical order, only Diane and I were in the same homeroom together, plus one other girl who sat with us at lunch, Peggy Klassen. Peggy sat next to me, and as soon as we heard the announcement, I turned to her and said, “Now, we’re talking.”

She was very quiet and shy, but she was cute – very petite, with long, straight blonde hair, and large blue eyes. In the school uniform, she looked like she had no shape at all, and it was only when we were in gym class that we learned differently. When we sat together, she smiled at Cookie’s antics, as if she were watching an act that she found very enjoyable but that she would never apply to herself.

The night of the dance, Cookie’s mom drove the three of us to school, and Laura’s mom would drive us home. At lunch that day, Cookie had announced that she had asked her mother to drive us to the dance so that she wouldn’t have to explain to her why she didn’t want her to drive home in the event that she met a boy who drove. I tried to ignore Terri’s bristling at that.

Six of us showed up that night – Cookie, Laura, Terri, Diane, Peggy and me. I wore the shortest skirt mom would allow me to wear, and it was pretty short, along with stockings and a pair of mary janes that had a nice high heel. Cookie, of course, stole the show, once again giving the boys a glimpse of her stocking tops when she danced.

At first, we stayed in a group on the dance floor. But there weren’t any groups of six boys, and after a short while, we broke into pairs – Cookie danced with Laura, Diane danced with Terri, and I danced with Peggy. We all got asked a few times, although I turned boys down if Peggy didn’t have anyone to dance with.

At the first break, we got together outside the gym. Cookie casually asked Peggy to join her in the ladies room, and when they came out a few minutes later, Peggy looked like a different girl. Cookie had done a quick but effective makeup job, applying some eye makeup, giving her cheeks some color, and doing something with her lipstick.

Back we went as the band started to play again. This time, we spread out a little so we didn’t appear to be in a group, and we started to get more attention from the boys. Peggy and I were dancing together to a pretty good version of “Born on the Bayou”, when I noticed two boys checking us out.

They were clearly debating who was going to ask whom to dance, and since one was a couple of inches taller than the other, he apparently insisted on asking me to dance. I waited to see if his friend would ask Peggy, and he did. So when the taller boy asked me, I gladly said yes.
Oh, was he cute! He was about five foot nine, thin, with sandy hair and hazel eyes. His features were a little sharp, but I had decided I liked that. He was thin and kind of muscular, but not muscle-bound.

I had already noticed that some boys just stared at you as they danced, some tried not to make eye contact, and some just kind of looked around. This guy was making eye contact and smiling. I smiled back, and suddenly I really got into the music and the dancing.

“Born on the Bayou” is a long song, and a band can make it longer if it likes, and these guys did. My partner was showing some nice dance moves, and I tried to match him, imitating, to a certain extent, the moves I saw from Cookie, who was dancing up a storm to an appreciative older guy. It was as if we were flirting out there on the dance floor; I’d never known anything like it.

I was sorry when the song ended. Across the dance floor, I could see Cookie and her partner already in conversation. I tried to say, “Thank you” in a way that signaled I was interested, and I guess it worked, because he immediately said, “Dance the next one?” as the music started up again.

I had already said yes when I noticed that his friend had ditched Peggy. I was about to tell him I couldn’t leave my friend alone when out of nowhere Cookie appeared. She and Peggy started dancing again, so I turned back to my friend and smiled.

Halfway into the song, Cookie’s partner re-appeared, along with one of his friends, and suddenly Peggy had someone to dance with. They stayed together the rest of the evening.

“What’s your name?” my partner asked me as the song ended. When I told him, he said, “Wow, that’s a really pretty name!”
“Thank you,” I said, trying to be a little demure. “What’s yours?”

It’s not that I was trying to be coquettish or anything; it’s just that I had never asked a guy his name before, and I was a little uncomfortable. But he smiled and said, “Billy Taylor.” And as the band started a slow dance, he said, softly, “Dance this one?”

I had never slow-danced with someone I didn’t even know before. It felt strange being so close to someone I had just met. Cookie had told horror stories at lunch about guys who tried to grope you or hold you too closely while slow dancing, or worse, and I had been on my guard, but there was something about Billy that made me relax, something that I instinctively liked.

He held me close but didn’t squeeze me. He didn’t grope me. He made me feel comfortable in his arms.

I did check to see the other girls all had guys, and they did, and they were all checking on the rest of us. But mostly I reveled in being in Billy’s arms, catching just the faintest whiff of after-shave (the following Monday, Terri would have us in hysterics with her story of one guy she’d danced with who smelled like he’d doused himself in an entire bottle of Hai Karate – “the large economy size!” she added).

The song ended, and the band took another break. Billy and I went up to the cafeteria to get something to drink, and we actually found a place to sit down. He looked just as nice in the better light.

He was a sophomore at Molloy, our “brother” school. He seemed neither surprised nor disappointed to learn I was a freshman. He ran track.

I told him a little about myself, but did not mention that I played guitar. As I talked, he kept looking right into my eyes.

“What?” I asked at last, self consciously.

“You’re really pretty,” he said.

“Thank you,” was all I could say. Wow!

We returned to the darkened gym and danced a lot more. The fast ones were fun, the slow ones were better. Each slow dance – and the band seemed to play a lot of them – we seemed to get a little closer. The last one before their next break, we almost didn’t want to move apart, and this time I met his gaze and held it.

As we walked upstairs to the cafeteria, he took my hand. He bought us each a Coke and we found Cookie, Peggy, Laura, Terri and Diane, all with guys they had just met, sitting at one of the tables, so we joined them. The introductions were almost funny, and that night, on the ride home, Laura would tease me about the breathless way she claimed I had introduced “Billlllyyyyy.”

The last dance of the night – “The End”, by the Doors – was long and wonderful. Half way through it, I felt Billy hold me just a little tighter, so I held him just a little tighter. Then he held me tighter still, and I did the same. By the time the song ended, we were no longer dancing, we were hugging.

When it ended, all the lights in the gym came on, and he took my hand as we reluctantly made our way to the exit. As we got to the front door of the school, he said, “Erin, can I please have your phone number?”

I nodded, and then pulled a pen and notepad out of my bag. As I was writing it, he said, “I really would like to see you again.”

“I really want to see you again, too,” I replied, giving him the piece of paper.

We walked out into the warm night. It was a mass of people, but I could see Laura’s car, and Laura was waiting, waving to me. I turned back to Billy.

“Good night, Erin,” he said. And he kissed me, right there in front of everyone.

“Call me,” I said, and he assured me he would.

“Slut,” Laura said softly as I got to the car.

“Where’s Cookie?” I asked.

“Frank is a senior. He drove her home. His buddy, Sal, also a senior, offered to drive Peggy but her mother wouldn’t let her go.”

Laura’s mom was a little concerned about Cookie, and seemed a bit taken aback by my sudden public display of affection. Then again, so was I. But I was more taken aback by the fact that this gorgeous guy liked me. Me!

Terri called me the next morning. She wanted to know all the details about Billy. She also called me a slut, but she giggled as she said it.
“He’s going to call you,” she said. “Definitely. He’s a keeper.”

Then she added something.

“I owe you an apology – you were absolutely right about Cookie. She was all set to dance with him when she saw Peggy had been left alone, and then she told him, ‘You can dance with me all night and take me home if you want to, but first you have to get her a nice guy for the evening.’ Then she turned and marched right over to Peggy like it was the most fun thing in the world.

“You think we could get her to tone down the sluttiness just a little?”
I laughed at that.

Billy called me Monday night. It was a little difficult for me because Mom and Dad were fighting about his drinking again; he seemed to be getting worse. But things quieted down long enough for me to have a conversation with him, and for him to ask me out for the following Saturday night.

“I have to ask,” I said, hating the words as they came out. But he was great about it, only asking when would be the best time for him to call back. I told him the following night.

Later, when Dad fell asleep in his chair and Mom was in the kitchen, I asked her. I was actually quite nervous, because this was the first real, official “date” that I would be going on. But she just smiled and said, yes, as long as I was home by midnight.

The next night, I was in my room when I heard the phone ring. I had just jumped off the bed when Mom opened the door and said with a sly smile, “There’s a Billy on the phone.”

“Hi,” I said, breathlessly, as I got on.

“Hi. How’s everything going?”

“Um…okay.” I felt myself breaking into a big silly grin. “I can go.”

“Hey, that’s great.”

“The only thing is, I have to be home by midnight.”

It wasn’t a problem.

That Friday night, Dad was not home when Billy came by to pick me up, but I could tell right away that Mom liked him. And over the course of the evening, I realized how much I really liked him, too.

We chatted all the way to the movie theater. As we watched the film, he had his arm around me and I rested my head on his shoulder. I kept expecting him to start kissing me, and part of me wanted him to, but part of me wanted it to be more about the date.

The movie was Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner, and we both liked it. Afterward, he took me for coffee and ice cream, and we talked about the movie a lot. He thought that Sidney Poitier’s speech to his father was really powerful, and I had to agree, although I still loved Spencer Tracy's speech at the end the best.

We held hands as we walked up my block. I was chagrined to see Charlie sitting out on his steps, and was desperately afraid that he was going to yell out something tasteless, or, worse, crude. He didn’t, but as we climbed the steps in front of the house, I knew I didn’t want Billy kissing me there, although I desperately wanted him to kiss me.

I opened the front door to let us inside, and closed it. Now we had perfect privacy, and with only a smile of encouragement from me, he took me in his arms. Mine were tightly wrapped around his neck, and I slowly leaned back against the wall as we kissed.

I had pulled him toward me, and I felt his weight against me, his body pressing against my breasts. Like during the slow dance the week before, we clung tightly to one another, and the kiss went on and on. We broke it at last, and as we gazed into each other’s eyes.

We embraced again, and this kiss felt even deeper than the last. I thought I felt his mouth open a little, and so I opened mine. I held him ever tighter, and I couldn’t believe how passionate that kiss had quickly become.

The front door opened, and Dad walked in, carrying a six-pack of beer he’d bought at the Cow Shed, which was open until midnight on Friday and Saturday nights. We pulled away from each other, but much too late, and what was worse, we made kind of a slurping sound as we did so.
“What the hell…” Dad started to say.

“Dad,” I said with false heartiness to try to forestall the coming blast, “This is Billy Taylor. Billy, this is my dad.”

“Get out,” he said to Billy. Then, turning to me, he said, “You…upstairs now!”

Trying to maintain my sense of dignity, I turned to Billy and said, “Call me.” He nodded and quickly left.

Once upstairs in our apartment, he really laid into me.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing? Since when are you such a little whore?”

Mom came running, demanding to know what had happened.

“I am not a whore!” I yelled back.

“Well, then what would you call that little performance of yours just now?!” he demanded.

“For God’s sake, he was just kissing me goodnight!”

“Oh, come off it!” he bellowed. “What kind of guy kisses a girl like that on a first date?! And what kind of girl would let him?!”

“Like what?” Mom asked, still stunned at this turn of events.

“It was disgusting!” he said. “Mouths open, him pinning her against the wall, the two of them writhing…”

“But…” I tried to interrupt, but had no chance.

“And you hanging on to him like you were loving every minute of it! Right there where anyone could have seen you!”

“How did I know you were going to need a beer refill at this time of night?” I yelled at last. He raised his arm to hit me, and Mom yelled and jumped in between us.

“Oh, yes,” I said. “Go ahead, and make the night complete.”

I turned and stormed off to my room, too angry even to cry. I don’t know what time I finally fell asleep, but it had to be around four in the morning. My first real date, and it had been so wonderful and then so utterly ruined.
I had done some smooching with Jimmy and some real making out with Andy, but this had been different. This had been wonderful. Billy wasn’t just a sweetheart – for the first time in my life, it felt like I could have something much deeper and more meaningful than that.

I vowed, lying there in the moonlight, that I would not let my father’s foul temper and dirty mind ruin what Billy and I might have. Whatever else might happen, I would not let this fall apart because he had walked in on us. At that moment, I knew that Billy and I couldn’t be in love…yet.

But I knew that there were possibilities. No boy had ever been so attracted to me, and I had never been so attracted to any one boy. When we touched, it was like a spark passed between us, and when he kissed me, it was pure magic, and maybe that was the beginning of what could someday be love.

I drifted off to sleep only after realizing that I would have to be vigilant, and make sure that when Billy called, I answered the phone. I knew I had to make sure that I didn’t let my father have a chance to frighten him off. We’d have to meet for our dates elsewhere, of course, until such time as reason returned, but I figured Billy would understand.

When I awoke the next morning, I kept a low profile until I could get out of the house, and over the next few weeks, I said little; no mention of the blowup was made again. Whenever the phone rang, I made sure I got it before he could, and I was amazed at how easy it was. I never had to worry about a thing, after all, because Billy never called me.



Upon learning of my musical abilities, my homeroom teacher, Mrs. Sartori, urged me to join the school orchestra. Since I didn’t play an orchestral instrument, I doubted there would be much value to it, but then I thought that my drum corps experience might be useful in one of the brass instruments. So, I decided to drop in one day after school to check them out.

They were, in a word, awful. I had never heard such noise. Even in our early days, playing only G-bugles, the corps had sounded better than that.

The director was an older man named Mr. Kramer, and he really had his hands full. Half the girls didn’t seem to be paying much attention during rehearsal, and most thought their awful sound was funny. Terri was standing with me at the entrance to the music room, and after a few minutes, I glanced at her.

“Why do I think this isn’t going to work out?” she asked with a smirk. Her touch of mirth was exactly what I needed at that moment, and the scowl I had just launched was abandoned.

All of the girls had been supportive and understanding in the wake of what I now called the Billy Disaster, each in her own special way. Cookie was alternatively angry on my behalf and insistent that I “get back out there”. Laura was soft and soothing. Terri made me laugh.

It had always been her way to tease me, so I was used to it from her. She loved to find the humor in any situation, and while she could find none with Billy or my father, she found enough in other things, like the orchestra, to keep my spirits up.

I also found refuge in music – if not of the orchestral variety, then certainly in other things. I alternated between blues, of which I was growing increasingly fond, and Bob Dylan. It was Dylan that channeled the ongoing tensions with Dad.

He took it as axiomatic that a parent never apologized to a child, even if the parent was completely wrong. So, he started to approach me to talk about other things. If all went well, the entire incident would be swept under the carpet.

But he got off on the wrong foot, walking into my room one evening while I was listening to Dylan’s album “Blonde on Blonde”. I don’t know what he had come in to talk to me about, but he had barely opened his mouth when he stopped, stared at my little stereo, and asked, “What in God’s name is that?”

He asked with a smile, as if it were all a big joke. I chose not to take it that way.

“You mean ‘who’,” I replied. “That’s Bob Dylan.”

“He sounds like a Jew at the Wailing Wall.”

“Sorry,” I shrugged. “I just don’t like Perry Como.”

“Aw, no really, Erin. How can you listen to that whining?”

I looked up at him.

“I like the music, I like the lyrics – especially the lyrics,” I said. He listened. It was “I Want You”.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “They’re just words.”

“Images, Dad. Poetic images, and using words as sound, for their sound value.”

Whatever he’d come to say was forgotten, and he decided to leave it there. But he would afterwards always look for an opportunity to comment on modern songwriting in general and Dylan in particular.
A few nights later, he took it up at the dinner table.

“So,” he said, as if calling me to account, “let’s see if I have this right. Somebody sighs, somebody cries, somebody else plays a silver saxophone, and you think this is great music.”

“I didn’t ask you to like it,” I said calmly. “I just said that I like it.”
“But, Erin, you’re asking me to believe that this guy is some kind of great songwriter, and it’s all nonsense.”

“Well, I’ll admit that he’s never written anything as meaningful and riveting as ‘Nansedotes and dosiedotes’, but I think ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ is almost as good.”

Mom snorted down a laugh, and Dad shot her an angry glare. Then he turned back to me, and resumed that tone of calm patience, like he was trying to explain something to a petulant and rather dim child.

“The song you are referring to has real words,” he said. And then he recited, “Nans eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy; a kid’ll eat ivy, too, wouldn’t you?”

“So,” he added triumphantly, “How is that so bad compared to Dylan’s gibberish?”

“You’re right. ‘How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man’ can’t possibly compare. Hey, tomorrow night, can we trash some of Shakespeare’s sonnets?”

“Oh, so now Bob Dylan is on a par with Shakespeare?” he demanded. I decided I’d had enough, both of dinner and the conversation.

“Someone else will have to decide that, probably a couple of hundred years from now. All I can tell you is that Dylan speaks to me at least as clearly as Shakespeare, and on some days a little more so.”




In early November, I arrived home late one day from school, as a new friend – Gina Delmonico, who sat next to me in Math, English and Social Studies – had let me know that she played bass, and I had let her know I played guitar, and we had spent over an hour talking about our musical likes and dislikes. We had also talked about our limited band experiences. And we had decided to explore things further.

I had arrived home a little before five, and was surprised to find Mom already home. Usually, she didn’t get home until after 6:00. Dad was sitting in his usual chair, with his usual beer, but he was in a tattered robe, and he looked awful – his face was pale and gaunt, his eyes not quite focused, and then the last thing I noticed was the huge swath of bandage around his left index finger and a good part of his left hand.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Accident at work,” he said dully. “I put a drill through my finger.”

“Wait…what kind of drill? What do you mean?”

He meant a full, sixteenth-inch thick drillbit on an electric drill. He had been holding a contact in place, where it would be anchored and connect to foil on a window as part of an alarm system. He explained that their usual practice was to put the contact where they wanted it, use a pencil to mark it, put the contact down, then pick up the drill and drill the hole for the anchor that would hold the contact to the wall.

“I was running late and trying to make up for lost time,” he said. “So I decided to hold the contact in place with my left hand and drill directly through the hole with my right. Unfortunately, I must have hit a piece of concrete behind the wallboard, because the drill kicked back; and since I was putting my weight against it, it went forward again, but this time through my finger.”

Mom had left work early and Tony downstairs, who happened to be home, had taken her to the hospital to meet Dad. They had done some quick surgery on his finger, but he had hit a nerve and there would be permanent damage. Eventually, he would lose about 30% of the use of his left index finger.

I walked back to the kitchen, where Mom was making dinner.

“Dad just told me what happened,” I said. “God, that’s awful.”

“Mmmm,” Mom replied without looking up. She didn’t have to say anything else.

By Thanksgiving, though, his spirits were picking up. The healing process was going well, and he was expecting a sizable workman’s compensation settlement. And when it arrived in mid-December, he decided to make it a Christmas to remember for Mom, buying a nice color television set, as well as a compact washing machine that would fit in the kitchen.

The latter was more a present for me than Mom, because I was the one who took the laundry up to the laundromat every Saturday and did it. I was excited, too, about the color TV, and didn’t even mind when Dad decided to hide it in the spare room, rendering it off limits until Christmas Day. Between the sympathy I felt for him about the injury and the good feelings that the big gifts for Christmas brought, the chill that had existed in the wake of the Billy Disaster had pretty much faded.

On Christmas Eve, after we had gotten home from Dad’s brother’s house, while Mom was in the shower, he and I moved the new TV into the living room and the ugly, old metal box of a black and white TV into the spare room. Then he connected it to the antenna, and as Mom was coming out of the bathroom down the hall, he turned it to the most colorful thing he could find – “Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol”.

Mom walked in, saw the bright, colorful picture, and gasped in delight. It was the first time in a long time I had seen her and Dad so genuinely happy together. Looking back, I wish Dad had stopped there, even if it meant I had to keep going to the laundromat.

