Triblog

!!!!!*****WORKING COPY DRAFT*****!!!!!

Chanukah came late that year, after Christmas.The whole first week at home, I tried to keep busy, buying and wrapping presents for my parents, brothers, and sisters, cooking with mom, and spending some time with Lizzie. Over at her house one evening, we started talking about the differences between high school and college.

I noticed she had a mess of literature books spread over her desktop. Poetry, classics, even some foreign works like Gunter Grass and Dostoyevsky. “That’s a lot to read!” I observed. All for class, or are you just bored?”

“When you’re an English major, you can never read too much, whether it’s assigned or not. The only problem is, I don’t have any time to write, which is what I really want to do.”

“What about outside of class? Are you on the paper? Is there a literary magazine?”

“Well, yeah, but there are so many girls there who want to do it, unless you’re already a published writer, or a senior, there’s really no chance.”

“So, are you doing anything outside of class, anything formal, like we used to do at Avondale?”

“No. No time. Oh, I talk with people a lot, I go to dances, I even have a boyfriend, Clark, at Amherst. But nothing like school, no extracurriculars. You?”

“It’s more like the whole world is our extracurriculars now, right?” I wanted to know more about her boyfriend. “What’s he like, Clark.”

“I hate to say this, I know we always used to make fun of girls who went by looks alone, but he’s …dreamy. Thick blond hair, like straw. He’s kinda tall, five inches more than me. He plays guitar, and he’s on the crew.”

“Not like Leon, huh?”

“He’’s a WASP through and through, went to prep school in New Jersey, doesn’t ever say a word in Yiddish.”

“He sounds, uh, perfect? Is there any edge to him at all?”

“He does wear a bead necklace. And he has started saying ‘Peace’ whenever he gets anxious. What about Mike? He still a Boy Scout?”

“I don’t think he’ll ever stop being Mike.” I didn’t want to go into any details about us, so I tried to keep things simple. “I saw him at a swim meet finally. All they do is just go up and back a few times, it looks pretty simple, but they get so tired out!”

“Where is he now?”

“He’s in Idaho, Sun Valley again, with his family, not learning how to ski.”

“Not learning?”

“No, he says he doesn’t want to get sucked into a social, jet set scene. You know Mike, always trying to be above, outside of, whatever might be popular.”

“You guys have been together, what, almost two years now?” Eyes widened, brows arched, head tilted, she mimed the question, “Have you finally done it, Janie Stein?”

Sighing, I felt myself flush from the neck up to my cheeks and ears. I dodged her unasked query. “I’ve been thinking, about us, Mike and me. I really am lucky we are together.”

“What do you mean?”

“When I’m with him, I feel alive, in a different way. He doesn’t tell me what to do, he listens to me about things.”

“Like?”

“Like, he started subscribing to the New Yorker. He goes to plays and movies I suggest. He thinks Martha’s Vineyard is a special place. But he’s not a schlump. He’s got his own mind. Boy, does he have his own mind. When he thinks he’s right, there is no arguing with him. When he decides he has to do something, nothing, nothing can stop him. He’s this strange mixture of fear and hesitation on the one hand, and headstrong ambition on the other.”

“Hmm. That does sound like Mike, now that I think about it. Someone you can hold your own with, who doesn’t put you down, and who you can lead around a little, when he’s not leading himself.”

A couple of days later, Linda was getting ready to go to a party with some kids from Avondale, home from college. While she sat at her mirror, plucking a few stray hairs from her eyebrows, I asked her, “Linda, what do you know about birth control pills?”

She put/laid down her tweezers, turned three quarters (a)round on the stool, pointed to the nearby desk chair, and said, “Sit.” Putting her hands on my knees, she brought her face uncomfortably close to mine. “Are you thinking about starting them, or are you already…”

“We’re/ve already,” I answered, hoping I wasn’t being too cryptic.

She patted my knee and went back to her eyebrow excavations. “Good. Good. Finally. Pills. Yeah, they’re bad. Good, but bad. Good, of course, ‘cause you don’t get pregnant, but bad, cause they’ve got all those hormones. Your breasts swell and hurt.” She turned again and looked at my chest. “Well, maybe that wouldn’t hurt you. Sorry. And you gain weight. Not fat really, but you kinda swell, retain water I think. Throw up, maybe? But overall, on balance, I’d say it’s a good thing.”

“Why?”

“Why!? Haven’t you started having fun yet?” Apparently satisfied with the arch of each brow, she slammed down the tweezers with finality and turned fully around. “Come on, sister. Do you need an anatomy lesson?” Thus ensued one of the very few times I actually got some value out of having crazy Linda as my big sister.

Christmas eve, Mom was making us a special “spiritually uplifting” dinner, with as little help from me as I could get away with. It seemed to be be the same old steak, peas and potatoes, maybe the matzo ball soup was the secret sauce?

“Mom, do you love Daddy?”

She turned off the mixer, satisfied with the fluff of the mashed potatoes. Checking the oven temperature, she set a pan of water to boil. I was putting bread into a basket, hiding it with a damask cover. “Well, of course I do. You know that.”

“But why? You guys…you’ve been together forever, I see you kiss every night when he comes home. But what is it, really? Love.”

Her eyes clouded over, then cleared. “I think, Janie, it might be, we’re different, George and I. He’s so rough and ready, always finding fun in everything. He doesn’t really care about books and reading, or going to shows or anything like that.” A pause for reflection, then, “I’ve thought about this many times, over the years, 30 or so, we’ve been together. Have you ever seen that drawing where you look at it one way, it’s a vase, and another, it’s two people looking at each other in silhouette?”

“Right, we saw those in psych class this year. There’re others where, one way it’s a young woman, look at it another, you see an old lady.”

