[First Draft, 8th section]
During the last two years of medical school, my schedule mimicked that of an intern – days filled with following residents on their rounds in the hospital, and frequent nights on call, the first line of defense for newly admitted patients. During the interstices around the work, I managed to I discover courage enough to call women up, go out on dates, and follow-up afterwards. Two of them stand out in my memory.
Bessie, a classmate, had attended Berkley as a first generation Chinese immigrant. She had a combination of shyness and depth which intrigued me. Our time together was tentative, spent mainly navigating the wild variation in our cultural experiences. Compared to her, I was worldly and undisciplined, despite the single-minded ambition I had been following towards an MD for 12 years. In the end, my desire for a partner with whom I could go out and have a little fun fell victim to her ingrained fell fear of what a wild white guy might be up to. In the end, it turned all we had in common, besides the burden of medical training, was myopia – we could share eyeglasses, and little else.
Teri became my final attempt at a practice girlfriend. For over a year, she and I toured LA together. A recently graduated occupational therapist, she accompanied me to movies, to friends’ weddings, to Southern California attractions including Disneyland, Orange County beaches, the Farmers’ Market, and the Santa Monica Pier. While looking for work as an OT, Teri found a job as a house sitter in the hills above Sunset, the glittering palace of an entertainment industry heavyweight. While she could live there, and invite me for a visit, she dutifully followed the rule to never have any overnight guests.
Teri grew up in solidly middle-class Alhambra, and kept the scruples she learned in high school and church. Wary of entanglements, she never dropped her mask with me. Slim, blue-eyed, blond, conventionally attractive, I never got the vibe that she wanted any more from me, from us, than the re-assurance of a conventional connection with a suitable young man. I felt like a cipher, a place-holder until Prince Charming came along. Since I had no other options, I played along, learning how to talk to, to be with a woman who had her own agenda.
In December of my senior year, I took a bizarre interlude from Los Angeles. During the darkest, coldest time of the year, I signed up for an out-of-town clinical rotation in the emergency room of University of Cincinnati General Hospital. I told my friends I wanted a break from LA, from the Medical Center where I’d spent three years cloistered in the largest hospital west of the Mississippi, where I hopped to spend the next four years in an Ob-Gyn residency. Someplace familiar – my hometown, living in my parents’ house. Something easy – working in an outpatient urgent care setting, no call, no worries about patients arriving with intractable illness or injury.
In truth, though, I was following internal the Siren calls from Sarah J. and Molly B, the two girls I felt most connected to. I’d kept in touch with both, and had the fantasy that with Molly, at least, I might build on the connection.
One night I’ll never forget, in late December or early January – fifty years ago as I write this – I found myself driving up the hill from the Mill Creek Expressway through Clifton on my way to an evening shift in the UC clinic. I drove up Clifton Avenue following a vestigial waft of fading pheromones and turned right onto Belsaw Place. During the loop around this enclave, as I passed Janie’s house, a song came on the radio, one sounding familiar and yet new to me. The haunting voice of Stephen Stills, singing, “If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.”
I’d made a date to visit Molly in her dorm room at University of Cincinnati. I was convinced that all I had to do was show up, and she would see we were cosmically linked, and meant to be together. I also knew that geography, age, and life interests formed a potentially impenetrable wall between us, despite the inner spark we both felt burning, ready to inflame us.
We talked a while, recounting our current lives. She was a member of the charter class of Title Nine female athletes, having won a scholarship to UC after her gold medal at the 1972 Munich Olympics. I was headed for another four years in Los Angeles, the final brick in the edifice of an imminent medical career. I sat at her desk, she on the edge of her bed. Small lamps at her bedside and on the bookshelf to my side provided a muted light, the cold and dark creeping in from a window looking 12 stories down on the campus.
Despite her easy laugh, her casual smile, I caught a hint she had not yet heard a call to turn the fantasy of a life with me into a reality that could bridge the gap of time and space between us. I left despondent, alone, with no direction home, nor even knowing where that might be.