When Mom saw the washer, the joy disappeared. I didn’t understand why, because I didn’t know how much money he’d gotten, or that it was meant to replace lost wages, or that he’d bought both the TV and the washer “on time”, or that, at that moment, he had no job to go back to because he would never be able to install burglar alarms again. For that matter, I couldn’t even suspect what Mom suspected – that it would be she, not he, who made most of the remaining payments.

She did a good job of working herself back to a proper sense of jollity, and it carried over to the next day. My grandfather drove us out to Mom’s brother’s house, where I was reunited with my four cousins. This was different from other years, though, because in the trunk of Grandpa’s car, along with all the gifts for my cousins, was a suitcase for me and my acoustic guitar.

Aunt May had called Mom a few days before and had extended an invitation to me to stay over between Christmas and New Years. And my cousin, Maureen, now 13, was looking forward to having some support in her daily struggle against her three brothers. It had been Mo’s idea for me to bring my guitar; I had wanted to bring both, but Dad had pointed out that there wouldn’t be room for both in Grandpa’s car, so I had left the Fender at home.

When we first got there, of course there was the usual rush of seeing family after a long absence. And I was surprised to see Tom Barrett for the first time since the Graduation Dance. But an even bigger surprise was Maureen.

While everyone seemed to take note of the fact that she had begun to physically mature, what struck me the most was how melancholy she seemed. The veneer of cheerfulness was painfully and obviously thin. She seemed genuinely happy to see me, and I gave her a very enthusiastic hug.

There was the usual kidding and teasing from the boys, but most of it seemed targeted to other female cousins on Aunt May’s side of the family, especially Gaye, who was the same age as Maureen and, to her obvious embarrassment, was a late bloomer. I tried a couple of times to deflect some of the abuse away from Gaye, but I was more focused on Maureen, and since she and Gaye weren’t close, I found I had to choose between them.

When Maureen had asked me to bring my guitar, I hadn’t expected it to mean anything on Christmas Day, but Uncle Rob surprised me after dinner by asking me to play for everyone. At first I resisted, but two things convinced me to play – Grandma said she really wanted to hear me, and Maureen said if I played, she’d play.

“So?” her brother, Brian, cracked. “Who wants to hear you?”

We tuned up. I figured I’d play it safe with Christmas fare, so I began by finger picking “Greensleeves”, which Dad loved.

“I can’t follow that,” Mo said, and I laughed.

“Do you know ‘I Saw Three Ships’?” I asked her. She looked doubtful, so I told her the chords. Then I started to pick it and she joined in with the chords, playing rhythm to my lead. We played it through once, then she started to sing, and I joined in singing harmony.

“You have a really nice voice,” I told her, which pre-empted Brian from making a wisecrack. We played a few other carols and then started playing “The Twelve Days of Christmas”, going around the room for each number. Everyone joined in except Grandpa.

“Someone had to listen,” he said with a smile.

“Hey, Erin,” said my older cousin, Kyle, who was two years older. “You actually can play some leads. Maybe you should play in a band.”

“She has,” Mom said. Kyle seemed to file that away, and then Mo asked me to play something other than Christmas stuff. Dad kind of rolled his eyes, and Mo caught it.

“Don’t mind him,” I said with a laugh. “He’s afraid I’ll play something by Dylan.”

And then I started to play “Love Minus Zero”. I don’t know why; it wasn’t a conscious choice, it just kind of sprang out of me. I did have the presence of mind to change all the “she” references to “he”, so that I started, “My love, he speaks like silence, without ideals or violence…”
“That was lovely,” Grandma said. I could see Dad kind of grinding his teeth.

“Hey,” Mo said. “I do know ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’.”

We launched into it. As I expected, she only knew the verses that had been recorded by the Byrds, so when I sang the other one, I sang it alone. But we harmonized a bit, and it sounded nice. Then, wanting to play a little lead, I asked Mo if she knew “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry.”

She didn’t, so I gave her the chords. Then we played through the progression once, and then I started singing it. I only had to change one line – “Don’t my guy look fine when he’s comin’ after me”. Twice, I played leads through a progression instead of singing a verse, and Mo got into it as well.

We went on like that for a while and then quit. But Maureen was grinning, and I knew we’d be playing a lot in the next few days.

“So Erin,” Brian said as I put my guitar away. “Do you date, or are you still a loser like Mo?”

Aunt May landed on him for that, and everyone kind of winced. I glanced at Maureen, and she looked like she’d been punched in the stomach. After 13 years with brothers, she was certainly used to the give and take, but that one had been way out of line, and I think even Brian knew it.

She may have been the most Irish looking girl I had ever seen, certainly moreso than Mary back in Dublin. My hair may have had more red in it, but hers was thick and naturally curly, and she was just bristling with freckles. Add to that the general awkwardness of early puberty, and she was just miserable. There was something else to it, as well, but I didn’t know it, yet.

She hardly uttered a word after her brother’s crack, choosing instead to withdraw into a shell. After everyone left, she and I went upstairs to change. We both got into jeans and sweaters, and naturally she did a little comparing.

“Don’t, Maureen,” I said gently. “I’m a year older than you and I started younger than you did. “

She was staring at her hair in the mirror.

“To tell you the truth,” I added, “I wish I had your hair.”

“Oh, God!” she said in disgust. “That’s the last thing you’d want, or maybe second to last, what with the freckles.”

“No, I really love your hair. I love the curls. Mine is just a thick bush, like my mom’s, and I really wish it was more like yours. You also have a pretty face.”

“Liar,” she said simply. “But I appreciate the effort.”

I looked her in the eye.

“I’m not lying. I meant what I said.”

“Well, then you’re alone, because no one else agrees with you, except maybe my father.”

“And you mom,” I added, trying to help. Her face hardened a little.

“Oh, yeah. Her.”

Even at 14, I could hear the door slam shut. We sat quietly for several minutes.

“What should we do tomorrow?” I asked at last. She brightened a little.

“I thought we’d go over the shopping center. My friends will be there; they’ll like you.”

She began asking me about the guitar, about my playing. I suggested we go back downstairs and I could show her a few things, and she agreed. Aunt May was in the kitchen and the boys were in the family room, which was next to the kitchen in the rear of the house, watching TV; Uncle Rob was alone in the living room, with music playing softly on the stereo.

“Oh,” I said when I saw him sitting there.

“You girls want to come in and play?” he asked. “That’s fine with me.”
He immediately stood up and turned off the stereo.

“You play well,” he said to me.

“If you can stand the music,” I joked. But I was surprised when he said, with obvious sincerity, “I can always enjoy good music played well.”

Maureen knew the basics – she hadn’t just learned chords. She shared some ideas, and the only thing that didn’t fit well was our musical tastes. Hers was definitely more pop oriented than mine.

Brian walked in while we were playing and stopped in his tracks.

“Hi,” I said. “If you’re here to apologize to Maureen, I can leave and give you some privacy.”

He hesitated and then nodded, so I went out to the kitchen and asked Aunt May if I could help. She said no, I was a guest, and then Uncle Rob came over and gave my shoulder a squeeze.

“You’re a pretty smart cookie,” he said.

I heard footsteps on the stairs, and realized Brian had gone up to his room. Kyle followed me back into the living room and listened to us for a while.

“You have an electric?” he asked me, and I told him about the Fender. I also told him about my limited gigging experience, but he seemed impressed.

I slept in Maureen’s room, on a cot they had moved in there. We chatted a little before going to sleep, and she asked me about my periods and cycle. She also asked me about dating, and I told her about the Billy Disaster.

“My dad’s drinking has really become a problem,” I said at last. “I used to think that it was only a problem some of the time, but I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s always a problem; it’s always a weight, dragging me down, no matter how much he tries to make it not be.

“I guess that’s why I’ve gotten so much into music. It’s like a place I can go to hide, a place where he can’t get at me.”

She didn’t say anything. We lapsed into silence again.

“I hope music does the same thing for you,” I added after a while. “You need to have something that belongs to you and no one else.”

I thought I heard a sniffle. Then, after another silence, she said, “Thanks.” And I knew she was crying.

I got up and went to her, and I hugged her for a while. I thought she’d let it out, then, but she didn’t. I kissed her on the cheek; it was wet with tears. She hugged me, and was suddenly clinging to me like she was holding on for dear life.


The next day, we did go out to the shopping center, and we met a group of her friends, all 13 and 14 year olds, trying to be cool. They reminded me of the eighth graders I’d known at school, and I could sense their disdain for me as an outsider. But Maureen was one of them, one they seemed to look up to, and so there was some acceptance as well.

We got home around lunch time, and Aunt May stood at the sink with her arms folded and demanded of Maureen, “Where have you been?!” I thought this was strange, because we had told her that morning where we were going and when we’d be home.

“I told you,” she said, pointing at Maureen, “That regardless of anything else you might be doing, you still had to get the laundry done, because it’s your day to do it. Now, get started, and then you can have some lunch!”

“I’ll give you a hand,” I said to Mo, but Aunt May turned to me with a display of sweetness and said, “Oh, no, Erin. You’re our guest. Maureen doesn’t mind. You come have your lunch while she gets her chores done.”
Then she turned to Maureen and snarled, “Move!”

She turned away stoically and got started. The laundry room was between the family room and the garage. From where I would be sitting at the kitchen counter, I could see her working.

“Aunt May,” I said, “If you don’t mind, I’d really like to help Maureen. I can’t sit and eat lunch while she works.”

“You’re a very nice girl,” she said with a smile. “You do what you think is right.” Then she turned toward the laundry room and shouted, “Make sure you get that water temperature right!”

I got there in time to help her sort the clothes, white from colors. She still had the same neutral expression plastered in place. I expected her to be mumbling under her breath, but she wasn’t and she didn’t make any comments to me, either, other than to thank me.

When the first load was in the washer and going, we went back to the kitchen.

“Thank you, Erin,” Aunt May said, and walked out, the scent of heavy perfume wafting behind her.

With two loads of laundry to do, we really couldn’t go anywhere, so we spent the afternoon playing guitars and chatting in the family room. Aunt May was in and out, and I couldn’t figure out what she might be doing. But she did manage to get a nice dinner on the table, and naturally Maureen and I helped.

“You two coming tonight?” Kyle asked. He was talking about a basketball tournament at the high school. Maureen had talked about going, but she wanted to hang out with her friends.

“I think it would be nice,” Aunt May said. “Kyle, you boys make sure you watch out for your cousin.

She dropped the four of us off at the school, where Kyle and Brian went one way and Maureen and I went the other. I saw most of the girls I had met earlier in the day. The makeup was a lot heavier, and if they had been aloof with me that morning, the claws were out in force tonight.

“Hey, Maureen,” said one of the girls, Sara. “Is Brian here tonight?”

“Yeah.”

Alice, a tall girl with long dark hair, and the only one wearing a skirt, sneered at Sara behind her back.

We were in the hallway outside the gym, waiting to get in, when I saw Kyle and Brian coming toward us, with a group of friends.

“I got orders,” he said to me with a smile. Then, turning to Mo, he added, “He’ll watch himself.”

I could tell that the last thing Maureen wanted to do was sit with her brothers, but the crowd carried us all in together, and her friends were more than eager to join us.

When we sat down, Kyle was on my left, with Brian a little further down, and Maureen was on my right, with her other friends further down.
Kyle asked me if I knew anything about basketball, and the truth was, not much. So he explained it to me. By the middle of the first half of the first game, I had the basics down, and I was able to complain about ref calls along with everyone else.

“Hey,” Kyle said with a grin. “You’re really into this.”

“I guess.”

“You’re just full of surprises.”

I tried to balance talking basketball with Kyle with talking friends, boys and fashions with Maureen. Both seemed sympathetic to my plight.
At halftime, while Brian was talking with Alice, a friend of Kyle’s came up to us and asked, “So, Kev, is this your cousin?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Erin, this is Larry. Larry, this is my cousin, Erin.”
We exchanged pleasantries, and then I turned back to Maureen. All through the halftime, I found I was doing the same balancing act that I had while watching the game.

When we returned to our seats, Larry followed us. He tried to sit between Maureen and me, but I slid to my right at the last minute and he sat between Kyle and me. The balancing act continued, but I made sure it favored Maureen.

It was a two-night tournament, so I assumed that we’d all be going back together the next night. But Maureen and I awoke the next morning to find a very different atmosphere in the house. As soon as we came downstairs, Aunt May was making demands on her, some of them contradictory.

As Maureen and I were trying to keep up with her demands, I twice saw her refill a glass from a vodka bottle. The second time, Mo saw it, too.

“Oh, manure,” she whispered. “When she gets into the vodka, you know it’s going to be a bad one.”

It was the first time I had ever heard her talk about her mother’s drinking directly. One look at her face and I knew why.

By lunch time, Aunt May was complaining loudly of a migraine. Maureen was so nervous she dropped a glass, and when it shattered, Aunt May screamed at her, called her a whore, and threw a plate in her direction. It crashed against the kitchen counter.

We all froze – Maureen, Kyle and me. Aunt May froze, too.

“My head is killing me,” she said at last, as if nothing else had happened. “I’m going to lie down.”

After she’d gone, Maureen and I cleaned up the mess in the kitchen. Twice, I tried to say something, and twice she begged me not to. Finally, with no one else around, I stopped and hugged her.

“You’re my family, Mo. And I’m telling you, you cannot fight this alone. I don’t try, and you shouldn’t, either. We have to be together on this.”

“I’m not trying to do it alone,” she said. “But I can’t talk about it; I just can’t. But I am glad you’re here, and I want to make sure we stay close.”

As the afternoon, wore on, it became obvious that Aunt May was not going to revive in time to make dinner, so we decided to do it. There was a large package of chopped meat in the refrigerator, and Maureen remembered she’d something about meatloaf.

“Oh, good,” I said. “My mom and I have made meatloaf together a few times.”

We pulled the ingredients together, but Maureen was listless. I knew the conflict at lunchtime had taken a lot out of her. As I worked, I kept up a commentary on what I was doing, but keeping my voice down, so as not to wake Aunt May, since the master bedroom was on the first floor.

The boys came in around five and were surprised to see the two of us cooking, but Kyle, who had been there, made it like it was the most natural thing in the world for the benefit of young Greg, who mercifully had not been there.

“Anything we can do?” Kyle asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “You and Brian can set the table.”

I stopped and stared at them.

“You do know how to set a table, don’t you?” I asked.

“Yes!” Brian snapped, defensively, and Maureen laughed for the first time that day. When they’d finished, Kyle went into the bedroom to wake his mother. To my surprise, she emerged a few minutes later, disheveled and in a robe, but she did have dinner with us.

“I’m feeling a little better,” she said as if we’d asked. “Much better, really. Those migraines are brutal.”

“I know,” I said. “My dad gets them sometimes.”

Kyle and I locked glances, and in that moment we both knew what we shared.

“Who gets the credit for the meatloaf?” she asked.

“Erin,” Maureen said reflexively.

“Oh, thanks, Maureen,” I said warmly. “But you really shouldn’t be so modest. All I did was help. You put everything together so nicely, and it’s delicious.”

“Yeah,” Kyle said. “Great job, Mo.”

“Way to go,” Brian added.

“Thanks,” she said.

We cleaned up after dinner, and I was surprised when Aunt May was ready to drive us to the school for the tournament. Maureen announced that she didn’t feel up to going. But she insisted that I go, as did everyone else, so I did. I wasn’t surprised to find Larry waiting for me.

We chatted and it was pleasant enough. When the first game started, he began the same basketball lesson I’d had the night before from Kyle. Somehow, it was different in tone and feel, and I started talking to Kyle, who was sitting on my other side.

In the second game, I noticed that Larry was emphasizing his more important points by touching my arm, putting his hand on my shoulder, and finally resting it on my back. I kept shifting away from him, and finally, when I felt like I was about to move onto Kyle’s lap, I excused myself and went to the ladies room.

Alice was in there, drinking out of one of those little bottles they serve drinks with on airplanes.

“So,” she said. “Looks like you’ve got something going with Larry. I didn’t think you were that kind of girl.”

The venom was hard to miss. I apologized for barging in on anything, and offered her the chance to come back and join us. Her eyes lit up.

“You serious?” she asked.

“Sure. I only ask one favor – make sure you sit between him and me.”

We returned to our seats just as halftime was ending, so it worked perfectly. Kyle moved to his left to make a little more room, and we sat down with Alice next to Larry. I worried briefly that I might have placed a slightly tipsy and overly desperate 13 year old girl in the path of a predatory 16 year old boy, but it was needless worry – the look on Larry’s face told me that he was militantly uninterested in Alice.

“I like your style,” Kyle said with a smile.

After the game, I met a few more of Kyle’s friends. One of them, Jack, was a musician, and it became obvious that Kyle had told him about my playing. He wanted to know if I might be available to jam sometime before going back home; I told him that I didn’t have an electric guitar with me, but he said he could arrange for me to borrow one, so I agreed to see if we could work something out.

We moved out front to try to find Aunt May’s car, but it was a madhouse. A fight broke out between factions from the two schools in the final, and that added to the confusion. I lost sight of the guys for a moment, and when I turned I was face to face with Larry.

“Hi, Erin,” he said smoothly. “Looks like you lost your group. That’s okay, I’ll be glad to take you home.”

“I’m sure they’ll be right back,” I said. “Besides, it’s a long walk.”

“I have a car.”

“You have a license?”

“Sure,” he said, smiling conspiratorially. “I have a license.”

I looked again to find Kyle or Brian. I was starting to panic.

“Terrible thing to leave a pretty girl like you alone in a place like this,” he said. “It will be my honor to protect you.”

He slipped his arm around my waist and pulled me toward him. I couldn’t move away from him. He was starting to pull me along.

“Larry, I really want to wait here for Kyle,” I said.

“Sure,” he said, placating. “I’ll wait right here with you.”

His hand slipped from my waist down to my backside, and panic started to rise in my throat.

“Erin!” It was Kyle.

“Over here!” I called. The crowd began to disperse a little, and I had room to pull away from Larry. Kyle and Brian came right over while I was still disengaging from Larry.

“So,” Brian said. “What’s up, Larry? Taking good care of our cousin?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“’Cause you wouldn’t want to try anything with her, right?” Kyle asked. We left before Larry could answer. We didn’t talk much in the car going home; if I had said anything, it would have been a prayer, because Aunt May was having some trouble following the road.

My biggest concern when we got back to the house was Maureen, but she assured me that she’d enjoyed a very quiet evening.

“I just wasn’t in the mood to be with anyone else,” she said. I told her about my encounter with Larry, and the role her brothers had paid in extricating me. “Yeah, they’re not all bad,” she said with a chuckle. Then she turned serious, saying, “Kyle especially has been looking out for me, lately, and even Brian has joined in. But I’m really glad you’re here, because it’s great having a girl to talk to.”

We drifted off to sleep that night talking to each other. We decided that the next day, we’d get back into the music, which Maureen was really starting to enjoy.

“That’s what I did tonight,” she said. “You were right, it was something that was all mine.”

But the next morning, as we were having breakfast, Aunt May announced that she had called Mom and told her that I’d be home by noon. I’d thought the plan had been for me to stay until New Year’s Eve, and I figured that there’d been some misunderstanding.

I was sorry to be leaving Maureen and the others, and Maureen decided to come with us on the ride home. I was glad she did, because I got to show her my room and that made us feel a little closer. I wished that I could have found a way for her to stay a while and meet Laura and Cookie, but I knew that was impossible.

We agreed to keep in touch, mostly by letter but occasionally by phone. And when we hugged each other goodbye, Mom was surprised at how fervent it was. We didn’t want to let go.

After they’d gone, I started unpacking. I had enough laundry for a small load, so I decided to break in the new washer. Mom laughed and said she’d beaten me to it the night before.