“Exactly. Well, that’s your father and I. We…complement each other, fill in the gaps, the missing parts. You look at us, you think you see one thing, but there are two of us there, hiding in plain site. You wouldn’t see either of us, without the other. Does that make sense?”

It did make sense, and it got me to thinking. What if Mike and I were too much like each other? What if, instead of complementing, we clashed? That evening, I just picked at my meal, barely touching the steak, mostly stirring the potatoes, and tried reading the peas as if they were tea leaves.

********

!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!

Esther, older married Esther, was right of course. First thing Monday morning, I called for an appointment at the campus health center, telling them I wanted to get my ears pierced. I didn’t have the nerve to give the real reason; I decided I could bring it up when the doctor was punching holes in my lobes. I walked out with a stud on each side and a prescription for Enovid, thinking to myself, “Well, Sarah Jane Stein, you’re officially grown up now.”

I waited with some trepidation for my period, so I could start the pills a week later, and get this whole thing over with. Finally, on Pearl Harbor Day, it came. The next Thursday, I opened the little pack, popped out the first pill, and contemplated where I was going with this. I had not told Michael anything yet, so this was all on me. Was it what I wanted? I put the pill down on the copy of St. Augustine’s Confessions I was reviewing for the term paper I’d write that night. I went across the hall to Jeanne’s room, finding her with Marcie, reviewing flash cards for their biology final the next day.

“Uh, can I talk to you guys?” I asked, closing the door behind me.

Jeanne seemed a bit put off. “Better be important. This Bio test is the difference between an A and a B for me.”

Marcia knew I’d gotten the pills, and had my period, so she jumped in. “Is today the day? Did you take it yet?”

I slumped down on the bed next to her, leaned over, and started sniffling, feeling like I was ready to cry. I rested my head on her shoulder. She patted it, stroking my hair. Shaking, crying, I couldn’t say anything.

“I know, I know. It is a big deal. You want it to be right.” Marcia kept up a quiet reassuring patter while my sobbing came to an end. “Have you talked with him about it?”

Collected again, I sat up and said, “This Friday, he’s coming up. He’s flying out of Logan on Saturday, going to Idaho with his family for Christmas. He’s going to stay with me the night before.”

“You’re sure this is what you want?”
The past two years slammed around in my head. Seeing him, his beautiful hands, his softly glistening hair in French class. Pursuing him through debate team timekeeping. Talking endlessly with him so many days and nights. Sharing our thoughts, our dreams, our selves in letters, reading his poems, knowing his ideals and fears. All I felt was a rush of love, of being loved, and knowing there was still something missing in all of that.

I tried explaining that to her. “It’s like I’m – we’re – putting together a jigsaw puzzle. It’s not just love, it’s more than that. But there’s a final piece, it won’t be complete without it.”

Jeanne looked puzzled. I couldn’t tell if it was what I’d said, or her frustration with the flash card she was staring at. Marcia simply nodded, saying, “He’s beautiful, you two look so…so perfect together. No one’s going to say this is anything but good for you, for the two of you.”

“OK, I’m going to take it now. Want to watch?”

Jeanne finally asked, “What are you two talking about? What’s the matter, Janie?”

I went back to my room, grabbed the pill and the pack it came from, returning holding both aloft. Marcia must have filled Jeanne in while I was gone, as she said, “Ooooh…the Pill.” They cheered as I swallowed it with a glass of water.

The next night, Mike arrived, and we had dinner celebrating the end of my first semester at college. After the break was “reading period”, and a few more final exams, but the real work was over.

Back in my room, Mike started talking about his family’s trip to Sun Valley. “My father wants to try skiing there, with S. He’s always finding some new sport.”

“Are you going to ski, learn how?”

“I don’t want to. It feels like something rich people do, to go and show off in their clothes,  act pompous and entitled. I’m going to just sit in the Inn while they go out. A chance to study for that Organic Chem final. I have to get at least a B, just to get a C for the semester.”

“C! Don’t you need that for med school?”

“Yeah, if I keep that up, I’ll just find another career, I think.”

“What would that be?”

“I’ve thought about that, you know. I like to drive, just sit in my car going across the country, hours on end. Maybe I’ll be a long-distance truck driver.”

As usual, he seemed serious, so I didn’t make fun of that. But I really couldn’t see him eating at truck stops, talking with guys in overalls and baseball caps.

“Listen, there’s something I want to talk to you about.” I pulled back my hair, tilting my head towards him. “What do you see?”

“A new hair band?”

Frustrated, I chastised him. “No. I went to the doctor last week, got my ears pierced!”

“Why?”

“It’s something girls do at this age, you know.”

“Sure, but you? I mean, you don’t wear lipstick or make-up, why did you want to do that?”

“I just wanted to. But there’s another thing. While I was at the doctor, I asked him about …about what we did a couple of weeks ago. He said, you can get pregnant even from something like that.”

Mike’s face went blank, but I could sense him stiffen up, getting anxious. I went on, “So I got some birth control pills. Mike, I don’t want to stop what we were doing, but I don’t want to get pregnant either.” He stayed quiet. “Say something!”

“Well, that’s good. That’s good, yeah, that’ll be better.” We were looking straight at each other, not smiling, but not turning away either. Inside, I was a little mad that I had to do all the work here, getting the pills, having my body changed by them. But I didn’t want to scare him off, so I kept that to myself, for now. Instead, I reached out and stroked his cheek.

He finally got the idea, and started to kiss me, unbuttoning my blouse while I undid his belt. The bed beckoned.

After we finished, I sat up. Lifting the sheet, looking at its underside, then at the one below me, I observed, somewhat analytically, “Look. I bled a little. Not much, but there it is.”

********

!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!