Dad was sitting at the dining room table, hard at work with paper and pencils and special measuring devices. He looked sharp and focused, and I made sure I didn’t disturb him while I worked. It turned out he was designing a new stock room for the alarm company.

“I didn’t know you knew how to design things,” I said.

“I’ve learned a thing or two over the years,” he replied.

After I put the laundry on, I poured myself a soft drink and went back into my room. Mom followed me.

“So,” she said. “How was it?”

“I had a nice time, especially with Maureen. We got closer, and I’m glad of that. We all went to this basketball tournament, and Kyle was teaching me about the game.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“Yeah, it was. Last night, Aunt May didn’t feel well, so Maureen and I made dinner. I made your meatloaf recipe, and everyone liked it.”

“You made it?”

“Yeah, well, Maureen didn’t have any experience cooking, so I helped out.”

There was a short silence.

“Mom, why did Aunt May bring me home early?”

She looked surprised.

“She called me this morning and said that you were a lovely guest, but that she didn’t think you were having a very good time, and that you’d probably be happier if they brought you home.”

“No, Mom, I was having a good time, and I really wanted to stay. I wish someone had asked me, first.”

[Robyn Katie]

Hi sisters, thought for the day:

"You cannot hammer a girl into anything." -- John Ruskin

And here's our next installment, a longie, as Robyn tackles freshman year in high school. Be warned: masturbation is included, but in passing, not pruriently.

Happy Monday!

Love, Robyn Katie

***

I don’t care what anyone says, freshman year is hard. Algebra, Social Studies, English, French and so on. Teachers are very tough, nothing like grade school, and some of them are outright hateful and contemptuous of us. I don’t know where they get the right! But I am trying to behave myself and apply myself and do well in spite of them.

Probably my hardest class is algebra. Talk about foreign languages! (a+a) (b+b) – x, solve for x. Well, I am happy to let x stay the Unknown Quantity forever if it likes. There should be unknown things, they make life interesting. I wish algebra was interesting but it’s not. In English we construe sentences. In Social Studies we get innumerable quizzes about cave men and emperors. French class is unexpected fun, Pardonnez-moi, madame, puis j’avoir du lait? Merci buckets. Je suis une craie, no, I mean, j’ai une craie. See, my craie is feminine, why doesn’t English have feminine words? Imagine: Helloe, Ie ame Robyne, howe are youe?

Anne Thoras, a small pretty junior taking first year French who sits on my right, says I’m a young idiot. That’s how she greets me every day in French class, “Hello, young idiot.”

“Hello, ancient damozel.”

“Damn what?” We get along fine. Saundra Cline, who sits on my left, is effortless, she learns grammar, vocab, everything, never at a loss when called on, while sketching nonstop fashion illustrations in her notebook all class long.

“How do you do that?”

“I’m Wonder Woman, what else.”

My roommate Alison is not in my first-year French class, though. She is already in second-year French, and is taking German too. “Auf Wiedersehen,” she burbles when leaving for class, and “Willkomm!” when I came back in from hockey. I have had to make her stop, as it was a little too much like living with Adolf Hitler.

She snickered at that. “You’re funny.”

“Me funny? What about *you?*”

“I’m not!” That little edge of panic when you suggest she’s different.

With a ghoulish laugh I intone, “You are One of Those that Prowl By Night, Unseen by Human Eyes, Ghastly in Aspect—” I don’t know where I get this stuff, it flies out of my head. But I stop immediately when I see her reaction. “—Alison?”

“Oh … well.” She tries not to show it, but the least little thing offends her.. She doesn’t take teasing at all well, though she’s making an effort. “You were being facetious, I suppose, right?”

Serious as Miss Meagher the dean, “Yes, Alison.”

She tries a little smile. “I’m never sure.”

“Be sure.” Flinging myself on my knees before her, hockey uniform and all, I clown, “I am Your Majesty’s loyal subject.”

“Oh stop, now I know you’re kidding!”

She is such a nice roommate, I’m bad to tease her, but she is so susceptible! I’m launching a project to teach her not to worry. Heavens, I thought I was a worrywart! She makes me seem as calm and sure as Joan of Arc.

“What is it like to be popular with boys?” she asks.

“Gracious, how would I know?”

“Well, you are, aren’t you?”

I snicker. “Hardly.”

“I thought you must be, you’re so free and easy—”

“Come on, I am not easy.”

“—Easy-going, I meant. You seem so comfortable with people.”

Eyebrow cocked at her, “You seriously think I am comfortable with people? Alison, let me tell you, I die a thousand deaths every time I have to look somebody in the eye. Yes I do. I feel like a squirmy worm trying to crawl under the carpet whenever anybody says boo.”

“I thought that was just with girls though. I figured you haven’t a lot of time for girls because you probably have, oh, you know, reams of boyfriends and so on.”

I try to digest this. Okay, she has noticed that I’m ill at ease with girls, even with her. But not having seen me with boys, she thinks I’m not equally ill at ease with them. How naïve of her. Shaking my head sadly, “No boyfriends. Not one.”

“But you have had.”

I think back. Well, there was Katie. Oops, she asked about *boy*friends. “I honestly don’t think so.”

“Well, now I am surprised.”

Oh good, I’ve surprised my roommate. She thought I was this romantic heroine and now she knows I am a complete wallflower. Oh fine. Gee, I’ve really done myself a lot of good in this five minutes of my life.

“I personally have never been kissed by a boy," Alison declared, "and I don’t suppose I will be any time soon. I know that much about myself. Not that I’m pining! Really I prefer it that way. You, on the other hand, I would think …?”

“Um, well. In a way. But really no. At least that’s how it seems to me.” (My Art of Answering Without Answering.)

“You don’t know whether you’ve kissed a boy or not?”

“It’s complicated.” Frantically I search for thoughts, find none. “If anything I’m way too shy. I suppose I’m waiting to be asked. Oh, who knows. It’s such a tedious subject, don’t you think?”

She smiles that impish smile. “Distracting, it’s true. From the main business of life.”

“Which is?”

Suddenly serious, “Knowledge, I would say. I can’t think of anything higher or more noble.”

“Wow.”

“It sort of dwarfs boys and kisses and so on.”

Uneasily I laugh. “You think so? Well, as to boys—or, really, girls, because—” Brightly, “Girls is what we are, after all.”

“By an accident of genetics, yes. Not as important a distinction, really, as some people would …” Alison halts herself. “Listen to me lecture, would you! You’ll think I’m terribly dull!”

Headshake. “Not dull at all.”

I have this sudden impulse to let her know just how complicated my feelings are. But she’s so undeveloped, it’s possible she hasn’t felt real sexual feelings and wouldn’t understand. She’s such a nun!

Cautiously I say, “I’m not popular with the boys like some girls.” A breath. “Actually it’s not boys that I—although,” backtracking hastily, too terrified of the bald fact to speak of it any further, “I do admire boys, I played a lot with boys growing up, and who knows, one might ask me out,” sitting on my hands to keep them from smacking me on my mouth. “I suppose it’s just the way things are, but I’m kind of alone most of the time.”

“You are? Have you any particular friend?”

“You.” Then I realize what I said. Do I wish I could take it back? Not sure.

That startles her. It seems to outrage her sense of truth, or something. “Me? But I’m not your friend—oh,” eyes horrified, “I didn’t mean that like it sounded!”

The little minx, I knew what she meant. I’d like to do something to show her I’m not offended, in fact I think she’s sweet. Any other girl would get up, go over, give her a kiss. But me, I’m self-conscious about things like that, ‘cause I know when I do it, it’s not meaningless. So I turn away instead.

“I haven’t any particular friend, as it happens," I blurt. "Though I wish I had.”

“Is it because you’re mad to love someone, and won’t take anything less?” Then, seeing whatever is showing in my eyes, she amends, “Oh, never mind, I know so little about all that—it obviously shows. Really I’m not this forward and pushy, Robyn, I mean it, as I hope you know. And I do like you, so there!”

“I like you too, Alison.”

“Want to do our English memorization together?”



A lot of the time I simply don’t think about my feelings, but if I did, I suppose I would come up against more of my own fledgling eroticism than I’d be comfortable with. I am most desperately wanty. It comes out at night. After I’m pretty sure Alison is asleep, which I judge by her soft regular breathing, I take the liberty of touching myself. I try to be very quiet about it, I would be mortified if she ever so much as suspected. The drawback to all this is I’m losing sleep.

Sometimes I go and take a shower in the middle of the night. I sit on the little stool they have and turn all four showers on, angling them so they all hit me. It’s like Niagara. There I am naked, hair running down like the horror woman in one of Chas Addams’ cartoons, acres of hot water splashing on me, and then, knowing I’m truly by myself, I can let myself go a little more, move around, make noises when I rub myself.

I ought to be ashamed of myself, sometimes I even am. In fact I think I must live with more shame and guilt than any three other people. Much of the time I spend in a sort of deep dread inside, dread of what I don’t know, nothing in particular and everything in general. I dread class tomorrow, I dread saying hello to Pauline or Helen, Betty or Kathleen or Zelia or Carol or any of the others on the hall, I dread all of it. Yet when it comes time to do it, I seem to manage it without any problem. It was all just jitters beforehand.

Then why can’t I stop the jitters? Why can’t I talk myself out of them? They seem out of my control entirely.

“Robyn? Are you sad?”

“Unh-unh.”

But Alison seems determined to be concerned whether I want her to or not. “You seem down about something. You’re not depressed, are you?”

Depressed? “Good heavens no.” I never even heard the word till I got here. I’m not even sure what it means exactly. But even so, what girl in her right mind would admit to being depressed? That’s the direct route to the looney bin.

What worries me is, what if I’m not in my right mind?

Is something wrong with me?

That’s what I fear. I fear going mad like that girl Polly Pendleton in fourth grade who came waddling out in the hall with all her clothes around her ankles making goonish sounds, she had to be taken away and none of us ever saw her again or heard what happened to her.

Is masturbating—there, I’ve said the word—aggravating this? Or soothing it? It does excite me, but it comforts me too. Afterward I feel guiltier but calmer, my brain settles down, I can think straight. It seems to help overcome the times when I can’t, when I feel most awfully blue and stuff overwhelms me, when I bow under a mountain of it and would cry, but around here you can’t cry without attracting too much attention, not to mention questions you can’t answer.

“Robyn? What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know, I just—”

“But you’re crying.”

“I’ll stop.”

“But something must be wrong if you’re crying.”

“Maybe, I don’t know. I mean, no, there isn’t.”

“Oh yes there is, otherwise you wouldn’t cry. Well? What is it?”

“I don’t know. I mean, nothing.”

“You homesick?”

“Nn-nn.”

“Something hurt?”

Yes, but. “No. Nothing’s wrong, honest.”

“Well, if nothing’s wrong, how come you’re crying?”

That’s how it goes if I let that happen.

Could I be losing my mind? Going crazy? In short, a nut? I think of that book The Snake Pit. That’s where the nuts wind up. That really scared me. Horror, they lock you away and that’s the end of you. So I dare not let anybody suspect I have moments like these—after all they’re just moments.

So I’ll just play with myself a little while—the clock only says 11:14—then I’ll go to sleep. I really am tired …

But it's true I have gotten in the habit of doing this too much. Sunday afternoon nobody was around, so I lay on my bed doing it. What was my surprise when without even knocking the door opened and in walked that pert doll Julia Kirkus, all eyes, and right on her heels looking over short Julia’s topknot, tall Pauline Bigelow. Good thing I was fully dressed at least! But they saw. Everything. I snatched my skirt down, hands away, but of course it was too late.

You should have seen Julia sneer. “She plays with herself! I always suspected she did. She’s just the type. What a little pig.”

Surprisingly Pauline stuck up for me. “Let her alone. It’s her own business, let her do it if she wants.”

I’m not used to being defended. Nor has this big, rangy girl ever been sympathetic with me about anything till now. How should I react? Can I react? It was sweet of her, but how can I say that?

I hang my head, say nothing. They go, no doubt to spread tales all over East Main.

The one thing you’re supposed to do if you’re “troubled,” as they call it, is go to the nurse, or the dean, or worse yet, the Counselor. That’s Mrs. Schine, she has an office in the main corridor downstairs. You make an appointment and go and see her and tell her all your problems—

If you haven’t the sense you were born with, that is. The one student that went that route this semester, Tricia Wilcox, wishes she never had. She went and had a heart-to-heart, and the school said she was going through a phase and she’d better get over it, so now she’s home on indefinite probation and she’ll be lucky if she ever gets back.

But this big cut on my shin, that’s almost reassuring, that’s real at least, it looks terrible under my stocking (so, knee socks today), but it pins me to the outside world so my mind doesn’t crawl up the sky and pull the cold dark trees in over me.

For the cut I can thank Girls’ J.V. hockey, the only squad I was able to make. I’m not good enough for varsity, probably never will be, but I’m good enough to clack sticks with the other inepts, bang the ball, run around, and get a wicked wound below my left knee. Later we even have a game schedule against Penton and some of the other local schools. For the moment I feel real, anchored to the pain in my shin. It helps me concentrate in algebra. I ask Alison about algebra.

“Child’s play,” says she. “Isn’t it fun?”

Well anyway. These chill afternoons it’s getting dark earlier, the gloom can get on my nerves. Playing hockey helps. Bashing around in the keen grey air, blood pulsing, shouting, steering the ball with determined pushes of the stick blade, then whack! Through their legs. Feels nice when they pound you on the back ‘cause we won. Then the bright lights in the girls’ locker room afterward, the shouts, the comradery, I kid around, I don’t think about myself so much. Not to mention all the different bodies to compare and wonder at, tall, short, fat, thin, graceful, awkward, swarthy, fair, in all stages of development. I peek without letting on. There’s one girl, Laurie, an upperclassman, I almost don’t dare look at, she’s so lovely and appeals to me so.

One girl isn’t here any longer because she’s been excused from freshman sports. Adelaide Funk is Mennonite, she was in tears her first day in the locker room, refusing to take off her dress, for they think any nudity at all is a sin. At first the girls teased her, but then they drew back in a curious kind of respect. I like bareness myself, mine and other people’s (if it doesn’t get too dangerous, that is), but I don’t blame her in the least, and I don’t think she should have to if her beliefs are different. Too bad though, ‘cause though she’d never done it before, she had a natural bent for playing hockey.

The usual problem: what to do with my hair. A long pony tail serves, but it’s to the middle of my back and the boys pull it in study hall. Alison and I have a conference about it, which Julia walks into the middle of. Julia (as usual) is very decided and uncomplimentary, she suggests I cut it as short as hers! Alison stands by with the scissors as Pauline happens by.

“Oh no, you’re not dragging me into the middle of what to do with Robyn’s hair.”

I waffle. “It’s tempting to cut it, except I hate to lose it.”

“You’d look great in a shingle,” says Julia.

“Tell me, anybody, and I’ll cut it,” Alison insists.

“No!” I protest. “Don’t cut it till I say.”

“Well, what do you want me to do.”

“Oh, take a couple of inches off. But not too much!” I surprise myself by how tenacious I am of my long hair, though it’s a bother and a frustration, you’d think I’d be glad to lop it off to the roots, but somehow I'm reluctant to lose even a tiny bit ... well, maybe a tiny bit …

"All right," I whisper. "Just a tiny bit. Be careful!" And feel my precious locks fall soundlessly all around me.

[Robyn Katie]

Hi sisters!

In this installment Robyn gets the surprise of her life -- a boyfriend -- and has to figure out a lot of things very quickly!

Lengthy but entertaining I hope. Have fun ...

Love, Robyn Katie

***

I should correct myself. It’s not “the boys” who pull my hair in study hall, it’s “the boy.” His name is Karl somebody, he is assigned the seat behind mine. I keep meaning to look at the seating chart to find out what his last name is. He is a big nuisance! He won’t let my hair alone.

Correction number two: today he let my hair alone. That’s ‘cause he was too busy pulling my bra strap instead, and making it snap against my back. Right through the back of my sweater! Can you imagine?

I was furious. What right had he—? On the other hand, I had a hard time not laughing. I told myself solemnly, I mustn’t let myself laugh, if I laugh I’ll never be able to scold him properly! But this darn giggle kept rising in me like bread, and then it leaked out. I didn’t dare move a muscle. My goose was cooked.

Karl whispered “Turn around!”

“I can’t!” I said in a muffled voice. “The teacher’ll kill me!”

“Turn around, come on.”

So, dumb me, I turned around. I had imagined he had a great big grin on his face the way boys do when they tease you, but not Karl. His eyes were wide and he looked so serious, I thought, What have I done? Then our eyes met and stuff happened, I can’t quite decide what.

The upshot was, when the bell finally rang for the end of study hall, I let him carry my books and we walked to the next class talking so much! I never talked so much to anybody. Yet when I tried to remember what on earth I’d been saying, all I could recall were bits and pieces that sounded so childish I wondered at myself. But when we had to part to go to our different classes (we don’t have one class in common, not one), I could scarcely stand it.

Is this bad? Am I in for it? All the girls talk about being in love with this boy and that, the warning signs are when you make sheep’s eyes and it’s like a tunnel between the two of you, you don’t even hear or see anything or anyone else. I hate to say this, but that’s a lot like how it felt between him and me. Only if anything the talk conveyed only a fraction, it hadn’t prepared me at all for feeling like this.

All day long I felt like I’d been torn in half. The day after that, worse. I’d see him and I’d start to run in his direction like he was a big magnet but before I’d taken half a step I’d caution myself and stop dead in my tracks. I’d turn aside, pretend I hadn’t seen him, afraid if I made it too obvious he’d think I was cheap, throwing myself at his head, etc. when of course that is exactly what I’m moaning to do …

There he is! On the same walk as me! Coming in this direction! We can’t help meeting, it’s not my fault, I couldn’t help it—

“Hi Robyn.”

“Hi Karl.” I put everything I know into speaking that name, adoration, accusation, everything else A to Z.

“Hey, don’t go so fast, I want to ask you something.”

“Um, I have to get to class—”

He looks as desperate as I feel. We’re saying words that are so worn out they no longer mean anything, when this situation is so brand new it deserves entirely new words that have never been used before. At the same time, though, I want to get away from him, because the way I am when I’m around him scares me, it goes against all my better judgment, I wasn’t going to get involved with boys, I told myself I wouldn’t, and now look at me—

“What say?” I babble. He just said something to me but I don’t know what it was, my brain was whirling too fast.

“The dance, I said. Saturday night.”

I’m so gaga I have no idea what he is referring to. “What about it?”

“Will you go with me?”

“You mean you—you’re asking me to the dance? You mean a date?” He means a date, he says, says he. I am stunned. Worried. He just asked me to the dance. What am I supposed to do now. I don’t even know this boy. I need advice. There’s no one around to ask. He’s waiting. I’m too young for this! Say no, Robyn, say no.

“Um, okay.”



Can this be me? I’m sitting at my itsy bitsy desk with a mirror propped against my textbooks doing guess what, getting ready for my date. Tonight I used East Main’s one tub instead of showering. Bathe. Dress. Makeup. Everything. Perfume? Perfume.

“Do my eyes look right?” I ask like a drowning girl.

Alison, who has given up on me by this time, is supercilious. “Do you seriously think I would know?”

“Well, who can I ask?”

“What about Sue?”

“Not her—she’s way too hoity toity for me.”

Alison stands a moment with a commiserating look. It is obvious she feels I have gone off my rocker. “Wait here, I’ll go find someone.”

In four minutes and seventeen seconds by my wrist watch she comes back with Diane Morris in tow. I barely know Diane, but I guess she’s a good choice, she is always faultlessly made up.