The morning after what Esther called our “consciousness raising session”, I remembered that Mike had told me his first varsity swim meet would be at Brandeis that afternoon. We couldn’t see each other, he said, as the team went up together on a bus, ate lunch as a group, swam, then went back to CT right away. But Brandeis was on the Fitchburg train line, and I could go see the meet anyway, even if I couldn’t talk with him. I’d never seen a swim meet before.

The first thing I noticed, all the boys on the team sat around in just their swim suits, which were tiny little things, slung low under the belly button, and barely covering their butt cracks. They constantly shook their arms and legs, a jangly dance of muscle and bone. Mike had a little thing he did with a partner, where he locked his fingers behind his back, straightened his arms, and the other guy pushed Mike’s hands up towards his shoulders. This pressed his upper arms against his sides, making his them appear large, smooth, and powerful.

He only had one race, towards the end of the meet. I knew the idea was to finish ahead of the other boys in the pool, but each time, it was different. Different strokes, from the undulating butterfly to the lazy backstroke. Different distances, from the explosive two length freestyle to a seemingly endless one which took almost 20 minutes. And then there were the divers. Running forward, jumping up from the end of a teal colored springboard, then twisting, flipping, and finally slicing through the water’s surface, some with floppy splashes, others, the better ones, straight and clean. They looked like dynamic sculpture, making art with their bodies.

Finally, Mike stepped onto a starting block over at one side of the pool. He’d told me, “I’m maybe the worst swimmer on the team. There’s another guy in my year who’s the designated breaststroker. I’m just there to fill out the lanes. If I get a third place, I’ll be doing well.”

The white suited starter, holding his pistol straight overhead, shouted “To your marks!!” and everyone walked forward, curled their toes over the edge, reached down, and grabbed the block. After the gun went off with a puff of smoke, Mike exploded forward, arms outstretched head extended then tucked between his shoulders. With a slight bend at his waist, he sliced into the water. Underneath, he pulled his arms back, kicked hard while bringing them forward. He lunged his head up into the air, took a sharp breath I could hear in the stands, then launched into a rhythm of stroke – breath – kick, a foot-high swirling bow wave out in front. Eight of those cycles, then he touched and turned at the wall, pushing off hard, repeating the whole thing three more times. When he finished – he’d come in fourth – he stood at the edge, heaving, spitting, coughing, until he hauled himself out. He dragged himself back to the team bench, slung a black and red striped towel over his shoulders, and sat slumping head down. The coach was talking earnestly with his winning teammate, surrounded by half the team, pounding his back in congratulations. Apparently his win gave them enough points to secure victory for the day. Off to the side, one other guy came over to Mike, leaned over, smiled, and seemed to say, “Strong work.”

Thanksgiving was the following Thursday. Mike and I were both staying at school, ostensibly to study, write papers. He planned to drive up Friday morning, we’d spend the day in Cambridge and Boston, maybe go to Lynn shore Drive where he was born, seen Nahant and Salem. I realised we hadn’t talked about what to do after that.

The dorm food service was closed for the weekend, but we’d had a turkey dinner for those few girls who’d gotten permission to stay on campus. I’d secreted leftovers in the lounge ‘fridge, so we wouldn’t have to buy dinner. We ate up in my room, where I told him about my secret trip to Brandeis.

“What?” he asked. “You were there and didn’t come over to talk to me?”

“I was up in that balcony, where the stands are. What was I supposed to do, holler at you? You’d probably say I was embarrassing you.”

“Probably right.” He took a contemplative bit from his turkey sandwich. “What’d you think?”

“This might sound a little funny, but I’d never seen you like that before.” He raised his eyebrows, so I went on. “That’s a side of you I haven’t really paid attention to, the guy who likes to swim, who can swim well enough to be on his college team…”

“I told you, I’m the worst one there. I’m not sure why they let me on, maybe because there’s only one other breaststroker?”

“Even so, it’s different. It’s not something you do with words, like a poem, or talking with me. It’s something you do with your body. What do you think about when you’re swimming in a race?”

Typical of Mike, he pondered that seriously. Satisfied he understood, he said, “I’m not thinking of anything other than how hard my body is working, making sure my arms and legs are doing what they’re supposed to.”

“What’s that like?”

He chuckled. “It’s about the only chance I get to have my brain shut up.”

I stroked his arm, feeling, probing a little, trying to remember what he’d looked like when he was stretching before the meet.

The next Friday, we met again with Esther. The other girls she’d brought last time must have gotten scared off by the mirrors, as only Jeanne and Marcia were there with me. I’d been anxious all week, holding inside a nagging worry I’d carried since Mike and I spent the night together in Cabot.

Esther sensed right away I needed to unload. After serving us some tea, and chatting about the snowstorm on the way, she looked at me and said, “Janie, you’re usually so perky. You seem quiet tonight. I haven’t even seen you smile yet.”

I’d been able to hide my fear all week, going to class, studying, joking in the dining room. But here, where the subject was our bodies, where we knew we’d come to talk about sex, it all came flooding out.

Before I knew what was happening, I blurted, “Can you get pregnant if he doesn’t come inside you?” Jeanne and Marcia stopped rattling their tea cups, frozen on my words.

“What happened, Janie?” Esther asked. Her face was full of sympathy and concern. “Did he go in and pull out before…?”

“No.” I was shivering. “No. We were in bed together mostly naked. We almost feel asleep, but there isn’t really room for two of us there, so we kept waking each other up. It was like I lost my mind or something, remembering seeing him at the swim meet on Saturday, then feeling his skin, warm, and smooth. I pulled him over on top of me. I kept my legs closed, but let him push down between them. He started moving – we both stated moving – and next thing I know, he’s quivering, shaking, almost, and moaning. Then I felt wet down there, I don’t know if it was him or me, or both of us.”

The room was quiet, the steady ticking of the kitchen clock the only sound. Jeanne broke the silence. “Do you think he…”

Feeling stronger, I completed her thought. “…penetrated me? No, I checked after he left, with my mirror. It’s still intact, and there was no blood. Just a goopy spot on the sheet.”
“Ewww,” Marcia whispered, shaking her head.

Esther firmly said, “Janie, you’ve got a health service here, right, at the college? Go see the doctor first thing, talk to him, ask about birth control, OK?”

Reluctantly, I answered, “Really? Even if we don’t ever do that again?”

Esther said, “Oh, you’re going to do that again. Believe me, you’re going to want to do that again.”

********

!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!

Tuesday night, Jeanne showed up at dinner in a shimmery black cape, tall conical hat, wand, and black mask. “Where’s your costume? Aren’t you going to the Yard, protect the little kids knocking on doors?”

I was not a fan of Halloween. “I have a hard enough time just being me, much less dressing up as someone else. Can I just go with you, keep you company?” I looked at Jeanne in her witch’s outfit, and Marcia, dressed as a cheerleader, tight ribbed letter sweater hanging down to her jeans below. She jiggled pom-poms in my face. “Where’d you get that?” I asked.

“Didn’t I tell you? Junior year, I was actually a cheerleader. Of course, with no football team, it was more of an honorary position, I guess.” She threw one arm up, the other down, stuck one hip out, and, pirouetting around, danced out the door.

Outside, Jeanne asked, “So you went to New York on Saturday. But you didn’t come home until Sunday afternoon. Um, what did you guys do? Where did you stay?”

Marcia added, “Jeanne and I decided, while you were gone, we need to make a pact together. About boys. And sex.”

“Everything but…” Jeanne explained.

“Everything but?” I wondered.

Marcia went on. “In high school, boys were always looking at me, taking me out, expecting me to … do things. The school was mostly Catholic, and some of the girls, we vowed, ‘Never”, we’re not going to let our lives get messed up just because some boy wants to, how do I say it, “experiment” on us. But we didn’t want to be seen as prudes, so we drew up some ground rules, and all swore to each other. I’m starting to feel the need for that again.” She paused as we came to Mass. Ave, the traffic halting us as we crossed over to Harvard. “The TA in my childhood development class, Esther, she’s married. I asked her about it, about how she handled it when she was in school. She’s really cool, she said she’d show us some things.”

That Friday, we went to Esther’s apartment. She’d convinced her husband Nathan to have a boys’ night out.

Esther was short, wiry, almost hyperkinetic. Large black glasses framed her face under short black hair, giving her an owlish appearance. She turned to the television, switching off Walter Cronkite in mid-sentence while khakied GIs slogged through a swamp, rifles held up over their heads.

“Men…” she whispered, more to herself than us. Louder, she went on. “You all want to be shrinks, right? What was it Socrates said, ‘Know thyself’? You may think he means, your mind, who you are.” Esther was about 5 years older than us, married, graduated the previous year from Brandeis. She exuded worldly self assurance. “When I was your age, high school and starting college, I didn’t know much. About myself. About my body, what it wanted, what it could do. I found out a lot, by making a lot of mistakes, stupid things. No reason you should have to make the same ones. Let’s see what we can learn together.”

That night, we talked about what we’d done, or really hadn’t done, with boys. What we’d learned, or really hadn’t learned in high school health class. We shared our knowledge, or really our lack of it. Esther just let us talk, looking around our little group, eyebrows raised, a human talking stick keeping the conversation moving.

Jeanne: “At school, in class, it all sounded so mechanical, so anatomical. “Penis’, ‘Vagina’, “Spermatozoa’, ‘Ovaries, tubes’.”

Me: “I know. Never anything about what do do with physical feelings, just vague talk about love and responsibility.”

Marcia: “And why did we have to be separate, boys and girls? Wouldn’t it be better to talk about this with them, rather than just talk about them?”

Me: “Yeah, the same’s true when we try to learn from each other. Anybody ever had a conversation about sex, a serious conversation, I mean, with boys and girls – women – together. And don’t start about mothers, or sisters…they either clam up, or make jokes. At least mine did.”

Jeanne: “Have any of you ever looked at yourself? Or someone else? Down there, I mean.  I’m gonna be a doctor, and I’ve looked at those anatomy books and drawings. But that’s isolated, and two dimensional. I wish I knew more, and I don’t even have a boyfriend, not like Janie.”

Esther looked back at me, raising an eyebrow and cocking her head to one side. “Well…?”

I considered her unasked question. Mike and never did talk about what we were doing, kissing, feeling, lying together. “It almost seems a cliche, but I want him to love me…I think…I feel the way to do that is hold him close, have him feel that without me asking or telling him. Does that make any sense?”

“Has he asked you to do anything you don’t want to?”

“Nooo. He’s unsure, I think, maybe even a little frightened of scaring me away.”

Esther just nodded. I couldn’t think of what else to say, so she turned to Jeanne. “You know, maybe we should all bring a mirror when we meet again. And is it OK if I ask a couple of others to come? The more we are, the more we know together, is what I say.”

Two weeks later, Nathan away at a Celtics’ game, seven of us were gathered in a circle. We each had a mirror – compacts, handheld, round, square, all kinds. Esther brought out two flashlights, and trained her floor lamps into the center.

“Is anybody going to feel uncomfortable if we take our clothes off, and look at ourselves? Has anyone tried to do that before?”

Marcia giggled nervously. “Playing doctor?”

“No, I mean since you grew up, got bigger, filled out, started having periods, all that.”

Another girl said, “How would you do that? We’re not dogs, we can’t, like, lick ourselves.”

Jeanne lifted her hand mirror and waved it a bit. “I get it. That’s what this is for, right?”

It felt a little funny – no it felt a lot funny – but we all took off our pants or skirts, shed our underwear, drew up our knees, and held the mirrors between them. Gasps, laughs, and sighs emanated softly from the circle.