“So,” Alison says, “here is the mooncalf. What do you think?”

Diane bends, frowning. “Mind if I—?”

In a heady swirl she has me redone different and, she says, “Much better. There. You’re ready. You look like a million dollars.”

“I’ll settle for a hundred thousand.”

“Don’t forget your purse.”

“Oh! Right. Thank you!” I’m so discombobulated I give her an actual kiss of gratitude without a second thought. “’Bye.”



The dances are held in the girls’ gym. Till last year it was the girls’ and boys’ gym, but now they’ve built that giant steel and concrete monstrosity down the slope in front of the hockey and football fields and the baseball diamond, and that is now the boys’ gym. So this hunched, sweat-soaked old brown building hunkered down among trees that are drenched tonight by a chilly rain is strictly for us girls, since we don’t rate like boys do when it comes to sports. But they still hold the dances here. Every Saturday night they do.

Is my gown straight? It’s strapless, is it coming down? I do seem to be showing quite a lot, but maybe that’s only as seen from up here. I don’t care what the school thinks, but I don’t want him to think I am a floozy or be ashamed of me.

Squaring my shoulders, touching my hair to make sure it’s still properly fastened, but not worrying about my looks—thank goodness for Diane—I walk in, put my fall coat and umbrella someplace I’m sure I won’t remember, and stare around beaming, a little spray of baby’s breath on the net at my wrist like Jill Endicott taught me. The lights are darkened, the decorations make it darker, the big basketball floor is murky. I recognize a girl or two, a boy or three, but where’s Karl? I don’t see him anywhere!

Funny though, I hear him talking.

“Robyn?”

There’s a hollow uncertainty in his voice like he doesn’t believe his eyes. How sweet. But where is he? Oh. He looms from behind my shoulder. I see, that’s where he was. I should’ve turned. Sound is confusing in here. It’s very loud with the music.

“Hi …” Feeling flatfooted on my three-inch heels, I wait, heart crushed by the weight of all this. He has my hand. He didn’t bring me a corsage, but that’s all right, it wasn’t expected, they said not to, not for the regular Saturday night dances. He is loud and nervous, so much so that it gives me courage. We’re dancing. We are proper at first, I insist on this and keep him at bay best I can. But he doesn’t put up with arms’ length for long, and I’m not all that reluctant either. From then on we cling to each other.

It’s horrible when the music stops. What to say, what to do? I look anywhere but at him. I’m so relieved when the music starts and I can put my head on his shoulder, push my body against his, and just be moved, endlessly moved to the music.



I was in the habit of walking to class with other girls. Not any longer. I walk with him. We sneak and hold hands though it’s frowned on. Quite a lot is frowned on here. Social propriety is maintained by the iron-faced Miss Mary Meagher, who looks like she never got nearer a boy than the adjoining desk in her entire life. But I don’t pity her, she makes life too miserable for us when all we want is to be together and drape ourselves over each other.

Gee, I can’t believe I was such an ignoramus a week ago. Now bathing and primping for the Saturday night dances is second nature. I count the days, I get all swollen with anticipation, I swoon, I sweep myself off my feet, I deposit myself in Karl’s vicinity and then everything is all right—well, almost everything. I do have to make him keep his hands to himself. Continually. He really seems not to know the meaning of No.

Promptly twenty-six days after the first period of my life comes the second period of my life. Copious is the word I think they use. I am a ache-wracked, messy wreck. Nuisance!

It would be nice to have sympathy. Alison wants to be helpful, but as she is such a late bloomer herself, and hasn’t had any of this yet, what I get from her is apprehension, incredulity, and a certain wish to edge around my whole darn vicinity till the worst is over. None of the girls down the hall do I feel close enough to. So I cope alone.

Fortunately there’s stuff to do. Gucky and gloppy as I am, I get tricked into helping organize the harvest dance. This was none of my intending. My whole plan was to avoid getting rung in on makework, but this time I got trapped by that persuasive bloodhound, Mary Tennace from Main West. So, lo and behold, here I am stuck on a committee with four other girls: Vicky, Jeanette, Zelia from my hall and Frances, and they’re all as unreasonable as I am.

Just as we get ready to battle each other to the final teeth, the truth dawns. It’s Thursday. There’s next to no time. There’s no budget for this, there never is going to be one. We have to manage with what we can scrounge, and Saturday will soon be upon us, so we better scrounge quick!

Nothing to do but laugh and buckle down. We make mind-addling arrangements, cut and hang a million decorations. We break our backs for no thanks at all. We chatter like magpies in a sequin basket, I don’t even have my usual trouble thinking what to say. In the process, funny thing, we all get to like each other enormously, Zelia, Jeanette, Vicky, Frances and I. So much so that I get volunteered to do it the rest of the semester. Am I a fool?

All the girls are knitting socks for their boyfriends. I learn to knit too. I make a shamelessly shapeless pair for Karl, with clocks on the sides (these are supposed to be examples of peerless skill I guess). Every minute in class I’m writing my married name in my black pebble-cover three-ring notebook: Robyn Beck, Robyn K. Beck, Robyn Katherine Beck, Robyn Katie Beck in different letter shapes and styles till all the space is covered and sumptuously filled in with hearts and posies and exclamation points!



Kissing. Kissing kissing kissing. Kissing Karl for hours, tummy flipping, astonished with the infinite geography of each other’s lips, each other’s bodies held suffocation tight.

So things progress. We dance, we snuggle, we kiss in corners. One day we’re in the back stairwell of Main building kissing avidly as if to devour each other. Without warning there is a clatter of shoes and talk from below. We barely manage to hide in the corner behind the open hall door as up comes the girls’ lacrosse team on the way to the dorm upstairs.

Yikes! Motionless, we endure. We know if they look they can easily see our outlines through the door’s pebbled glass. Mercifully they never even notice. Not chastened even a little bit, we go back to kissing …

Karl. I’m awful with him. He must bring out the hoyden in me, the way I act. If I watch what I’m doing (too hard to do very often), I see I’m blushing, flirting, curvetting, wriggling, even doing what Daddy calls “presenting”: standing very straight with my behind poked out, breasts taut in my blouse, offering myself on a silver platter. Why does this seem to come as second nature? It worries me, the things I let him do to me. Where I’ve let his hands delve. Anyone would call me a slut, if they knew, but since they don’t know, I’ll say I’m not till proven otherwise.

(Liar.)

The bell rings. Wild-eyed, needy, staring helplessly, we have to let each other go, walking away, never breaking eye contact because that would be like having an arm torn off, until we helplessly disappear from each other’s view.

It’s terrible, having to leave him. I feel torn in two.

Afterward in our room, lights out, I seem not to be able to resist caressing myself—flicking the quick, as vulgar Sandra upstairs calls it. I’m frantic not to make any noise or make the bed shake, lest Alison tumble to what I’m doing. (Really, how could she possibly not know? But I tell myself she doesn’t.. She’s such a sweet friend she never alludes to it, never.)

I pause, listen afresh for her breathing in the other bed. In. Out. In. Soft, regular—or is it? Is she really sleeping, or could she be faking? Is she listening to my telltale noises right now?

Resuming (of course). Rubbing myself to sleep.

To excite myself I pretend I’m Karl doing the considerably reduced list of things I still won’t let him try. It’s very effective, I find. But that’s when it’s my own fingers. (And no one knows, I tell myself.) But when Karl feels me up? That’s very different, despite my eagerness. His touch on me is wonderful, I leap to it—but underneath it feels disastrous, an awful mistake I mustn’t make. That disobedient thought keeps surfacing: Shouldn’t it be a girl doing this?

For secretly somehow I know this is way too private, too intimate to share with any boy.

But isn’t sex precisely what girls do with boys?

Not here at school. They forbid it.

You know that’s not the wrongness. You don’t care a thing what the school says.

I know. But at least that would be an acceptable wrongness. Not the one that’s even worse, ‘cause it’s something nobody allows. Something that, if I ever dared even hint about it to one of the girls here, they’d string me up without thinking twice—

In short it’s a girl you want caressing you. A girl’s fingers you want flicking --

I didn’t say that.

But you meant it all the same.

Oh fine, bully me.

“Didn’t you?

Okay, okay—yes.

Then would it be perfectly all right if it was a girl feeling you up?

Would you very much mind if I don’t answer that.

Deep unease at the sensation of that whole underlayer of me that no one understands. I daren’t talk to anyone about it, they’d turn me in. The desires I feel not for a him, but for a her. That’s double verboten, as Alison would say. Girl and girl is unspeakable, unthinkable, they believe. Girl and boy is the only right way—but girl and girl is what my insides tell me!

“Don’t,” I murmur, not very forcefully. I need to make him stop. “Please, honey? I mustn’t be that sort of girl.”

“Why?”

Not sure. I duck my head with that annoying non-answer. “Because.”

Friday night in the auditorium during the movie Karl and I are way back, high up, in the back row of the balcony where nobody can see us. My dress is sort of plungey, in fact it’s slit from throat to forever. Over my feeble objections he slips his hand inside it. If any of the fifteen or so couples in front of us were to turn around and look, I would be expelled.

Goodness knows what the movie is about. If any of the girls ask me later I will be a complete dodo. The heads in front of us turn—oh! god! thank goodness, only to look at each other, not at us. But in a moment more or less, unpreventably, one of them will turn all the way around and see me indecent, and what Karl is doing to me, and I will be ruined, kicked out of school, disgraced, my life over.

So why can’t I care enough even to shrug the dress back into place?

I couldn’t make him stop if my life depended on it. If a Mack truck was about to run me over I couldn’t say no to this. I should get a Purple Heart for just managing to keep myself from moaning aloud and giving us both away.

See, that’s the trouble: here we are in plain sight and we can’t even behave! Let alone when we’re behind anything, or around any corner, or in some nook or cranny where people momentarily can’t see us. Even here where the administrators, faculty and fellow students are all watching every dating couple like hawks, ready to shoot to kill if there is the least touch of fingertips, he’s doing this, and I'm letting him! And we’re not even in any of the way too many hiding places and out-of-the-way corners where we can be really bad -- all of which we seem to find without half trying.

So nothing and no one, not even the demon dean of students Miss Mary Meagher, is going to come to my rescue. Unless I keep constant vigilance Karl will keep at me until he has done anything and everything possible to me. Me, keep a rein on us? I’m my own biggest traitor! One of these days it will be my virginity we’re tussling over, and let’s face it, I’ll lose.

My virginity, taken? I don’t want that. Mystery of intact me that I must keep inviolate. When or if broken, it’s irrevocably gone. If it’s really there. I ponder my own unknown deeps. Erotic awareness has come to live there. Tenderness too, like a very young mother’s. Some of me isn’t at all cautious.

Only above the waist, I’ve told him. I’ve made him promise. Be his conscience too, Mom always said, poor things, men can’t help themselves, so you have to be the one to say No. Men don’t respect girls who give in too soon! Easy for her to say when he’s turning me into a pillar of squirm. I’m melting. The smell, feel, look, presence of love between us unnerves me. This emotion so new, too deep, too true. Am I going to go overboard and not be able to help myself? I think I possibly might. Of course I really can’t. No. I won’t. Definitely won’t.

I might though … even tonight I might … because I won’t any longer be able to help myself …

No.

Not tonight, not any night.

But tonight is Saturday night! And Saturday night is sacred to Love …



How lewd-icrous, my reveries. I am Maid Marian madly riding through the depths of Sherwood Forest, leaning forward to rock myself lasciviously on my doughty steed’s neck. Soon as we get to the hideout the outlaws will have me where they want me; will I be able to wheedle them out of doing forbidden things to me? …

I’m Pauline in the Perils of Pauline serial, bound to the railroad track by the evil villain, or tied on a log as the circular saw whines toward me to cut me in half …

I’m Fay Wray, and King Kong is lifting me straight up in the air. He wants to Have Me! I scream, No! no! Piteously I ask him How can a fifty-foot ape have sex with a girl my size? I’ll be torn apart! Yet when his big eye looks into my hotel room window, overcome with lassitude, I fall back pliantly on the bed, his willing victim …

I am a young witch burning at the stake, flinging terrified glances at the handsome young knights to rescue me. A figure darts in and dumps a pail of water on the flames! Which of the knights is it? No, it’s a sylph of a girl! Tthen she wants to kiss and fondle me in front of everyone, I tell her please don’t, not till we’re alone! but she won’t listen …



My doings are becoming public knowledge, according to Pauline and Julia. Frowning,.they take me aside and admonish me, try to bring me to my so-called senses.

“If Alison won’t tell you—and she really isn’t experienced enough to know—then it’s our duty to.”

“Yes. You’d better watch your step with that Karl, everybody’s talking about you.”

Gravely Pauline regards me like a flyspeck on a diamond. “You’re getting a Reputation, in case you didn’t know.”

“Straighten up for godsake,” pleads Julia, “you can’t let this one warty boy ruin your life.”

“He’s not warty! He hasn’t got a single wart—”

“How would you know? I suppose you’ve looked?”

“Oh, she knows, all right,” says Pauline with certainty “She knows him, every inch—because, see, she’s already Done It with him.”

“I have not either!”

“Don’t make useless objections, Robyn, you know perfectly well you’re his total dupe and victim.”

“Do you even bother to recognize you have to guard yourself against what could happen?”

“Particularly to your cherry.”

“If you’ve not already lost it by now.” Julia’s tone is Early Frost.

“When are you going to learn to control yourself? Because if you don’t, you know what will happen. You’ll be storked.”

Knowing nods. “In the family way.”

“Knocked up.”

“Belly Beautiful.”

If they merely guessed how that dire possibility enchants poor totally-head-over-heels me! Overwhelming, the image: Myself, big as a house with his baby. My birth pangs. Being rushed to the hospital. My water breaks. In the midst of my lovely agony his daughter appears out of me! Her first cry tugging at my heart …

“Watermelon on two sticks,” says Julia severely. “And you know what that means.”

“Disgrace.” Pauline spits out the word.

“Kicked out of school.”

“You couldn’t be that much of a dope.”

“Yes she could. That’s why friends are needed. To warn her to stop before it’s too late.”

Their accusing stares bore into me. Addled, I whisper, eyes big, agonized, “What if I can’t stop? What if I don't *want* to stop?”

“You have to, that’s all.”

I have no intention of taking it to heart, but I do. Their glares go with me everywhere.

***

Poor Robyn! Can she possibly ever live to grow up? Don't miss the cliffhanging Next Episode ...

[Robyn Katie]

Hi again ...

Here's a brief addition that really ought to have been part of the last one. (Mostly because it doesn't go very well with the next one.) This is the last I'll inflict on you this week, I promise. And just think, you get to meet my family, lucky you!

Love, Robyn Katie

***

Mom and Daddy come and pick me up to drive me home for Thanksgiving. Four entire Karlless days! Be brave, Robyn. Show you can do this. Don’t let them think they can break you just by taking you away from your lover (he has to go gobble turkey with his family in Schenectady anyway). Show your class. Carry it off.

So strange, though, getting in the car with my parents, my little suitcase stuffed in the trunk as if to make it irrevocable! The ride home is full of stilted question-and-answer like a pop quiz, what a relief to actually get there! It’s at least more spacious than the Dodge’s back seat, even if it does feel like jail. (And really, knowing as I do how ingeniously back seats were made to be used, just sitting primly by myself on one truly lacks all novelty.)

Eventually we survive the bustle of getting in the house. Daddy astonishes me by making me a drink for the first time in my born days.

“Just a little one,” he says to the accompaniment of that angering sound, liquid judiciously burbling into a glass. “To welcome the Prodigal Daughter home.”

“It’s time you learned to handle your liquor,” admonishes Mom. “A very little bit, no more.”

They must be addled. I’ve just turned fourteen for heaven’s sake, I’m a minor, this is illegal. Gee, it tastes nice. Possibly we all need it? Alice is looking at me like I’m something run over on the road.

“So, how are your studies, dear?”

“Have you made some nice friends?”

My family. They seem so remote, like people I vaguely remember from years ago. Home is the same but the spaces feel different. I don’t belong here any more.

“Oh. Yes. Any number.” With the care of a crazy person I arrange my skirt meticulously, feeling like the Unexpected Guest. “I got A in Social Studies, I can’t believe I remembered all those kings. French vocab I got a B+ on my exam, that’s pretty good considering; it was hard.” Having to translate from schoolese back into English is backbreaking toil. “I’m having a lot of fun though.” Without warning a giggle escapes.

Ooo, little heady there. Watch it, you’re in Enemy Territory now. Best if yon’t drink any more of that drink Daddy fixed you, Pauline and Julia could tell you that. But more of it’s already down the hatch. Gloop! With a fingertip I tuck back my hair, first this side, then that, conversing like a pro, well no, like an amateur. No, the truth is, words are coming out of me but to the critical observer sitting behind my ear they sound dangerously stupid. I feel a vulgar fit coming on. Any minute now I’ll give way to some impulse and begin telling the world what Karl does to me in words of four letters or less. My own gravestone stares me in the face, the epitaph reading

HERE LIES ROBYN KATIE
R.I.P.

SHE HAD ENORMOUS
PROMISE, BUT
SHE COULDN’T KEEP
HER DARN MOUTH SHUT
BURMA SHAVE

With ceremony and gravy the turkey arrives on the table. I hear myself laughing and make myself stop. Busy myself with the eating routine.

“Got a healthy appetite, I see.”

“Uh huh, I have to watch I don’t gain a million pounds.” Everybody making much of me, I wish they wouldn’t.

“Don’t be silly, you look wonderful, school must agree with you. Just look at her, isn’t she blooming!”

Embarrassing me with that old code word for breasts. Must they? An instant’s panic that they can somehow tell, just by looking at me, that Karl has made mine his utter abject playthings. But truly, the difference can’t be visible, can it?

“Um, guess it does.” Abruptly, disconcertingly, my B cups choose that moment to draw attention to themselves by feeling suffocatingly tight. Oh god, my cup size hasn’t increased—has it?

Mom surveys me. “Can’t believe you’re looking so pretty.”

“Yes, she’s really grown up-looking, isn’t she?” chimes in my father, leering some more.

I feel like snapping, Yes, just imagine, all I’d need to do is slip up once, and there I’d be, rosy-cheeked and throwing up every morning. Then you could say My, doesn’t pregnancy agree with her!

I must reacquaint myself with these strangers, after all they are my family. With the greatest care, I ask after the news.

“Well, there’s a new girl across the street, her name is Antoinette, they’ve adopted her from Germany, child of an American soldier and—”

“A fraulein,” says Daddy in that leering tone no one is supposed to wonder at. “Pretty girl, too. Very thin when she arrived, but she’s filling out nicely.”

Code.

Alice is having trouble in fifth grade, I gather, though it’s difficult to understand because they’re having to talk around the subject since she’s sitting right here across the table from me. She’s getting bad grades apparently, but that’s not the real worry.

“She’s been waking up screaming at night, poor thing,” Mother says.

“It’s puzzling,” says Daddy. Since at the moment my internalized injunction not to know anything about what happens between midnight and dawn is working seamlessly, I have no difficulty in agreeing wholeheartedly.

“Something we were wondering,” says Mom. “Would you be willing to help her with her homework?”

“What?”

“Just to give her your feeling for how much fun it can be to learn?”

I regard my mother with deep concern.

“Well,” she snaps, sweetness having failed, “just try, will you.”

So the Saturday of Thanksgiving I do try, sitting down with my little sister over sums, and spelling, and sentence diagramming (which I never understood myself and hated), plus a few of the inevitable kings and battles.