Esther was speaking. “Now, if you’ve ever put a tampon in, you probably have a general idea. Uh, nobody’s on her period now, right?” No response. She went on. “Though maybe you never stopped to look, you just wanted to get it out and in, didn’t pay any attention to anything else down there. So. Take your hand, your free hand, and make a ‘V’ with the first two fingers, pointing down. You see those wrinkly things in the middle?”

“Labia?” someone said.

“Right. Labia. Means lips. Let’s call ‘em that, OK? Try to push them apart gently, slowly, with your two fingers, push them wider.”

It was a little tricky for me, someone without a lot of hand/eye coordination, to navigate that maneuver looking through a mirror, but I soon got it. “My hair keeps getting in the way!” I groused. 

One of the new girls, a blond with thin wispy locks, grumbled, “At least you’ve got some.”

“Ah, there it is!” I exclaimed.

Next to me, Jeanne turned her head. “What is?”

“My hymen!”

That same blond, a bit more dejectedly this time, said, “At least you’ve got one…” Giggles all around.

Pale pink inside the darker crescent of those lips, a few stray black curly hairs tickling the folds radiating from its center, it looked so small, so vulnerable, so … lonely? “No way anything fits through there, Esther.” I whined.

“Have you ever seen a new born baby’s head? We can’t see it well, ‘cause we’re not looking all the way inside, but the vagina, that whole area, is pretty elastic. Think of one of those little drink umbrellas, or a fan. It’s all compact when folded. But open it up, see how big it is.”

Jeanne blurted out, “Where’s my clitoris?”

Marcia snickered, “You sure you’ve got one?”

One of the other girls said, “Clit..Clit-us? That’s not something they told us about in Health. They named it, pointed to it in those drawings,  but didn’t seem to say much about it.”

“OK, the clitoris,” Esther declaimed. “To me, this is where the magic happens. Anatomically, it’s the same thing as a penis on a boy.”

“But it just never grows or gets big?” someone asked.

“Oh, it can grow, can get bigger. But that’s not the point. You know how sometimes a boys’ head seems to be focussed on nothing but his dick?” More laughs. “Well, we’ve got all those same nerves they have there, but all compressed, compacted into that little spot. So much more sensitive, so much more…powerful…when it comes to feeling sex.”

On the way back to Cabot, Jeanne wondered, “I don’t know if that helped or not. I’m still afraid of doing anything with a boy, even more afraid now, they might hurt me there. Marcia, Janie…?”

Marcia slowed, looked away, and, keeping her head down, said, “There was this guy, senior year. He took me to the prom, in his parents’ station wagon. Somebody must have put something into the punch, or maybe he just did it to my drink. I was so tired, I couldn’t fight, after he folded the seat down in the back of the car. I don’t know if he did anything or not, I was so out of it. It didn’t feel like it afterwards, my clothes were still clean. But he still bragged about it to his friends the next week. Nobody said anything to me, but they all gave me looks, like, ‘Oh, the great Marcia Levine, she’s not so smart after all…”

Thanksgiving was the next week. Mike and were both staying at school, ostensibly to study, write papers. He planned to drive up Friday morning, we’d spend the day in Cambridge and Boston, maybe go to Lynn shore Drive where he was born, seen Nahant and Salem. I realised we hadn’t talked about what to do after that.

********

!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!

We must have forgotten, that day, about getting back to Cambridge. The topic never came up, not on the way to New York, not in the deli, or walking through the Park, or on the train ride back. I had a round trip ticket, Boston-to-Grand Central. Somehow, though, I found myself getting off with him in Meriden. I thought, “Maybe just a kiss good-bye, then I’ll get back on.”

He held on so tight, so long, though, it seemed natural, as conductors whistled the stragglers into the cars and lifted the stairs inside, finally pushing the doors closed, for me to simply stay with him. I had no plan, just a slight inability to say good-bye.

“I guess Rich and Larry aren’t coming back tonight. He said something about going out this weekend.”

“You know why?”

“Larry is such a wonk. He wants to be a lawyer, a judge someday. He studies more than we do. Finally he got restless, asked Rich to take him somewhere. I thought they were going down to a mixer at Conn. College, would get back late tonight.”

I looked around his suite. He had divided the large common area in half with a few two-by-fours hauled in from the nearby hockey rink construction site. Most of this make-shift wall was covered by several burlap curtains nailed to the superstructure, with a swinging fabric door in the middle, next to a shelf which looked like a little bar. No liquor was in evidence  though, only a green bulbous Chianti bottle holding a half-melted candle covered with waxy drippings. He had one bed, originally the bottom of a bunk set, underneath two windows in his jerry-rigged bedroom. Out in the truncated living room was the other bottom bunk, covered with a thin-ribbed faded red cotton blanket and a long vinyl back pillow.

I plopped down on this couch, and perused the contents of his bookshelf to my right. Without thinking, I pulled out The Abnormal Personality by Robert White, opened it up and said as I randomly flipped through the pages, “White. You know, he’s a famous guy in Cambridge. Everybody talks about him in the psych department.” I noticed Mike’s meticulous green highlighting, covering every page though Chapter 4, “The Integration of Personality.” One part had been furiously highlighted and starred. I read aloud, “Hey! Listen to this. ‘There is a certain restricted portion of the total range of intelligence which is most favorable to the development of a successful and well-rounded personality, somewhere between 125 and 155 I.Q.’ What did you say your mother tested you at?”

“138, I think.”

I went on, “He says, ‘Adolescents in this range are enough brighter than average to win the confidence of others, bringing about leadership, and a superior efficiency in managing their own lives. And, there are enough of them to afford mutual esteem and understanding.’ Reminds me of being at Avondale, and now in Cambridge. I feel at home, but not estranged.”

“OK, but there is more to you, to us, then just how smart you are. You know how to have fun, you can smile about your life. You’re not just a grind in school, I think that’s why…that’s why I like being with you so much.”

I put the book back on the shelf. Time to deal with the elephant in the room, I decided. “I’m staying here tonight, right? Can I use the bathroom down the hall?”

Only a little flustered, Mike hesitated briefly, eyes darting back and forth, then said, “Sure. I’ll stand outside, make sure it’s safe, OK?”

Back in the living room, seated on the couch again, this time with Mike, we fell together. One kiss, then two, and I leaned back, gently pulling him down next to me. The pillow left little room for both of us. Mike sat up, tugging at my arm, and guided me through the burlap curtain to the bed beneath the windows. I was thinking about the “mutual esteem and understanding” phrase in White’s textbook. I knew we loved each other, we said as much all the time. I knew that meant more than respect for each other’s minds, dreams, hopes, and ideals. I knew it also led to this, towards getting into bed together at night. We both got in, fully clothed.

“This is stupid,” I observed. I took off my shirt and skirt, slipped down my hose, and tugged at his pants. He finally got the idea, and pulled those off. We both worked on his pullover, getting it caught on his glasses, which he laid on the window ledge. Now what, I wondered, as we pulled the sheets over us. I certainly had no idea, and was pretty sure he didn’t either. Tentatively, I laid my head on his stomach, rubbing up and down across his belly-button. He felt so soft, so warm, I had to let him know.

“I like the way you feel, your stomach, here.”

“Why?”

Are you kidding, I thought. Now is not the time for analysis. It’s time to explore, to find and feed the feelings we each were hiding. “Shush,” I whispered. “Lie here with me, OK? Let’s just touch each other a while.” With that, he turned on his side to face me, started kissing my lips and cheeks, neck and shoulders. He stroked my head, my hair, and rested there, lost in those locks he professed to love so much. Then his hands roamed across my back, down my arms, feeling my hips, questioning, wondering as he went. I started to lose myself, began to open up to him, trying to meld my mind with his. I closed my eyes and saw a glistening, glowing tunnel, easy to enter, easier to slide down and through. One last gate stood in our way.

He stayed silent, still questioning with his arms around me. They slowly relaxed as he sighed and gently rolled me away from him. He fumbled briefly with my bra clasps, until I helped release them, slinging the straps across my shoulders. He pulled me closer, my back caressing his chest, my legs cupped and curved against his.

Two fingers tracing  down from my ribs past my hips, he whispered, “I like the way you’re soft and round here.”

Flippantly, I came back with, “We’re are built like that so we can bear our young.”

Sounding puzzled, he said, “What, you mean, like rest a baby on your hip?”

I thought of a baby growing inside, enough room for a seven pound kid. I wondered why I’d said that. “No. We have to carry babies, inside, we’re made for that…” This was so weird. I hoped he wasn’t taking it the wrong way. “Women, I mean. Not me. No way I’m ready for that.”

“Yeah. That’s scary.” He reached around, found one breast, and cupped it in his right hand. Quietly, he asked, “Does that feel good?,”

It did, I couldn’t deny it, not to myself or him. “Mmm hmm,” I murmured, slowly snuggling my body closer to him.

“You’re just the right size, we fit perfectly together.”

We fell asleep like that, huddled together against the late October chill.

********

!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!

Only The Birthday Party, by Harold Pinter, had open rush tickets. I didn’t tell Mike, but the New Yorker critic had panned it. It involved a lot of word play, scary confrontations, and the occasional blackout during the worst of the spats. Mike thought much of it was funny, and was in a jolly mood as we left the Booth theatre into a chilly drizzle. We found a small deli near the park, glad to spend more time out of the rain.

Still a little energized from his first Broadway play, Mike enthused, “That was fun. I like it when you almost can’t figure out what they’re talking about.”

“He’s English, you know. British.”

“Who?”

“Pinter, the writer. All those actors are American, but the play opened in London ten years ago. Maybe that’s why it seemed a little odd.”

“Mmm…” was all he said. Then, “I didn’t tell you yet, but my father wants to take us out to Sun Valley this Christmas, to see S. He wants to learn how to ski, he says. He’s a real jock, you know.”

“A jock?”

“Yeah, he was a triple letterman at the Naval Academy. He’s always learning some new sport. First, golf, when he got to Cincinnati. He’s got a little trophy from a tournament he won. Then he started ice skating, pulled my sister and I into it, remember? And he built that pool in the backyard, so he could swim half the year. Put in a basketball hoop, coached a Knothole team, and all that.”

“Knothole?”

“It’s baseball for kids. I played when I was 8, 10, 12 maybe.”

“Were you any good?”

“Well, not so much when I started out in the third grade, But then I got glasses, and I could actually see the ball, so I could get some hits. Say, I got spiked once, playing second base, when somebody slid into me. Wanna see?” he said, starting to pull up his left pant leg.

“No! No, not here.”

“Oh” he rubbed his left shin, as if remembering. “It was weird. I had a big gash in my skin half way down my leg, but it didn’t really hurt, just was bleeding. My father took me to the doctor after the game ‘cause there was this little thing hanging out, and he thought I might need stitches. We got there, the doctor took a quick look, said, “Oh, that’s just a little piece of fat. Don’t worry, this won’t hurt a bit.’ He grabbed a pair of scissors, and cut it right off. He was right, I didn’t feel anything. I guess there’s no nerves in fat? He only put on a little band-aid. You sure you don’t want to see the scar?”

I scruchned up my nose, and wondered how he could find all that so fascinating, playing baseball, his father’s sports, getting injured. I worked on my corn beef sandwich and thought,  that’s one of the things intriguing, attractive, really, about him, that’s he’s so at home in his body. He really does have a hidden grace when he moves, doesn’t have to worry that he might accidentally knock over a glass of water when he’s reaching for his hot pastrami sandwich. That and his little boy eagerness, in such contrast to his poems and his late-night thoughts when we talked about who we were and wanted to be, made him hard to resist.