“I don’t know why I can’t get this,” she frets.

“Everyone has trouble with it.”

“You didn’t,” accusingly.

“Yes I did too.”

“Well they’re going to flunk me but I can’t help it, I try but it’s no use, it all goes in one ear and out the other I suppose, or something. I don’t see why they can’t make it interesting.”

“Basically it’s just not.”

“Really?” Sounds as if that cheered her.

“Mostly you just have to memorize it. I don’t know any other way.” My tone is cold. I had hoped I might like Alice a bit better, but absence hasn’t made the heart grow fonder. Less fond if anything. Another cliché broken to bits. Feeling guilty about this, I pour it on, struggling to make a difference in her miserable school life that I care nothing about. It’s a lost cause. Alice can’t summon the interest and neither can I.

I’m positively relieved to catch the bus for Naventown and get back to school. I was never gladder to get free of a place in my life.

***

Next time: A Colder Shoulder.

[Erin L]

One of the things I'm really enjoying about this is seeing my story next to Robyn's. I love how different they are - how different she and I are from each other, and yet I feel a sense of sisterhood with her. She and I have never met, and yet I feel like I've known her for ages.

I am posting the next excerpt because it is well past time I do so, and because I know Robyn expects me to keep up. But it also helps me cope with the recent stresses and strains in my life.

January, 1968 - October, 1968...


After New Years, I went back to school. There were dances to go to, at my school and at some of the nearby boys’ schools. I went, but I didn’t really connect with anyone, and the girls were getting annoyed at me.

“You’re not trying,” Cookie said flatly at lunch one day, and Terri agreed wth her. I enjoyed the irony, but said nothing about it.

The Billy Disaster and the Larry Incident had left me very nervous about boys for the first time since I’d let John kiss me in Ireland. I liked dancing with them, and I even enjoyed slow dancing. When they stopped and asked my name and started talking, I was okay.

But twice at dances that spring, I’d met boys who’d liked me enough to ask for my number, and whom I’d liked enough to give it to them. But in both cases, I’d panicked at the last minute and deliberately given them the wrong number. Laura had finally smoked me out when a nice boy, a junior from Molloy, had “not called” after having been really attentive all night.

“I don’t understand it,” Terri said at lunch one day after I “complained” about the boy not calling me. “I thought he was going to propose the night of the dance.”

“Maybe he had second thoughts,” I said.

“Or maybe,” Laura said softly, “You gave him the wrong number.”

I was about to feign outraged innocence when the rest of the girls put down their lunches and stared at me, and I didn’t have the nerve.

“You did, didn’t you?” Cookie said at last. They all waited, and I couldn’t deny it.

“But why?” Terri asked.

“I can’t talk about it,” I said flatly, closing the subject.

After school, Terri and Cookie each grabbed an arm of mine and together, with Laura trailing behind me, they marched me out of school, down the street and into a coffee shop. We sat down and ordered coffee and pieces of pie.

“All right,” Cookie said. “What’s going on?”

I reminded them of the Billy Disaster.

“Ancient history,” Cookie said. “Anything else?”

Reluctantly, I told them about the Larry Incident. This one, they took seriously.

“Do you think he actually was going to try anything?” Cookie asked.

“I don’t know. All I know is that he was looking at me like I was a side of beef, nothing more, and he, not I, was going to decide what we did and how we did it. And I was rescued from that situation because my cousin decided he wasn’t going to let it happen; but I never got to decide anything.”

“I don’t understand,” Laura said. “What does this have to do with that nice guy you met the other night?”

“What?” Terri added. “You don’t feel you can trust any of them?”

“I don’t know. I only know that I don’t feel comfortable right now. Some guys are just out for what they can get, and others are looking for something nice, and I always thought I could tell the difference.”

“You can,” Cookie said with a shrug.

“No, I don’t think so. This guy Larry seemed like a nice guy, and I was attracted to him at first.”

“Yeah,” Terri replied. “But you said yourself that you decided early on that he was a loser. So, you can tell the difference.”

“It just shook me up, that’s all.”

“You gotta get back in there, Erin,” Cookie said at last. “You have to.”

I said I would, and I meant it, but nothing happened boy wise for the rest of the school year. There were two reasons for this: one, my grandfather had a stroke, which pulled the family back together again; two, after that had settled down, Steve called me about forming another band.

It was music to my ears, and I said “yes” before he’d finished, and before he’d had a chance to tell me that his friend Cal was going to be taking Lenny’s place. Otherwise, everyone else would be the same.

“Isn’t that going to set us up for some problems?” I asked.

“Maybe. But Cal approached me, and I already told him I wanted you and Bob in it, and he was okay with that.”

“What’s the plan?”

“Well, we take our time getting our material together, and then we enter the Pool Dance Band contest this summer.”

That got my attention.

“I’m in,” I said.

We started rehearsing every Saturday, and they were fun sessions. By now, I had discovered Cream and had fallen in love with Eric Clapton’s playing. Cal was into Clapton as well, and so we had something in common which we hadn’t had before.

The spring of 1968 was a phenomenal time for music. We had by then heard Cream, Traffic, the Doors, Buffalo Springfield, and plenty of Bob Dylan. At our first rehearsal, I discovered that Steve had a very pretty girlfriend, named Carol.

She started coming to rehearsals, and it wasn’t long before I realized that she was very suspicious of me, of my motives for being in the band, and of Steve’s motives for asking me. On the other hand, she occasionally flirted with the other guys in the band to try to get Steve jealous. I started getting concerned.

But the sessions were going well, and Cal and I had found a way to peacefully coexist. By mid-July, we were all discussing what kind of program we were going to play at the pool dance. Driving the discussion was the popularity that summer of Cream’s song, “Sunshine of Your Love”.

I’d loved it when I’d first heard it, and when I first got the album “Disraeli Gears” I had played it almost constantly, causing Dad to find another target for his irritation besides Bob Dylan. But by the summer, it had made its way to Top 40 radio, and it was impossible to get away from it. Now, I cringed anytime I heard it, which turned out to be several times a day.

When we started talking about the pool dance, Steve and Cal were in agreement that no matter what else we did, we had to do “Sunshine of Your Love”. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Bob staring at me, but I said nothing. Gary never joined in such discussions.

“What do you think, Erin?” Bob asked. I swallowed before answering.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” I said softly. Cal glared at me, but Steve looked with interest and asked why.

“Because,” I went on, “They’ve played it to death. Somehow, I don’t think that I’m alone.”

“But,” Cal said, “Everyone’s going to be expecting us to play it.”

“And what if every other band plays it, thinking the same thing?” I asked. “Even if we’re first, it won’t do us any good.”

“What do you think we should do?” Steve asked, earning a sharp glare from Carol.

“I think we should do a couple of Cream songs, but not that one. Some of the kids will have listened to the rest of the album, and they’ll appreciate it.”

“The judges might also like a band that goes its own way,” Bob said. “We’ll stand out.”

“Besides,” I went on, “I was at the dance last year, and the bands, even the winning band, weren’t all that good.”

“Yeah,” Steve said, “But I hear that they have some good ones lined up this year.”

“All the more reason to set ourselves apart,” I said.

“I’m with Erin,” Gary said. “I think we can put together a good program without ‘Sunshine’.”

There was a long silence. Then Steve shrugged and said, “Sounds good to me.”

Carol turned and glared at me. Then she turned away before I could say anything.

The fact that I was still boyfriend-less as the summer wore on was of increasing concern to Laura and Cookie, but I found it was bothering me less. It meant that I had one less complication with the band, and I could concentrate a lot more. My letters with Maureen reflected that as well, although she did make me laugh when she wrote, “If you can’t find a boyfriend, there’s no hope for me!”

We decided to open our set with Cream’s “Tales of Brave Ulysses”. In a joke, Bob suggested that I sing the lead, and when everyone laughed, I said, “Why not?” Steve was concerned that a “nice girl” wouldn’t sing lyrics like, “…and when your fingers find her, she drowns you in her body”, but when Bob took up the cause and Cal didn’t object, he relented.

The second song, we decided, was Buffalo Springfield’s “Mr. Soul”. This was weird for me because I loved the song but thought that it would be over the heads of the kids there. My biggest surprise was that Cal wanted to do it, so I was able to be magnanimous about it.

The third song was my suggestion, and mine alone. It was the only song I felt really strong about doing – Cream’s “We’re Going Wrong”. Moreover, I wanted to just sing it, no guitar. Cal supported it because it meant no competition on guitar, at least for one song; Bob supported it, because he was quickly becoming a good friend; and Steve supported it because he liked the idea.

Our fourth song was “Eight Miles High”, which featured some serious jamming between Cal and me, and then we finished with “Dear Mr. Fantasy”, so that we could feature Bob on a long solo. It was an ambitious program, but we knew it would have to be.

That night, Terri came as Cookie’s guest, and Diane came as Laura’s, so I felt like I had a fan club there. It would actually be the first time Terri had heard me play in public since the Larkin Boys and the first time ever for Diane. Naturally, they all wished me luck.

We had some on the draw – we would play last, sixth out of six bands. And my hunch had been correct, because all five of our competition played “Sunshine”, and the last time, you could almost hear the groans from the crowd. As we were setting up, I felt a rush of confidence, but one look at my bandmates told me that I was alone in that regard.

“Hey Steve,” I said, softly. “What’s goin’ on? You guys look tighter than that snare of yours.”

He shrugged. He didn’t know. Then I looked down at the crowd, and they seemed to be growing tired of the whole thing – the downside of playing last.

“Hey,” I said into the microphone, which I had grabbed on the spur of the moment. “How y’all doin’ tonight?”

Later, Terri would ask me whatever possessed me to adopt a Southern accent, and I told her the truth: “I don’t know.” For now, I got a tepid response.

“Aw, come on,” I said in a teasing drawl. “I know y’all can do better than that! How y’all doin’ tonight?”

This time the response was better.

“Well, we hear that y’all are pretty big fans of Cream ‘round these parts. That so? Yeah, Cream is actually one of our favorite bands. We hope y’all won’t be too disappointed, but we’re gonna pass on playin’’Sunshine of Your Love’ tonight, and play a couple of other Cream songs. That okay with y’all?”

There was sustained applause, and we launched right into our set. As I shifted from the low, breathy tones of the introduction of “Ulysses” to the more powerful verses, all I could think was how much fun this was, and when I got to the line ‘and when your fingers find her…’ and the guys in the crowd reacted, I didn’t even crack a smile.

We got a nice round of applause when it ended, and Cal jumped – a little too soon, I thought – right into Mr. Soul. Cal was taking the vocal, so there was no discomfort. I felt we were two for two.

I had never just sung before. I’d always played at the same time. Singing and not playing in public for the first time was daunting when the song first started, and I had a momentary fear that my voice would crack or something, but it was just fine.

When we’d rehearsed, I had tried to think of whom I might be singing it to – some great guy who I might have a chance to have something great with, if only we could see that something was amiss and we were going wrong. But I didn’t have anyone, and so I had to focus on just the idea of it, and that seemed to work when I got up in front of a crowd. And when I finished with a broken-hearted, half sung, half spoken “we’re going wrong” to end the song on Cal’s chord, it seemed to work.

I slipped my guitar back on over my shoulder, and Gary did the bass line intro to “Eight Miles High”. Cal played the first lead part, and I thought he made a slight mistake on the first really difficult phrase, but he showed no reaction. We sang the first verse, and then the second. As we neared the break, he looked at me and mouthed “You take it.”

There was only one segment that really scared me, where I had to play a stretch of 64th notes. But the fingerings were easy, so I tried to just get comfortable, and it went smoothly. When I finished the solo, I could hear the applause. We reverted to our normal roles until the end of the song.
As the audience applauded, I leaned over to Cal and said, “Gee, Cal, thanks so much. That was so great of you to let me take the solo. I really owe you one.”

He looked surprised, but then he smiled and said, “Forget it.”

On “Dear Mr. Fantasy”, Cal took the solo I would have done, and Bob had a nice long one for himself. We had a nice big finish, and got a really big round of applause as we took our bows. Backstage, I gave all the guys a kiss on the cheek, while they all slapped five with each other.

We won the competition, which meant that we all won $100.00, but, more importantly, it meant we’d have some gigs coming up in the fall. It gave me something to really look forward to.



A week before school started, on a Saturday, Dad decided that he wanted – no, had to have – steamed clams. It would be his treat. Mom seemed doubtful about it, and I was certain that they had been squabbling, and maybe this was his attempt at patching things up.

To my surprise, he decided that he wanted me to come with him. Whatever closeness we’d gotten back had been fading. But, I suppose that in the back of my mind was the idea that perhaps if we could get some kind of closeness, I might somehow be able to help him finally get free of his addiction.

My optimism hung in there as we drove aimlessly around Queens, and I was sure it would come to him where the place was that he had in mind. But then we turned down a road that I knew led to our old neighborhood, and I could feel my optimism fading. Sure enough, we pulled up in front of a bar he had frequented often when we’d lived there.

It hadn’t changed all that much, but there was a younger crowd that hadn’t been there before, a bunch of rough looking guys in their twenties passing a Saturday evening drinking beer and shooting pool. I sat at a table drinking ginger ale, wearing a pink top, white shorts and moccasins, and watched the light fade from the windows while Dad sat at the bar drinking shots and beer and someone kept playing the Mills Brothers doing “Cab Driver” on the juke box. As the evening got later, the guys playing pool eyed me speculatively as they went back and forth to the bar to get more drinks.

“Dad,” I said at last, “What about the clams?”

“They don’t have clams here, honey. You want a sandwich?”

“I think we should go home.”

To my surprise, he told me to call Mom and tell her we’d be home in about a half hour. I called her, and when she asked where on earth we were, I saw no reason to lie. She didn’t say much.

“Mom,” I said, “I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what he had in mind.”

“It’s not your fault, honey. Just try to get him out of there when you can.”
When I went back to the bar, he had a fresh ginger ale waiting for me. I told him I didn’t want it, and I told him that Mom was pretty upset.

“When are we leaving?” I asked him.

“Soon.”

I went back and sat down at the table, passing the time singing “Desolation Row” to myself. Soon, it was completely dark outside, and I realized we’d been there a good three hours. It was another half hour, and I guess a few more drinks for Dad, when I became aware of one of the pool players veering over toward me.

“What’s your name, baby?” he purred. I tried to ignore him, but he came closer. I saw Dad come off his bar stool, and he stumbled a little. Great – my protector!

I got up and walked past the pool player.

“Dad, I’m leaving now. I have enough money in my bag for the bus,” I said.

“You’re not taking the bus around here this time of night,” he growled.

“I’ll take you home, little lady,” the pool player said smoothly. Dad turned around and cocked a fist, and the pool player grabbed him by the shirt. “You wanna take this outside, bucko?” he asked.

I screamed. The bartender came out from behind the bar and pushed them apart.

“Get back to the pool room or get out,” he growled at the pool player. “And you have had enough,” he said to Dad. “So, why not take your daughter home?”

Dad left without saying another word. It was only once he made the turn outside the bar and staggered that I realized how drunk he was. We got into the car, and he still said nothing.

He started the car and made the left turn onto Springfield Blvd., pulling out of the turn much too late and having to pull the car back into the lane. I started to silently pray. He made it up to Hempstead Avenue smoothly enough, but had to yank the car out of the right turn just before he would have hit a parked car.

As he drove East on Hempstead Avenue, he drifted from lane to lane. At one point, he drifted well into what would have been oncoming traffic, but fortunately there was none. He pulled back to the right, back into the eastbound lane, and minute or two later we saw some heavy westbound traffic.

Further east, we drifted again into the westbound lane. I was afraid to say something for fear of somehow spooking him. Again there was no westbound traffic, and he pulled back into the eastbound lane, and then we saw oncoming traffic that we had managed to avoid.

I knew we were approaching a police booth where he would be turning, and I prayed it would be manned and that they might see us and pull us over. But it was empty, and no one saw him make the worst left turn ever, barely missing a car coming south. We were approaching the street where my grandparents lived, and I decided that if I had a chance, I would jump out.

But he didn’t have to stop, not even at the light at the corner where he turned for home. On the way, we passed within a block of the village police station, but without incident. We went all the way up on the wrong side of the road, and didn’t see another car in either direction; anytime anyone talks about miracles, I think of that night.

We got out of the car in the driveway, and I ran ahead into the house, up the stairs and into the apartment. I hugged Mom as tightly as I could, and she watched, horrified, as Dad staggered up the stairs and into the apartment. He walked in, looked at Mom, and turned and walked away.

“What happened?” Mom asked me, when we’d gone into my room and closed the door.

“After I talked to you, I told him that you were upset and that I thought we should go home.” Mom rolled her eyes. “What?” I demanded. “What did I do wrong?”

“Nothing, honey. You couldn’t know. But telling him I was upset probably made him mad, and he was more determined to…do something.”

I was about to tell her about the ride home, but she already looked so pained, I couldn’t do it. That would wait until the next day, when I unloaded on Laura and Cookie.



A few days later, Mom came to me with a rather dramatic announcement. She had told Dad that she could no longer continue with their marriage in the current state. She needed to be away from him for a while, and he was therefore moving out for a time.

He had lost his job with the burglar alarm company. They had liked his design for the supply room, and they had kept him on to oversee its construction, and after that, to run it. Or, at least, that’s what he had thought – in fact, they had kept him for only a short time before letting him go.

His next job had been working as an exterminator. He had gone for training, worked for a while, and then decided that he could do better working for himself with accounts that he gathered from people that he knew or had worked for. Or maybe the exterminating company decided – one could never be sure.

He’d only had a couple of accounts, and the family car now reeked of insecticide. He’d also managed to get into an accident, so that the right front bumper was pushed in. I sometimes thought that the car was a physical representation of his life.

It was funny, but Mom and I fell into a very organized routine. We stayed out of each other’s way while getting dressed in the morning, and had a little time to share a cup of coffee. She taught me a number of refinements to my makeup routine, while I told her some of the ideas I’d learned from Cookie and some of the other girls at school. I started the school year with a sense of calm that was very welcome, as it was going to be more difficult, academically, than freshman year had been.

At the end of the second week of Dad’s exile, Mom came to me one night while I was doing geometry homework and asked me to be honest – how did I find it with Dad gone?

“I know I shouldn’t say this,” I said softly after thinking it over for a minute. “But it’s a lot nicer. There’s no tension, no…I don’t know. It’s just calmer.”

“Sweetie, the only way you shouldn’t say it is if it isn’t true.”

“No, it’s true.”

At school, the girls noticed the difference. Our lunch group had been pared down as schedule changes had split us into different lunch periods. Only Cookie, Laura, Terri and I remained.

“I think the worst part is that I feel a little guilty about not feeling bad about all this,” I said. But they were all adamant that I deserved some tranquility in my life. “Well,” I said, “I won’t be getting any conflict from the band, that’s for sure.”

We had played two gigs since the pool dance – a Squires dance and a dance at Memorial to open the year – and then the band had collapsed when Carol had dumped Steve for Cal. Bob said he had some ideas, and that I should be ready, but he never called. Steve was apparently too broken-hearted to even think about another band.

“Well, then,” Terri said, “I’d say that leaves you in perfect position to concentrate on your other area of need.”

We started off with a Molloy dance, but although I had some nice dance partners, nothing seemed to connect. Cookie said I was being too picky and Terri said I looked distracted. Well, maybe.

Then we had our first dance of the year. Laura and Cookie already had regular boyfriends – actually, Cookie was currently juggling three – and so it would be Terri and me. I took the bus there, and Terri’s mom agreed to drive us home.

By now, I had realized that Dad might never come back, and he and Mom might just get a divorce. Somehow, that made me relax. Guys started asking me to dance, and I started enjoying myself.

The band had come back from their first break and been playing for a while when this really nice looking guy asked me to dance. He had an air of confidence that underclassmen almost never had, and at the same time he didn’t have that superior, aren’t-you-lucky-I-asked-you-to-dance attitude that seniors often seemed to have.

He was on the tall side, maybe six feet, with brown hair and blue eyes, slim and well-built. I was wearing a rather short skirt, pantyhose and heels. I could see that he liked my look as much as I liked his, and dancing with him became an exercise in flirtation.

The band slid from one song right into another, and he gestured “this one, too?” I smiled and nodded. He smiled back, and we held the gaze while we danced. We danced the next song, too, and I found myself wondering when they’d get around to playing a slow one.

He danced close to me and asked me my name. I laughed, because I’d never seen a guy do that before. He smiled when I told him I was a sophomore. His name was Jeff Maitland, and he was a senior at St. Michael’s, a small boys’ school in Bayside.

When the band did finally get around to playing a slow dance, he smiled shyly at me and asked me if I’d like to dance. I smiled and slipped into his arms. He held me snugly, but he didn’t paw at me; in short, he was a gentleman.

During the breaks, we talked. He was editor of his school’s newspaper, which was pretty much his only extracurricular activity, except for occasionally helping with the yearbook, because it was so time-consuming. He had a passion for writing as well as for doing the actual production work of the paper.

“I’m sorry,” he said, stopping himself. “I’m going on and on, like some kind of motor-mouth. I’d really like to know more about you. What is your favorite thing to do?”

I told him about my playing, and about the bands I’d been in. He got a big charge out of that, and asked me about my experiences performing.

“I’d love to hear you play,” he said at last.

“Well, that’s a bit difficult right now,” I said. “My band broke up recently. The drummer’s girlfriend dumped him to go out with the other guitarist.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “It must be difficult to work dating in with playing in bands.”

“Not for me,” I said with a laugh. “One of the guys in my first band was my boyfriend, and after that I decided that I’d never date anyone in a band with me.”

“For the first time in my life, I am truly thankful that my daydream of being a rock star has never come true,” he said. He grinned, and I felt myself with a silly grin to match it.

We talked about all sorts of things the rest of the evening. We danced. We slow danced, and each time we did, he held me a little more closely.
And then he kissed me. A slow dance had just ended, and we had parted, but he had kind of held me there. He had gazed into my eyes, pulled me closer, and then, very gently, touched my chin to angle my face toward his and kissed me.

“You surprised me,” I said as we parted.

“I surprised myself,” he said. “I don’t usually do that.”

“It’s okay,” I blurted, then blushed, and then he kissed me again.

When the dance ended, we started to make our way out of the school, and he asked me if he could take me home.

“I have a ride from my friend’s mother,” I explained. I hated how immature that sounded.

“Oh, I’m a good driver,” he assured me. “I’ve had my license since May. No accidents.”

“A car?” I blurted, then turned crimson. He laughed easily, gently, a laugh I had already decided I liked very much.

“Yes, Erin. Look, I’d love to drive you home, but if that’s a problem, I understand.”

“Please wait here,” I said, and left him at the front door of the school while I walked over to Terri’s mom’s car. I explained my situation.

“Erin,” Terri’s mom said, “I know that getting driven home by a boy is a big deal, but you just met him, and your mother might not look too kindly on that.”

“I think she’ll be okay with it. I’ll tell her myself.”

She smiled and nodded her acceptance.

Jeff drove me home, chatting nicely all the way. When we got home, he stopped the car and turned to face me.

“I’d really like to see you again,” he said. I nodded. I gave him my phone number.

“You already have my address,” I said. He laughed softly.

“Yeah, I do.”

And then he kissed me again, ever so softly. Then he walked me to the door and kissed me again. After he’d gone, I slowly climbed the stairs to our apartment, feeling like I was floating.

He called me Monday night. We chatted for a while, and then he asked me out for Saturday night. I asked Mom, and she said it was okay.

“It’s looking too good,” I said to the girls at lunch the next day. “Something’s going to happen, I know it.”

“Don’t start,” Terri said, severely. “I saw this guy,” she told the others. “Wow.”

Everything looked great until Thursday, as Mom and I were cleaning up after dinner. I was telling her about Jeff, and how I knew she was going to like him.

“You seem to have gotten to know him pretty quickly,” she said. “That had to be some dance.”

“Yeah, we had a really nice time. It was almost a first date all by itself. And he was so nice when he brought me home.”

“Oh?”

I realized I’d said too much and tried to change the subject.

“No, no,” Mom said. “What about him bringing you home? You got home by 11:30, so you left the dance early? And why did you pass up the ride home with Terri’s mom?”

I stammered a bit, which was my undoing.

“Erin, you don’t mean to say that this boy drove you home, do you?”

I’m not a good liar, and besides, Mom and I have always been honest with each other. So I ‘fessed up.

“You’re too young to go dating boys in cars,” she said with finality. No plea would even make a dent, and before long I fled the room in tears. I felt sick to my stomach.

The next morning, I didn’t say anything to her at all, except unavoidable functional things. She tried to open up a conversation once before I left for school, and again over dinner that night. I gave only monosyllabic responses.

After dinner, she went into the living room to watch TV while I went into my room to listen to music. I withdrew to classical music – Mozart. The Concert Rondo in D major washed over me with no effect.

It was after 10:00 when Mom came in.

“Erin, we have to talk.”

“Nothing to say.”

“Then listen. You are my only child, my daughter, my jewel. You can’t possibly understand how much you mean to me.

“You also can’t possibly understand all the nightmares a mother has just about girls in cars. Girls lose their virginity in cars, Erin. They get into horrible accidents in cars; they get horribly maimed, or even killed.”

“So, I can never date a guy who drives? I’m sentenced to forever date guys 16 and under? Public transportation only?”

“Of course not. Once you’re a little older, and the boys you date are a little older, they’ll have the maturity they need to be safe drivers, and you’ll develop a decent sense of judgment of drivers.”

I didn’t say anything. I felt the bottom dropping out of my stomach.

“You’re judging him, and you haven’t even met him,” I said at last. “I know he’s only 17, but if you just met him, you would see what I mean.”

“Erin, I…”

“Can’t you just meet him before making up your mind?”

We hadn’t been just the two of us very long, and Mom wasn’t any happier than I was that we were already at a crisis point. Looking back, I think that’s what ultimately swung her – she had to be feeling awfully lonely, knowing she was doing the right thing, but feeling alone nonetheless.

“What do you have in mind?” she asked at last.

“Just meet him and keep an open mind. Talk to him. See if he impresses you the same way he impressed me. And if you think my judgment is wrong, say so and I’ll explain it to him. But if you honestly think I was right, you let me go with him.”

The silence seemed to hang forever.

“All right,” she said in resignation. I gasped and jumped off my bed.

“But if I say it’s off, then it’s off. Deal?”

I agreed. The next day, I told Cookie, who thought I’d been foolish and should have just kept quiet about it, or at least denied he had a car.

“I couldn’t do that, Cookie. I can’t explain it. She and I only have each other, and I can’t bring myself to do anything to mess things up.”

“No,” she said softly. “You explained it just fine.”

Jeff arrived right on time at 7:00 on Saturday. As I went downstairs to answer the door, I wondered if I should tell him. I decided against it.

“You look terrific,” he said to me as we walked up the stairs. I thanked him.

“Mom,” I said. “This is Jeff Maitland. Jeff, this is my mom.”

“Nice to meet you,” he said, taking her hand.

“Nice to meet you, too, Jeff,” she said.

“I’ve been driving for four months, ma’am. No accidents, no moving violations, no parking tickets. Just in case you were wondering.”

“Very good,” she said, suppressing a smile.

“We’re just going to a movie,” he said. “Is there a specific time you’d like me to have Erin home by?”

“I’d appreciate it if you could get home around midnight,” she said to me. It was only a small smile, but it meant everything to me. We had just turned toward the door when I glanced back, and Mom smiled and winked at me.

After the movie, we went for coffee. Jeff talked a little about where he wanted to go to college, and what he wanted to do in life. He was interested in law.

He had opinions, but he wasn’t obnoxious about them. And he asked me about mine. When we got back to the house, he surprised me and kept his distance.

“Erin, I really like you. Not only are you really pretty, but you’re a lot of fun to be with. I’d really like to see you again.”

Suddenly, my voice wouldn’t work. I nodded, and felt foolish. He smiled, and then he kissed me.



We went out again the following Friday, a dance at his school. Every slow dance dissolved into a long, delicious kiss. But I also saw that he seemed to be respected by other guys in the school, and there was an air of authority around him that I really liked.

In the car, when he took me home, we kissed more passionately as he tentatively probed my mouth with his tongue. I stroked his cheek with my hand, and he seemed to really like that. He walked me inside and we kissed in the vestibule, then kissed again, and yet again, and it was only with the greatest reluctance that we said goodnight.

That night, after I’d showered and gotten into bed, I lay there thinking about him. I kept thinking about the prolonged good night we had shared. And I thought back on all the other boys, all the other crushes I’d had over the past few years, and they all faded to insignificance.

I remembered how I had felt about Billy after the night we had met, and I realized now that if Billy and Jeff were in the same room, Billy would disappear. When Jeff held me, I felt protected, safe, wanted…cherished. Had it been Jeff that night in the vestibule, he’d have been polite to Dad, maybe even deferential, but he’d have defended me, and he’d have called me the next day to see if I was all right. I knew that.

I fell asleep hugging my pillow, pretending it was Jeff and even kissing it, desperate to get back that wonderful sensation I’d had being in his arms. When I awoke the next morning, I was still cuddled up with my pillow. What would it be like, I wondered, waking up in the morning next to him?

[Robyn Katie]

Hi Erin,

Me too. I am always eagerly anticipating your next episode to find out what will happen!

It's true we were very different in our teen years. How solitary I was by comparison with you, who were much more engaged with others at every step of the way, and, I think, had more foresight. Partly that may be because your 1960s were so much more social, whereas my 1950s offered far fewer opportunities. But also I was a lonely kid from the deep country and never made friends easily.

Being a loner, I had to keep making it up as I went along. I never dared ask anyone whether some act was advisable or not ... I was always too afraid of being told No, so if I got the impulse to do something, I either didn't dare, or did it quickly before I could be stopped.

I was so romantically driven early, at a time when most of my contemporaries (like my roommate Alison) were barely aware of love relationships and/or weren't interested yet. It's more common nowadays to be in a relationship at age 13 ... not so common then. However, it's also true that the repressed 50s saw a fair number of serious, committed relationships among quite young high school students, which became less common later. So it's a seesaw.

Your description of hugging and kissing that pillow. Oh golly yes. Brings back potent (and lonely) memories!

Please, one thing. I know I do press to hear more from you. I just don't want you to feel it as a difficult duty when you've so much else on your mind. So feel as easy as you can about whether or not to post.

Thank you so much for your contributions to this thread. They are full of wonders.

Love, Robyn Katie

[Erin L]

Actually, Robyn, things have begun to settle a bit, and it appears that I am out of immediate danger. Erin is craving to get back to the forefront, so this exercise helps a lot.

Hugs,

Erin

[Erin L]

October, 1968 - January, 1969


The next night, Mom was making dinner when she realized we were low on butter, so she sent me down to the Cow Shed to get some. I didn’t pay any attention to what cars were in the lot – I just walked in. I got the butter from the dairy case and went to the register to pay, and standing there, having just bought a six pack of beer, was my father.

“Oh,” I said, surprised. “Hi.”

“Hi.”

He seemed as uncomfortable as I felt. We left the store, and the gray Falcon with the bashed in right fender was right in front of us. He gestured to the car, and for a moment I thought of telling him that I had decided never to ride in a car with him again, but figured that was pointless, so I got in.

“When did you get back?” I asked.

“This afternoon. I stopped over at Grandma’s first.” He meant his mother’s. “She was asking for you,” he added.

As we were walking upstairs, it occurred to me that Mom was in for a shock, and I felt badly that I had no way to warn her. I walked in ahead, and only had time to say, “Uh, Mom, I…”

Dad walked in. She didn’t look too happy, either.

We had dinner. No one said anything, except for a few questions, most of them directed by Dad to me: How was school? Okay. How’s the band? It broke up. Any boyfriends? Yes, very recent.

“He’s a very nice boy,” Mom said. “He comes from Douglaston Manor.”

“Really?”

Something about the stunned surprise in his voice nettled me. Did he mean to question why someone from an upscale neighborhood would want someone like me? Did he mean that I had somehow been consigned to a lower social class?

I didn’t pursue it.

“He’s a very nice guy,” I said. “We’ve gone out a couple of times, and we’ll just see where it goes.”

Jeff called Monday, which was becoming his habit. I liked it, because it suggested that he was anxious to talk to me. We always talked for a while, sharing stories or jokes, likes and dislikes.

Mom came into the kitchen right after I’d hung up, and she smiled at me.

“Jeff?” she asked, and I smiled and nodded.

“We’re going out on Saturday. Third date.”

There had developed among the girls the theory that if a dating relationship lasted past three dates, you could consider it a genuine boyfriend/girlfriend relationship. I had always thought that silly, until now. Mom understood.

“He’s a lucky guy,” she said, and I hugged her.

“I really like him a lot,” I told her.

“That’s what I mean,” she replied, and winked.

I was a little worried about the fact that he would be meeting Dad for the first time. I never knew what conversations went on between him and Mom, but they had reached some kind of understanding, because the house slipped back to normal. How would that look to Jeff?

Saturday, I got a phone call from Cookie. She sounded very serious.

“It’s Laura,” she said. “She was out last night with that guy she’s been dating for a while – Nick.” I had met him a few times. Seemed like a nice guy, and Laura was crazy about him – she’d actually slipped once and said something to Cookie and me about being bridesmaids!

“Well,” she went on. “They were at a dance when they ran into a friend of his with his date. Turns out Nick knew his friend’s date, and they start chatting things up. Finally, Nick turns to his friend and Laura and says, ‘Hey, I’ve got a great idea! Let’s swap dates! Phil can have Laura, and I get Denise!’ The other girl loved it, and Laura and this other guy just sat there. She was totally humiliated, and now she’s a basket case.

“Anyway, she’s on her way over now, and I’m making a sleepover. I need you and Terri, if you can make it.”

I froze.

“Erin? You there?”

“I’m here, Cookie. I…I…”

“Oh, my God!” she gasped. “You have a date with Jeff tonight, don’t you? Forget it. Laura will understand.”

“No. I…I can be there.”

“Absolutely not. This is the Third Date. And I know you’re crazy for him. Laura knows, too. And let’s face it – with all the manure you’ve taken with your father and all, you deserve a little happiness. Please don’t give it a second thought.”

She hung up. I called Terri, but she said she couldn’t go, because her family had something planned for that night and she couldn’t get out of it.
“I feel awful,” she said. I told her about my situation, and she said she would call Cookie to explain.

After I got off the phone with Terri, I remembered all the times Laura had been there for me – when she and her sister had come to get me when Dad had first admitted to me his addiction; the night he’d fallen off the wagon; how supportive she’d been every time I ever needed a friend. I swallowed hard.

I called information to get the number for “Maitland” in Douglaston. There were three listed, but they wouldn’t give me all three at once, so I had to call back two more times. I tried all three numbers, but none of them were Jeff’s.

I tore my room apart, trying to find the old drum corps roster to see if I could find anyone who’d gone to St. Michael’s, but I couldn’t find it. I called Steve to ask him if he knew anyone who had gone there, and when he didn’t I called Bob, and still no dice. I even tried to call St. Michael’s, but of course there was no one there on Saturday.

When Jeff came to pick me up that night, I was dressed in a pair of jeans, a pink sweater, and a pair of penny loafers. I had a small overnight bag packed. I didn’t bring him up to meet Dad, I just went downstairs.

He looked surprised to see me like this – he had so far only seen me in skirts. He looked even more surprised when he saw the little valise.

“I’ll explain in the car,” I said. I told him about what had happened to Laura, and that we were close friends.

“I know you won’t understand this,” I said. “But she is a very dear friend. She has been there for me when I needed her, helping me through the worst time in my life. I just can’t turn my back on her now.

“I tried very hard to try and find out your phone number,” I said. “But…”

“I know,” he said, softly. “It’s unlisted. I’ll make sure I give it to you in case you ever need it.”

“I’m sorry, Jeff,” I said. I was starting to cry, despite my determination not to. “I really am, but I…I just have to do this. I really do. Please understand.”

He touched my chin, and he kissed me.

“I do understand. You are a wonderful person, and a wonderful friend. Laura is very lucky – in fact you all are, however many of you there are. I don’t mean to say that I’m not disappointed, but we’ll have other dates – at least, I genuinely hope we will.”

“So do I,” I said.

“Well, there you are, then. Can I at least drop you?”

I leaped into his arms and held on for dear life.

“I can’t tell you how special you are to me,” he said. And then he kissed me again.

He drove me to Cookie’s, and I managed to calm down, although I did thank him several more times.

“So, this is Laura’s?” he asked when we had pulled up.

“No, Cookie’s. She and Laura have been friends forever.”

“Ah, and what’s Cookie like?”

“She’s kind of slutty. But she has a heart of pure gold.”

“Sounds like my kind of girl,” he quipped, and we both laughed. “Hey, before you go, there is one thing I was going to ask you tonight, and I still want to. Our senior prom is in April. I know it’s early, but I really want to take you. Please go with me.”

“I…I’ll have to…to see,” I stammered.

“I understand,” he said, then kissed me one last time and I went inside.

“I knew you’d come!” Cookie squealed as she hugged me. Then I hugged Laura.

“I’m not in as bad shape as Cookie thought,” she said.

“Right. We just had to pry her away from the Suicide Hotline.”

“Hey, wait!” Laura said. “Wasn’t tonight your Third Date with Jeff?”

I told her it was, but that she was more important, and she hugged me a long time.

“How’d he take it?” Cookie asked. I told her the essence of the conversation.

“Oh, he has so fallen for you!” Laura said. “That is so great!”

“Sure is,” Cookie said. “So, why don’t you look like you think it’s so great?”

I told them about him asking me to the prom.

“Oh, don’t sweat that,” Cookie said. “You know your mom will let you go. You already got past the big problem, his driving. The rest will be a snap.”

“No it won’t,” I said, sadly. “Unless I can find a band, and soon, I won’t be able to afford a decent prom gown unless I sell my guitar.”

Just then the pizza she had ordered arrived. We had some and afterward, Cookie’s mom said to me, in her heavy German accent, “Erin, my dear, ve haff der perfect gown for you!”

We trudged upstairs, and she pulled out a gorgeous gown, in a sparkling gold material, with a slit up to mid-thigh and a plunging neckline.

“Cookie wore this to a formal family function last year,” she said.

“It’s wonderful to offer," I said. "But I could never fill out something Cookie had worn.”

“Oh, don’t be so sure. First of all, she wore it last year – she’s grown, and so have you. Also, it was a little tight on top for her, and besides, I can take it in if we need to. Why don’t you try it on?”

“Yeah, come on, Erin, give it a try,” Cookie said.

“I bet you’ll be gorgeous in it,” Laura added.

“I don’t have shoes to try it with,” I said.

“Now, you do,” said Cookie. “These are the ones I wore with it.”

She handed me a pair of very sexy sandals with a four inch heel. In a moment, I was down to just my bra and panties. I pulled on the gown, and then stepped into the sandals.

“Let’s see,” Cookie’s mom said. “Hmmm…you know, I don’t think we need to do a thing.”