Outside, the rain had stopped. Cars, buses, taxis, people, the whole panoply of New York Street life assaulted us as we left the deli. Soon we found ourselves outside the Plaza, looking across to Central Park.

“You need to – we need to – go in and walk, show you what’s here.”

“This is Central Park? It’s so big. And hilly. I thought it was all flat, Manhattan.”

Darting across 59th street, we skirted the pond and soon arrived at the bridge spanning its northern end. Fall colors were in full, defiant beauty, as if holding back the coming winter. A riot of flaming red ivy covered the stonework arch. Iridescent orange, sun-like yellow, and fading green flanked the upward curving piers on each side. Above, grey clouds lightened to white, a smattering of blue fighting to push through. Birds were everywhere, flying, flitting, alighting on the branches above, knocking leaves free to float like swinging hammocks to the water below.

“It’s so much…quieter in here, “ Mike marveled.

“Come on. I want to show you something.”

“What? Where?”

We skirted the zoo, animals pacing in the wrought-iron cages, looking out-of-place and desolate. To our left, Wollman Rink appeared to be open, maybe for the first time this year. A Zamboni turned tight circles. leaving a sheen of wetness behind, quickly freezing. Families with ear muffs and scarves laced up, waiting to slip and slide. Children’s cries pierced the quiet, anticipating excitements to come. “Wait, OK? You’ll like it. It’s up near the Met.”

Soon, we turned off the road, heading east, and came to the statue of Hans Christian Anderson. Tiny sailboats, remotely controlled from the far edge of the lake, motored along its surface. Off to one side, the Mad Hatter smiled at a mouse, sitting on its haunches atop a bronze toadstool, while the White Rabbit checked his watch. Alice, Dinah in her lap, stretched her hands out towards the edges of her own, much larger mushroom, as if deciding which side to eat.

“Yeah, wow, I love Alice in Wonderland.” Mike exalted. “In seventh grade, we read that, and then had to write a story based on it. I made up an encounter she had with a unihorn, that’s a unicorn who could play music through its horn! And before, when I was maybe three or four, I told my mother I wanted to be Alice for Halloween.”

“How’d that go?”

“I remember getting a lot of candy that year, and wearing a blue skirt with a white blouse.”

“It doesn’t seem to have affected you too much. I mean, you don’t still want to be a girl. Or is there something you’re not telling me?”

He took the question seriously. “Humm…I guess not. The next year, kindergarten, I had a crush on a girl in class, then every year at Woodland Park, it was another girl, until Kathy – you remember Kathy?”

Kathy. The girl with the curly black hair. Miss Cincinnati. A little gruffly, I said, “Sure, she got you into South Pacific, right?”

“You never forget anything, do you?”

“Yeah, it’s a curse. But it did come in handy on the SATs, and It’s Academic.”

We kept walking towards the Met. Mike continued, “I feel sometimes like there are two of you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, there’s one part of you that’s all serious and adult. No-nonesense, intense. The other side, you love little kids, love to laugh and have silly fun. Maybe even love me?”

“I don’t think that’s so surprising. We all – or at least you and me, and the friends we have – we’re not so far from when we were little, and it’s not that long until maybe we have a family of our own ahead, more kids. But to get from one to the other, we have to, for want of a better word, grow up. We have to find a life, create it from a vague dream, build it, and that takes work, serious work.’

“I know, I know, but I don’t want to change. That’s like Alice, she was always changing, and she got very confused. I want to always like having fun, to play at life, not have life play with me. Even when I’m older, I don’t see myself losing that, becoming too serious about anything. Never forget the little kid who made me what I am today, or something like that.”

We’d come to the Met, it’s stolid grant walls rising almost menacingly above us. ‘You’re sounding just like Holden Caulfield, now that you’ve come to Manhattan.” I looked at my watch. “Think we should get back to Grand Central? It’s almost 5.”

“How do we do that?”

“Just go out here, take the subway, I guess. Should only take 15 minutes.” I didn’t want to lose the thoughts I was getting, so I went on. “I’m not nearly so sure of who I am as you seem to be. I get all mixed up with what’s expected of me, and what I feel inside about myself. And that’s all wrapped up with being a girl, I think. At Avondale, and now at Harvard, I’ve always felt a little on the outside looking in.”

“You?” He sounded incredulous. “You were the queen of your class. And you got into the best college in the country!”

“Yeah, but being at Radcliffe, as smart as we all are supposed to be, we’re still second-class citizens. Harvard was there first, it’s their professors and classes. We’re still fighting to just be considered an equal part of it. They still think it’s a finishing school for very ambitious women.” I wanted to say, “You’ll never get what it’s like being a woman, no matter how hard you try, Michael Harrison,” but I held back. I felt a pull, a need inside fighting to rule me, a need to have, to possess, and be possessed by him.

We made it back to Meriden by nine, got to his room in Clark Hall by 9:30. No one was home. A little note, stuck to the temporary wall, a maroon burlap curtain actually, which cordoned off Mike’s space from the living room, read. “Larry and I are off to my house this weekend. Be back for dinner Sunday night.” It was signed, “Rich.”

********

!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!

Eddie called me a few days later from Providence. “I’m going down to D.C. this weekend for the Mobe. You want to come with me? This war has to end, we have to raise the stakes, make it impossible for Johnson to keep sending troops there.”

“The ‘Mobe’?”

“That’s the National Mobilization Committee. To end the war. All the anti-war groups, all over the country, set it up this spring. Don’t you remember, in April, the march in New York to the UN? Dr. Spock, Martin Luther King, the SDS set it up, and now they’re going to Washington, to keep it all going.”