I looked in Cookie’s full length mirror and was amazed. It fit like a glove. And although I was tottering on the very high heels, I decided I could get used to them; if I could get them past Mom, that is.

“I don’t know what to say, except thanks,” I said.

“Hey, one good turn deserves another,” Cookie replied.

“You girls have such a beautiful friendship,” her mom added, and I had to agree with her.



Monday afternoon, the three of us were coming out of school, late enough to have missed the school bus, and had just turned toward the city bus stop when I stopped short. There, leaning up against a lamp post, was Jeff. He grinned at me, and I went to him and we hugged.

“Let me guess,” he said. “Laura and Cookie.”

“How’d you guess?” Cookie asked.

“Easy – the two names that always go together.”

I straightened out which was which.

“Well, can I give you ladies a ride home?” he asked.

“That would be great,” Laura said, “But I think we would just kind of be in the way; besides, we already got in the way of your date Saturday.”

“Yeah,” Cookie added. “We’ll take the bus as planned. See you tomorrow, Erin. Nice meeting you, Jeff.”

He took my hand, and we started walking toward his car. I told him how sweet of him it was to come pick me up.

“Well, I had an ulterior motive,” he said as we got into his car. “Ever since we met, I’ve been kind of desperate to see you in your school uniform.”

I giggled loudly.

“No, wait a minute,” he protested. “I know that all you girls think the uniforms are awful and make you look dumpy – well, all of you except maybe Cookie, with her micro-mini. But a really pretty girl looks good in a school uniform, so I see it as the ultimate test.”

He was grinning.

“You’re beautiful,” he said, turning serious. And as I melted into his arms, I vaguely hoped we were far enough from school that no one would see me. As we kissed, I found myself caring less about who might see us and more about how close I wanted to get to him.

Late Saturday night, after Laura had fallen asleep, I had asked Cookie for advice, shocking both her and me. But she had smiled, kissed me on the cheek, and told me what I wanted to know. Now, suddenly caught up in a passionate makeout session in his car a block from my school, and not really certain of what might happen, I began to ever so gently stroke the back of his neck with my fingers.

He had a light coating of hair back there, soft as down, and I loved the touch of it. Soon, his breathing was heavier, his kissing more passionate. And then, softly, gently, almost shyly, he caressed me; an electric jolt shot through me, and I felt aroused in a way I never had before. In the back of my mind, I was a little afraid that he might get carried away, the way Mark had with Cookie that time in the Olde Mill, but his touch was so soft and gentle. Soon my breathing was as heavy as his.

A shout down the block brought us back to reality. It was cold enough outside that the windows were partly fogged, and he started the engine and the defogger to clear them. He turned back to me, looking a little sheepish.

“Um…are you okay?” he asked. I smiled and nodded. Then I leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. The windows were clear, and he put the car in gear.

“Did you talk to your folks about the prom?” he asked. I could hear the strain of nervous tension in his voice, and I thought that was so sweet.

“Yes, I did. I can go.”

He was thrilled – he suddenly rolled down the window and let out a rebel yell. Then, when he stopped at a red light, he sheepishly rolled it up again, and I laughed out loud.

Oh, my God, I thought. This could be better than anything I’d ever dreamed.



The holidays were a trial. I didn’t get to see Jeff at all, and my holiday with my family was one for the books. Christmas Day, Dad drove us all, including my grandparents, out to Uncle Rob’s because Grandpa’s stroke had left him incapable of driving.

Aunt May seemed in command, as always, if a little rough around the edges. I received a distinctly cool greeting from her, but a big hug from Maureen. We reprised our after-dinner act from the year before, and I couldn’t believe how much better she’d gotten.

In the middle of our singing, Aunt May suddenly stood up and walked out. She came back a few minutes later, wearing a long robe. She seemed pretty drunk, and everyone pretended not to notice.

When we left, I began to worry about Dad. He was okay, I guess, but he took it kind of fast going home, and some of the turns were uncomfortably fast. Grandma and Grandpa were very, very quiet when they got out, and they didn’t invite us in.

He drove the rest of the way home in silence. Mom and I got out of the car and went upstairs, neither of us saying a word. I put my guitar away and helped her put the gifts away. I had just started to get undressed when she called in from the kitchen, “Where’s Dad?”

I put my jacket on, slipped into my loafers and went downstairs. I walked back to the garage, thinking it was strange that the door was closed. As I got closer, though, I could hear the engine running and smell the exhaust.
I opened the garage door – the old-fashioned kind that opened to the side – and coughed on the cloud of exhaust. Dad was sitting in the front seat, with the driver’s side door open. He looked like he was dozing off.

“Dad? What are you doing in here?” I asked.

“Huh? Oh…gee,” he said, groggily. “Must have dozed off for a second.”

“Just turn the engine off,” I said softly. He did. “Come upstairs now,” I added. It was the first time I had ever given my father an order, but he followed me with no argument.

Mom met my gaze when we got upstairs, but said nothing. Later, she came into my room and asked me what had happened, and I told her how I found him. We both knew what I had just prevented.




The Saturday after New Years, Jeff extended a very unusual invitation to me – to join him at his school doing the layout of the next issue of the school paper. I was delighted at the prospect of seeing him in his world, working on something he loved. And I had to smile when he said, specifically, that I needed to dress down for this.

“As much as I love seeing you in skirts and heels, they are definitely out for this.”

Apparently, my jeans, baby blue turtleneck and penny loafers passed muster. When we got to his school, a tall and very lanky brother – Brother Ron – let us in. He smiled when he saw me and said, “I had thought Jeff was exaggerating when he described you, but he was not.”

Jeff blushed at that.

There were three other guys, Brother Ron, Jeff and me. What impressed me the most was the way Jeff took command, giving all the instructions. Brother Ron interjected a comment only occasionally, and always on some technical point; Jeff was in command, and I could see that he enjoyed showing that to me.

We had all the galley proofs cut and pasted, and the whole paper laid out, by about 2:30 that afternoon, and Brother Ron thanked me profusely for my help. I told him I hoped I’d be able to do it again sometime, and I meant it. It occurred to me that we hadn’t been affectionate with each other in any way since we’d arrived, but when we got to the front door on the way out, Jeff corrected that.

After a couple of more dates with Jeff, he invited me to a Sunday dinner with his family; he had just given me his class ring, which I wore with great pride. Mom and Dad were having a battle royal when he came to pick me up, and so I didn’t bring him back upstairs. I was glad to leave it behind.

Dad had been going on about how he would quit drinking, once and for all, if Mom would do just one thing for him – quit Al-Anon. He had told me this several times since right before Christmas, and I had yet to hear a coherent reason. Finally, I had asked Mom why she didn’t just call his bluff – stop going and see if he really stopped drinking – but she said, very firmly, that her going to Al-Anon was for her and had nothing to do with him; moreover, it was a smokescreen, an excuse, and if she gave into it, he’d only find another.

“He has to stop drinking because he wants to do it,” she had said at last. “Not because of anything I do or don’t do. His drinking is his problem.”

As Jeff wound his way through the lovely streets of Douglaston Manor, with its huge houses set on hills looking over Little Neck Bay, I could only think about how lucky I was to be leaving all of that behind me. We pulled into his driveway, and I realized that he was right off the water. I had never been to a prettier home.

My heart was in my mouth as we went inside. His mother and sister were in the kitchen, and they came out to meet us, while his father stood up.

“Mom, Dad,” he said with what sounded like pride, “I’d like you to meet Erin. Erin, my mother, Gloria Maitland, my sister, Donna, and my father, Steven Maitland.”

“Very nice to meet all of you,” I said, taking each hand in turn. “And thank you so much for inviting me.” I then gave Mrs. Maitland a plate of cookies I’d made at Mom’s insistence.

“Oh, thank you, dear,” she said. “How very thoughtful of you.”

She was a tall, slim aristocratic looking woman with grayish-brown hair and hazel eyes. His father was only slightly taller than his wife, balding, slightly pudgy around the middle, with a ready wit and a warm smile – a contented and successful looking man. Donna was tall and slim, like her mother, with dark brown hair and brown eyes, a girl of twenty who seemed capable of the same mirth as her father.

We were invited to sit down, and they served cocktails – a ginger ale for me and a coke for Jeff. Mrs. Maitland then had Donna bring out a tray of hors d’oerves. The conversation was measured, pleasant and polite.
It felt like a dinner at my grandparents’ house. And having grown up with them, and with my grandfather’s conception of what constituted polite behavior, I felt at home with it. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being observed, and possibly tested.

“You go to Mary Louis, right?” Donna asked over dinner.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m a sophomore.”

“Do you like it?” she asked.

“Yes, I do. I have some very good friends there, it’s a good school, and I really feel a part of it. It’s almost as if we’re part of a special community.”

“Well,” Mrs. Maitland said, “You have certainly attained rare status in this house.”

Was there sarcasm in her voice? I wondered.

“How’s that, Mom?” Jeff asked, perplexed.

“Why, dear, she’s the first girl you’ve ever brought home for us to meet.”
Jeff blushed slightly, which told me that it was true. I felt a rush of triumph, and at the same time, I felt a little vulnerable, for reasons I couldn’t understand at the time.

After dinner, I offered to help clean up. Mrs. Maitland assured me that wouldn’t be necessary, and left me with the sense that I had somehow committed a serious misstep. Jeff brought me up to his room, ostensibly to listen to music, but it was such a relief to be alone with him, I practically leaped into his arms.

We tumbled onto his bed, and I loved the feeling of his weight against me. I was surprised when he pulled away, breaking our kiss and our embrace.

“I love you, Erin,” he said, quietly.

“What?” I gasped.

“I love you,” he said, more firmly this time. “You are lovely, sweet, funny and wonderful to be with. You’re everything to me, and that’s why you’re the only girl I’ve ever brought home to dinner.”

I sat up, pulling down the hem of my dress.

“Your mother doesn’t like me,” I said, dourly.

“Of course she does. She just takes some getting used to, that’s all. She’s very reserved, and not easy to read; she likes you, Erin, I can assure you of that.”

But later, as he drove me home, I was sure he was wrong, and it frightened me.



The pendulum that was my life was swinging more wildly than ever. While I was dining at Jeff’s and desperately trying to pass inspection, Grandpa was having another stroke, a much bigger one this time. Dad, showing how strong he could be when he chose to be, kept Mom calm and also, on the side, warned me to prepare myself.

He was right. Grandpa died a couple of days later, and I had my first experience with the death of a loved one. A small man, he was always calm, always under control – a control he paid for with many years of battling ulcers. When he’d been limited by his first stroke, he took it philosophically and even made jokes about it.

At the same time, he could summon up a fierce authority when he wanted to, as we cousins all found out from time to time when we misbehaved or were rude at the table. His view of what constituted polite society commanded, and it was a measure of the respect we all had for him that no one ever protested or rebelled. I would miss him very dearly.

The wake was three days, and it was a chance for me to reunite with my cousins. All but Maureen, that is, who it turned out had a real phobia when it came to funerals and death in general. I was glad she was able to join us for the funeral itself.

We cousins had a limousine all to ourselves, which I thought was very unusual. I was relieved that I wouldn’t be with Mom and Grandma, both of whom had taken Grandpa’s passing very hard. I was also treated to my first taste of the irreverent humor with which my cousins dealt with death.
We were just getting back into the limousine at the cemetery, where we had seen Grandpa all but lowered into his grave. My brave façade had begun to crack just a little, and I knew that Maureen was watching me closely so I bit my lip to keep from crying. Brian slipped into the jump seat in front of me, turned to the driver and said, in an English accent, “Home, Higgins.”

Maureen and I laughed so hard we had to hold on to each other, and even the limo driver had to laugh.

Jeff had come to the wake the last night, which I thought was very sweet of him to do. The boys gave him a bit of a hard time, but in a teasing way. He offered to come to the funeral, too, but I told him not to – I wouldn’t be able to spend any time with him.

We picked up our dating after the funeral was behind me, though. He brought sweetness back into my life.

[Robyn Katie]

Hi sisters,

It's late Fall 1951. Things never looked sweeter but ... well, read on.

This has been pretty daring stuff, for me ... imagining being hot for a boy, the farthest thing from my libido. But by turning around the dating situation as I actually experienced it, making myself the girl I dated, and reimagining her as the boyfriend, I found I could half manage it.

Now, though, the Fickle Finger of Fate is about to intervene.

This is another longie, not too long I hope. Have fun,

Love, Robyn Katie

***

Karl and I are standing next to the student mailboxes in East Main, talking about nothing in particular and everything in general, holding hands carefully between us in such a way that Miss Meagher, alert in her office just a few yards down the hall, couldn’t possibly tell if she suddenly appears at her door. I am only half listening to what either he or I am saying, because I am possessed by this extraordinary feeling:

Just think, up there, just yards above my love-dazed head, hangs the whole huge weight of sacrosanct girl dormitory: Two whole floors along which, from late dark till dawn, lie in wait scads of beds with luscious girls in them ripe for the plucking, including me in mine—but where no boy may go on penalty of death.

Yet if in the dark of night while we are sleeping, by some uncanny chance known only between the covers of impossible romances, my Karl were to win through the serried ranks and walk into Alison’s and my room and v-e-r-y q-u-i-e-t-l-y, taking the greatest care that Alison doesn’t awaken, sneak in under the covers with me, would I have the strength to resist? Well, would I? (I know, I’d darn well better. Well, it isn’t that open-and-shut.)

But okay. Let’s suppose I have won the coveted Good Girl trophy by actually staving him off. There’s still a problem: He’s on our hall! How could I possibly—especially without Alison or anyone else knowing—what if there was a way?—

Out of the wild blue he says something I completely don’t hear.

“Beg pardon?” I sound rattled. The trip back from woolgathering is such a distance.

“I said,” for he really hates having to repeat himself, “I keep having this idea I just can’t stop thinking about.”

“Have you now.” I can’t believe my voice sounds this caressing, this—well—sexy. “What idea is that?”

“Now don’t get mad, okay?”

“Why would I get mad?”

“You’ll get mad.”

“I won’t get mad,” I purr. “Just tell me.”

“All right then, here goes. This is my idea. It’s very simple really. I just want us to go to bed together. Like we were married.” Voice rising because already he sees me reacting. “Okay now, you promised—”

Snatching my hands from his, I stand quivering, eyes glued to the floor. “Well you know the answer to that!” Knowing here I am again, defending the gates, forbidden at all costs to let on, particularly to one Karl Beck, a nearby delinquent, how sweet it sounds—more sweet, and more annoying, darn him! than apricot jam—

“See? You’re mad.”

“No I’m not mad, not in the least. But,” wishing I sounded more like I meant it, “we can’t.”

“Hell we can’t.”

“Don’t be crude.” I’m sorry, but I do not like bad language, I can’t help it, it corrodes my brain. There are enough things corroding my brain without that.

I need a time tunnel. I’m thinking a mile a minute. What if I wanted to come as close as I dare? How can we, but not quite? How can we almost? If we were naked together wouldn’t it be so sweet? Could I trust him? Could I trust me?

Here’s what I think. I could stand it if he could. Or could I? “But we’d better not,” I attempt. I don’t mean this, not even a little bit. I’m just angling for time while the picture is jelling in my head, rosy, like cherry jello.

Then he has to spoil it by asking crossly, “Why not?”

That throws me back to square one again. “You know why not. We mustn’t.”

“That’s no answer. ‘Course we must. It’s high time, past time. Say we can.”

Why do boys always have the best bonehead arguments? “Well, maybe you can, but I can’t.”

“R-o-b-y-n—”

“Sorry, but no. Anyway, where would we?” What just came out of my mouth? I cringe. But too late, it’s said.

He pointed at the floor. Actually he is pointing at the basement floor one story below our feet—don't our feet look cute together, his brown oxfords and my pointy slippers with the modest heels suitable for going to class in that make me look like Dorothy wishing herself in Kansas?

“Not the—”

“Maintenance tunnel.”

“Ick.” We kissed there last Monday for the longest time, it was cluttered, smelly, and we heard the janitor tramping by in the corridor outside, he could’ve walked in on us at any moment, I died a thousand deaths.

“The perfect place for it.”

What, on burlap bags? Breathtaking. “Somebody’d catch us.”

“Nobody’ll ever know.”

Does he perchance think I’m nobody? “I’d know.”

Trouble is, everything I say, he’s got an answer to. Thankless being the girl and having to put up dumb objections to what we’re hungering to do. Why do I stand here bickering? Why am I not on a pile of burlap bags losing my virginity? That’s what he wants to know. I want to know too.

“No. Honey, truly.” Me, I’m the poor simp that’s got to stay placidly dorm-bound. My responsibility, to preserve my virginity as I’m supposed to. And a hearty Hi yo, Silver, awayyy! Well, look, I was given too much secret knowledge when I was little. I hereby resign the post of Temple Virgin guard. My vacation from responsibility begins immediately.

Okay, I say, but only in my mind’s ear, take me down there and Do It to me. I’m so, so ready …

No! I‘m not ready! What are you trying to get me to do?

Goodness knows how I get myself out of this scrape, but suddenly here I am safely (alone) the other side of The Door to the girls’ dorm. I mount the stairs to the second floor despite my heart that weighs a couple hundred pounds. Passing the corner room I note that Julia and Pauline are mercifully elsewhere, I really couldn’t face them right now.

On my bed I fall immobile. Not even masturbating (two Good Girl Awards!), just lying here gloomily counting the imperfections in the ceiling.



Well, wouldn’t you know, my conscience smites me that I told him no. So I agree to meet him in the woods. It’s chilly this afternoon, but I suppose our mutual heat protects us.

“It’s cold, we can’t do this for long, at least I can’t, I don’t know about you,” I laugh brittlely, all nerves, hugging myself, feet splodging around in the freshly fallen leaves, my skin crawling with cold, goosepimples all over me. I’m going to have to ask him to lie on top of me just to keep me warm, which is a Very Bad Idea and I don’t dare do it. Why did I agree to this? I can’t possibly go through with it. “Karl? … I think maybe I’d better—”

Out comes his hand with a little tiny bottle in it. “Brandy.”

“My, you really know how to entertain a girl. Where did you get this?”

“Guy in the dorm. Make you warm.” He’s a poet no less.

“I don’t think it’s such a good idea, making me warm! Okay, we've met in the woods, just like you wanted. Can I go back in now?” Such deft gaiety, or do I mean daft? Just listen to me, laughing ere I freeze. You would think I would prop myself against a tree and give in cheerfully, just to have it over with.

But I don’t.

As he’s clasping me and bearing down so I’ll collapse more or less flat beneath him, I shake my head like the responsible girl I wish I was. “No, Karl, we mustn’t, and that’s all there is to it.”

What a mockery, what a debacle. Back in my room I shake my head at myself, muttering, “You are one nutty goon of a girl, Robyn Katie, you deserve to be drowned with the rest of the rejects from the litter, but somebody saved you, and now look what a problem you are.”

He was mad at me. Very. It’s much more serious than the last time we argued. I don’t know what he’s going to be like tomorrow. Probably he won’t even speak to me. That might be the healthiest thing all around, but I won’t be able to stand it, I’ll wheedle and beg and agree to some other stupid notion. Why am I like this? I do have a brain, or so I thought?

Mm, but I also have a lust. Lust trumps brain. Lust – Brain + x = y for Yes. See, I knew algebra would come in handy, but I still hate it.

We’re apart.

Pauline and Julia send me chilly stares. I think they disapprove of Karl and suspect what I’m letting him do to me. They certainly disapprove of me. They think I’m a simp and should be barred from the second floor. I think they should mind their own business. They’re being sweet to be concerned about me, I know that, but I wish in this instance they would just go soak their heads.

Legs freshly shaven and smooth as silk to my fingertip. Nails laboriously filed and polished scarlet. Nylons drawn on and gartered. Black slip over my prettiest bra (wouldn’t want him to be disappointed when he unfastens me!). Skirt belted, tugged taut. Cashmere sweater and tiny pin. My new eye shadow. Oops, mascara on too heavy—dust it off—

Lipstick carefully applied and blotted. Kissproof, it says (but in practice it comes off on everything, I have to carry a kleenex to repair the damage on him after) …

Mirror. Yes?

So much careful preparation of me for the slaughter. We dance like one four-legged being. Afterward we can’t bear to let each other go. I could cry, it’s so poignant that we have to part on this night of all nights.

“Wait here,” I whisper at the foot of the stairs up to my hall, “when I’m in my pajamas I’ll come down and kiss you goodnight before you go.” What gives me this truly dumbheaded idea I can’t say, but here I am in my PJ bottoms with a comfy flowered cotton nightie over it (approximately twice as decent as anything I ever wear by day) descending dreamy-eyed into the Main Corridor, he’s waiting by the newel post at the bottom of the broad oaken steps. There’s no one around but us as far as I can see; but then why would there be. It’s late. Everyone else has gone up.

Our heads are close, our faces nearly touching over the stair rail, enclosed in a glistening bubble of love. Softly we’re exchanging a few words, we haven’t even kissed yet, when—

“What’s this, may I ask?”

My startled glance is slow with surprise as like some gaunt galleon a vengeful Mary Meagher heaves on the scene. “’Fussing’ after hours, are we!” Can you believe that’s what she calls it? She is truly sick in her mind, this stick of a woman who has nothing to do in life but crouch like a buzzard, swoop and rend dating couples.

“We didn’t mean—”

“We were just saying goodnight—”

“Is that intended to be an excuse?”

“No’m, not really, it’s just—”

Her eyes are cold tin of the sort fish is canned in. “You are both on two weeks’ probation as of this moment. You will not be seen together nor talk to one another during that time, on pain of penalties much more serious than this, believe me.”

“But what about—”

“No exceptions! Be grateful it is not worse. Now you, young lady,” an eyeflick at me, “up to bed at once! And you, Mr. Beck—I am appalled. I should think you, as the gentleman, would have known better. I am holding you personally responsible. Off with you to the boys’ dorm this minute, or you’ll be sorrier yet.”

In shame and disgrace I climb, banished upstairs, heart hammering. Two weeks without him? I don’t even know if I can live that long. Meanwhile anybody else is free to see him and talk to him, except me. Such as that Petra Geyer who’s always making a nuisance of herself around him whenever my back is turned.

Treachery! He asks her out at once. When I hear of this I am aghast. But—he’s mine! I thought …

Oh why prolong this? In the two weeks that I am forbidden to say one single word to Karl or go anywhere near him, that Petra steals him away from me. Well, of course she was willing to do what I wouldn’t. (In the *boiler room*, Joan Severner took great pleasure in informing me.) Makes me feel just wonderful.

In other words, the worst has happened. My life is over.

But if the world had to end, couldn’t it at least be private, a mere breach between us two? No. Like any other couple going at it hot and heavy, we are in the spotlight, watchwords around school. No one not deaf, dumb and blind can possibly be unaware that Karl and Robyn are on probation. That Robyn is being faithful, but Karl and Petra are “fussing.” That Robyn is betrayed, double-crossed, rejected, abandoned, deserted, tossed away like a used kleenex. A pitiable object and sad lesson to be avoided and ignored, lest her bad luck prove infectious.

I thought when they talked about heartbreak it was a figure of speech—I didn’t know hearts actually do break in pieces that can never be collected together again. My heart is kaput. I was surprised to find it was even beating—I didn’t think it could. I figured it had stopped forever, like Grandfather’s Clock.

The feeling of being thrown away is like being skinned. Like having my insides torn open and a cruel cold light shined in, no matter how I twist and turn, showing everyone that I have nothing and no one. I *am* nothing and no one. Just a hurt in an empty container. At times like this, other girls have mentioned, you have to pick yourself up and go on, smile and act like you haven’t a care in the world, pretending it’s okay. I don’t know how to pretend that. As for smiling, I think I no longer know how.

The future stretches out before me, bleak, endless, no hope of ever being happy again.

I take a long time in the bathroom at the end of the hall. When I can’t put it off any longer I trudge down the hall, slip into the door of our room, hoping Alison is asleep. But she’s sitting poised on her bed in the dark like a little waif, her black eyes serious. I can’t muster even a hello. She blinks, but says nothing. Forlornly I lift the covers (they weigh about a ton), slide my useless self into bed.

Silence. Time crawls agonizingly by. I try not to cry, but I can’t help it. Muffled in my pillow, I try not to make a sound doing it, but I can’t help that either.

“What is it?” comes Alison’s voice, edged with fear. “What’s happened?”

“Meagher.” This is my voice apparently: flat, dead, mechanical. “I’m on probation. Karl and I are. Two weeks.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. Truly I am.”

“It’s okay—it can’t be helped—” My voice breaks. I am determined to sob silently. I work hard on this for a moment. Suddenly there’s a tentative weight on the edge of the bed. Alison. Seating herself. “I’m so sorry,” she murmurs. “Is it very awful?”

“Uh huh …”

I cry, and cry, and cry, and she awkwardly pats my shoulder. She is so nice even though she hasn’t an inkling, wanting to help, murmuring “I’m here … I’m here.”

“I know,” I say, and pat her hand. After a while I move my sniffly, miserable head into her lap. Her legs are thin and bony but her lap is nice.

“Thank you,” I moan. “I’m getting your nightie all wet with all these tears ...”

She shakes her head determinedly. “That’s all right, you mustn’t mind.” She touches my hair wonderingly. “I’m sorry it hurts so much, honest I am …”



Most of me is gone.

Doggedly I slog to class, sit there like a lump saying nothing no matter how the teachers pester me. Slog back to the dorm, sit, barely able to do my assignments. Alison advises me to throw myself into classwork (“About time you did”) but how can I pay attention? I’m like a gutted building where once things were made, but there was a fire and now acrid ashes, so all the equipment’s been removed and the place stands stripped bare, window-holes empty, roof fallen in, snow falls there now, and me? I’m the dried-up mud puddle in the corner.

Guess I needn’t say what my free time is spent doing; you know my habits, right? (As in the question, “What did you find to do with yourself all that time?”) What an evil girl I’m getting to be. But sex for one pales compared to love for two.

Alison knows I do this. She knew all along.

“At first I was worried. I don’t, you see.”

“Never?”

Headshake. “I had this awful impulse to protect you somehow. But then I understood it was important to you.”

“You thought all that about me? And didn’t say?”

Those black, black eyes, devotional eyes, dedicated to the sciences and languages so on. The science and language of me too, apparently. “I like you so very much, you see. Even though you’re hard to understand.”

“You like me?”

“Ever so much.” No one ever said this quite in such a precise, judicious tone, as if wanting to be sure she gets it exactly right.

“Well I like you too. A lot.”

We blink at each other and go our separate ways, she to Botany and me to English, wondering where on earth this leaves the two of us. She likes me! It is such a shock to think of. I don’t quite know what to do with myself in her presence. I’m not attracted to her in that way—you know, that way. Some of the girls here at school I am, but I’ve been scared to do anything about that, naturally, and now, so devastated, I can’t do anything about anything.

It’s heartening, all the same, to think of Alison is out there frowning over a Bunsen burner or doing careful drawings with a microscope stuck in her eye, yet all the time my friend, willing for reasons I will never understand to be my bastion against the world. Who’d have dreamed what a bond it creates, crying your eyes out on someone’s lap?

There’s still me to face in the mirror, though. Not really liking to look at myself any longer. How I doted on perfecting my reflection, turning this way and that, trying to see myself, using the hand mirror together with the wall mirror when I was (almost, not quite) Karl’s! I’d stand eyeing myself in bra and panties, blouse and skirt, trying to see myself as others see me, wondering whether I should turn a cuff, add a necklace, lower a hem. Once in a while thinking, on catching a glimpse of myself naked, Well, you’ll never be a calendar pin-up, but jeepers, you’re not bad, at that!

Now I can’t meet my own eyes, I barely sidle up to a glance. My hair’s a mare’s nest. Discontentedly I poke at it, thinking, Where did my pretty looks go? Where’s the little jump of happiness seeing myself so neat-looking in dress and scarf?

It seems phony to do my makeup when there’s no one to do it for. I have to push myself to remember to run a brush through my hair. It isn’t worth while trying out different looks like I once did so avidly. In any case I’m so far outshone by the posh girls with laden eyes and lips, who cares if I look like a little mouse caught in a trap, disheveled, bloody, crushed.

Self-pity? You bet.


In the midst of it all, lo and behold my late-blooming roomie Alison picks this as the time of all times to suddenly go through her Change. It is a doozer.

“Ohh,” she groans, “I feel so bloated, what is wrong with me.” Then it’s, “Oh, Robyn, I’m bleeding like a stuck pig, ohh, Robyn, have you got an aspirin?”

It’s hitting her extra hard, poor thing. You’d think she was being crucified, this slim sexless little creature, this nun of the Natural Sciences who hasn’t even any opinion on the subject of love. She hasn’t any breasts, and by all signs never will, so (in revenge I guess) Mother Nature has made her pay a double price down below. To her it’s the worst possible insult, and she isn’t taking it well.

Miserable, cheeks tear-stained, she sits staring glumly into space over an open notebook full of chemistry symbols. “Why can’t I do my homework?”

“We’ll do it together.”

“Do you hate me that I’m so cranky?”

“I couldn’t hate you in a million years.”

“Do I smell? I feel like I smell.”

“Like roses.”

“Oh, sure,” with scorn. “Although did you know, back in Renaissance times that’s what they called female menses—roses?”

“Did they.” She knows the darnedest things.

At its worst she just can’t stand it. So my lap gets pressed into service too. I stroke her black wiry hair while I try to field her pained, angry questions. There are lots of questions, many of them pretty basic. Never mind how ignorant the rest of us may be on the fine points of sexual development, Alison is even more ignorant. Probably she knows the whole story from the Physiology standpoint (which is more than I do), but the blow of menstruation completely defeats her and she can’t see why.

“What is this, why is this happening to me?”

“I don’t know, it just does.”

“Me of all people. I don’t want this. I’m not going to have babies. So why—”

“You’re not?”

“Of course not, Robyn. Can you imagine me having intercourse with anyone, let along enduring pregnancy? Then picture me with a baby, for heaven’s sake. What would I do with a baby? The whole idea is nonsense. I reached fourteen years old without any of this indignity, I was foolish enough to assume I might just escape it altogether. I might have known, I suppose, but since no one could possibly have any less use for it than I have, I suppose the Spirit of Perversity just couldn’t pass up the chance to give me the worst possible hotfoot—”

“It’s not aimed at you personally, it’s just part of growing into a woman.”

“Pooh, I’m not going to be a woman, not in that sense. I’m going to be what I already am, a scholar.”

“Yes, but you were born female all the same, or it would be illegal for me to room with you, right?” I beam, trying to cheer her up.

“What if I was born a woman, that’s hard enough, I shouldn’t have to go through this too.”

I pat her arm. “It’ll get better—I’m pretty sure it will.”

“Promise?” She stops moping and crying long enough to be sardonic. She thinks she should just be able to rise up and throw it off, this womanhood thing that’s so irrelevant to her life.

“Why is it, I would like to inquire, you don’t have it bad like this?”

It’s truer than is comfortable. I’m comparatively lightly “hit” when I am “under the weather” with “my friend,” as they satirically call our monthlies. Guiltily I avoid her eyes, “Actually I do, sometimes.”

“You do not, I never hear you moaning and groaning like I am.”

“The tub,” I say, inspired. “I soak, hours sometimes—works wonders—soak the aches out, the cramps and so on—you could try it.”

“That tub. It’s too much trouble. Somebody else is always using it.”

“’S why I use it in the dead of night.”

But she won’t be convinced. “One tub for the whole floor,” she scoffs, “what can they have been thinking of.” And suffers.



For Christmas Daddy and Mommy give me a watch, twenty-one jewels and so on, I have no idea if it’s fashionable or expensive but it’s pretty, I like it, I promptly snap it on my narrow wrist and hold it up for general admiration.

“Now you’ll always know what time it is, day or night,” says Daddy. He is full of these little jokes. When he carried my suitcase up to my room for me and put it on my four poster bed (one of the few things from home I really do miss at school), he teased, “I better not catch you letting any boys in there with you, ha ha.”

Ha ha.

And, uncomfortable surprise, a bra and pantie set from who else, Daddy again. What an active little Santa Claus he’s been. No one else thinks this is the least strange. Alice’s eyes are big as saucers. Mom exclaims happily to him, “Oh, honey, aren’t they exquisite—you never told me you planned to give her anything like this!”

Uh huh, bet he didn’t. Thinking of him licking his lips at the thought of how snugly these would fit on my body (I wish I didn’t know quite so well the way he thinks), I wonder if I’m going to be able to stomach putting them on. This too is ignored and allowed to pass.

“Too bad she can’t model them for us right now, huh?” Daddy must have been getting into the Christmas brandy. Mother looks at him uncertainly, then at me. “Well, if you wish to, Robyn,” as if I’d suggested it, “it’s all right to.”

“Mother!”

“Very well, if you don’t want to, you don’t have to.”

Daddy says nothing but his eyes are glued all over me. Go ahead, change into them, suggests his noncommittal gaze, give us a show.

Naughty/nice, I chill but respond, actually imagining myself undressing here, every stitch, bending naked to put them on. My Night Child training sees to it I don’t miss any of the implications, while remaining unable to act on any of them. Horns of my old dilemma. I picture a dilemma as sort of a big cow, bull rather, with me stuck rather painfully on top, like a failed bullfighter. Home is now an alien planet, I no longer have a place here.

Even Daddy seems to feel I’m a stranger. He no longer comes near my room, hurrah. I think he is a little in awe of his suddenly very different daughter whose axis is elsewhere, who talks about school and boys just like a real girl. Have I escaped his control?

At any rate I escape home. The car splooshes through the January slush, depositing me at Main’s front porch, a cheery wave and I’m in, out of their ken again.

Winter is weary, dreary our drudgery, bundling up like Eskimos to dare the haphazardly shoveled paths to the classroom buildings, sitting in class steaming off, pulling on wet boots and coats to go sit in some other classroom, never quite dry or comfortable. Darkness closing in early against the windows of the dorm. This time of year always takes an extra grit of the teeth.

Alison has adjusted, more or less, to femalehood. I think she may have decided she is her own science experiment; she takes her temperature and keeps daily notes until her period is over. That apparently keeps it alien enough so she can study it, as if it’s really not happening to her.

“It’s only puberty,” she says, as if by having found a name for it she can get it firmly under her courageous little thumb and keep it there. Her mom’s doctor sent her back with a prescription of some kind. I ask her about it (I could use something too, after all), but she doesn’t know what it is, and the name of the medicine means nothing to me. Useless to ask Mom, she doesn’t believe in medicines more strenuous than merthiolate and Petrolagar.

In the room I practice my guitar and banjo a lot. At first Alison was quite resistant to this, saying if I wished to practice music I ought to go to the practice room next to Mr. Steele’s office, the school Music Teacher, crammed full of tubas and music stands, like any other considerate girl would. But I couldn’t stand the idea of my singing and playing being exiled from where I live! Call me spoiled, but nobody ever tried to separate me from my music in that way. It was our only disagreement, and I just kept gently playing and singing my ballads and songs, not loud, hoping she could get used to them. She did. Now she even asks me to serenade her once in a while, though I think it’s less that she wants it than that she’s just being generous to me. And I do try to keep it down.

I’ve learned so many songs, I have a list totaling 176 of them! But I always want to learn more, and in this I’ve found a real treasure trove. In the wall of the classroom next to the school library is a shelf with about a dozen books of folksongs by Vance Randolph and John and Alan Lomax, Carl Sandburg and so on. When I have free time (I have too much of it now that my boyfriend days are over) I take blank paper in there and busily copy out song after song, anything that looks like fun or interesting to learn to sing. Alison stares at my pile of paper (I’ve had to put it in three whole binders, there are so many) and says, “My, you’re becoming quite the research devotee, aren’t you.”

One day when I am in there studiously copying away, in comes the tall grim figure of Mr. Huggen. This is a Quaker school and he is one of the rigid kind of Quakers (most of them aren’t, but he’s rigid enough for ten). According to the curriculum he’s supposed to be a history teacher, but everybody knows Mr. Huggen is such a fanatic he spends most of the time trying to drum religion into everybody in his classes. I don’t take his classes, thank goodness, for religion’s not for me.

But this time he’s caught me. “How do you do, Miss Corin,” he says, “I don’t believe we’ve formally met, though I know who you are, of course.”

“Yes sir.” Handshake.

“Tell me something, if you will. I noticed on your school questionnaire you put down that you are an Atheist?”

Wary now. “That’s right.”

“I hope you will learn to reconsider that.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Ah, but you should. You must allow me to advise you, from the viewpoint of my greater years and experience. Religion is a fortune you do well not to discard on your path of life.”

“I’m sorry, but that’s how I feel.”

“And I am telling you life’s most valuable lesson,” he intones in his ponderous way, “which you are, as yet, take my word for it, too young to have learned—”

Here it gets weird and scary. For though Mr. Huggen says nothing but harmless-sounding words, I can tell clear as crystal that behind them seethes icy rage. He is wild that I’m thwarting him, that a mere callow girl of fourteen should presume she has any right to disbelieve in God and all that. His eye is black iron, I think he wants to lay hands on me. Hate? Desire? No, revenge. He wants to destroy me in the name of God.

“Um, I have to go.” Hastily gathering my papers, I jump up, stick The American Songbag and Folk Song U.S.A. back in the bookcase, and back toward the door, not trusting this possibly insane teacher behind me. Fumbling for the knob.

“You will be sorry,” he warns. “Out of my own knowledge I assure you of that. God is not—”

But I’m in the corridor, hoping I didn’t leave any of my precious pages behind.

After this I wonder to myself, what did I do to bring down that dire man’s wrath? I think what he calls the wrath of God is merely his own wrath, I don’t think he even knows what God is. I notice this about the God thunderers, they all seem to be talking about something they have no idea of.

Something about me drew his fire. I’m scared it might have been my looks. The mere thought of being touched by that black-minded old man in his seamy suit makes me want to throw up, but that’s what the whole encounter suggested.

Am I too attractive? I ask myself. Should I be more like Alison, plain, undemonstrative, my head bent over my schoolwork? Am I merely laying traps for myself by putting on lipstick and powder every day, and form-fitting clothes? Nylons, garter belt, heels? Alison, innocent of cosmetics, prim in her pencil skirts and simple white shirts, wears none of that.



As usual with sworn resolutions to stop momentarily, pay better attention, figure things out, nothing comes of my sudden attack of thoughtfulness. Mr. Huggen never bothers me again; in a day or so I forget all about him, too busy kiting off to new battles.

I’m contentious now as I wasn’t before, tiled with glass panes that keep my raw soul from getting scraped any further. In class I’m sullen, practicing banjo licks on the back of my notebook until my teachers tell me to stop doing that with my fingers. In the gym I’m raucous and vocal, not listening very closely to a new note of meanness in the things I say.

I'm worldly wise, or think I am. I shouldn't have survived Karl, but surprise! I have.

***

Next time: Simmering through Summer.