“How does that work, Eddie? How does a march, even if it’s thousands of people, make a difference?

“It’s not any one thing, Janie. It’s a single drum beating, that gets joined by another and another and another, until they get so loud those people have to listen.”

“Well, I only just got to college. I feel like Alice through the looking glass – I have to run twice as fast simply to stay in the same place. So much reading, so much writing, everyone’s so smart, knows more than me, has more insight than I do.”

“Sure, I get it, you’ve got to study. I know how hard that is. I went to Brown, remember? Well, maybe there’s something you can do for me, for us, then. Arlene wants to go to, so we’d have to take Denise, but it’s no place for a kid, I think, so she’s going to stay home with Denise. Want to come down here for the weekend, baby-sit maybe? Then the two of us could go together. We’d be back early Sunday. You could take the train down here. She still naps every day, sleeps ten, eleven hours at night. You can do lots of studying with her, and on the train. Whadya say?”

I did want to see Denise, see what she’d be doing, how she’d be talking now. And I hadn’t left Cambridges, hadn’t really left the campus at all, except for that one day with Mike. Impulsively, I blurted out, “Sure. Pick me up at the station Friday around dinner, I guess?”

Denise kept me busy all Saturday. I read one page in my psych text, but otherwise I was catering to her whims, trying to keep her from running out into the street, or getting caught half-way up the jungle gym at the playground. Even so, I felt relieved to be free of Harvard stress, to be reminded that real life wasn’t always an intense discussion of endless new ideas. A little kid grounds you real fast, I decided.

Eddie and Arlene came back around noon. I drove Denise down to the station to meet them. The idea was to take that same train on into Boston, while they drove back home. We had maybe thirty or forty minutes to talk.

As soon as Denise saw Arlene, she ran to her and jumped in her arms. Hauling her little girl up, up, kissing her all over, then resting her on one hip, Arlene asked “Was she any trouble? Did she eat like she’s supposed to? What about a nap?” She didn’t really want an answer, as she turned away and walked over to the car, leaving me with Eddie.

He looked down, a bit bedraggled, baggy eyes, wrinkled shirt and twisted pants. He must have slept on the train. Still full of energy, though, he excitedly  described the day. After a few speeches at the monument – “None as dramatic or inspiring as Martin Luther King” – 50,000 people walked across the river to the Pentagon. There, things seemed to get a little wild.

“There were a lot of cops. Thousands of them, really. Army, too, MPs, Marshalls. It was chaos. There was one guy, he had a bunch of flowers, going along sticking them in the barrels of the Army guns. Another group of guys, I think one of them was Abbie Hoffman, were acting like a bunch of hippies, just saying crazy things, trying to get people naked. At one point, they chanted and waved their arms up and down. Said they were trying to levitate the Pentagon, bring the whole war machine tumbling down. People broke through the fences set up all around. Sometimes, the MPs would grab them, by the hair or the collar, hit them with nightsticks. People kept saying the time for protest is over, it’s time for resistance. Hundreds – hundreds, Janie – of people got hauled off, got arrested. There was blood all over the steps. I don’t know where it’s all going to end, I don’t know how they can keep fighting when so many of us are against it.”

“That sounds scary, Eddie. Are you OK?”

“Arlene was with me. I’m not going to let the mother of our child get in any trouble. We stayed out of all that, didn’t even burned by any tear gas.” He almost laughed, but turned serious. “Dow Chemical is coming to Harvard this week. I heard at the march there’s going to be protests. Same thing all over every campus when they show up, recruiting science majors for the war machine.”

“Why Dow Chemical? What’s so bad about them?

“Napalm. You’ve hear of napalm, haven’t you”

I knew the word, but nothing about what it was, or why it might be bad. I shook my head, “Yeah, but not really.”

“Napalm. It’s like liquid fire. They shower it down from airplanes, to burn the jungle, so they can see the Viet Cong hiding there. Only problem, once it leaves the plane, you can’t control where it goes. It burns people, Janie, burns women, kids. It’s evil, it’s wrong, and Dow makes it. We need to starve them of new talent coming in from good schools, Harvard, places like that.”

The next Tuesday, hundreds of people gathered in the Yard, to protest the war. The SDS, the Students for a Democratic Society, called for an action the next day against Dow Chemical recruiters. Wednesday morning, after my morning class, I headed over to a mass of students with a sprinkling of faculty between Mallinckrodt Hall and the Conant chemistry building. The SDS leaders soon realized the recruiter in Conant had no interviews scheduled, that the real action was over in Mallinckrodt, so they urged the crowd to block that building. The Dean of the College was just coming out with the real recruiter, hoping to sneak him away from the protesters. Once he saw the crowd, they darted back inside. Dean Glimp then spent most of the next seven hours attempting to negotiate his “release”. Scores of students gave their Bursar’s cards in a thick packet to him, calling his bluff when he said he would sever their relationship with Harvard if they didn’t disperse and allow the recruiter to leave. It was a heated confrontation, but without any of the violence Eddie had described in Washington just a few days earlier. Even so, I felt things could erupt at any moment. My legs were wobbly, my mind raced, as I walked back home to Cabot, grabbed a few more books, and headed got Hilles for some pre-dinner studying.

That evening, I was still jittery from the scene in the yard. Jeanne and Marcia were both engrossed in writing papers due that week, so I chanced a call to Mike. He now shared a top-floor room with two other sophomores, and they had their own telephone, so I was pretty certain I could talk with him. His part of the suite was actually the living room, converted into his space while the other two occupied separate rooms intended, with bunks, for two each. How they had gotten this deal, I never really understood, but it seemed fairly luxurious.

“Mike, can we go to New York next weekend…”

“Uh, I’ve got this Organic Chemistry test on Monday, and I’m not doing so well there. I haven’t figured it out yet. I got a C minus on the first test last week.”

“I really need to get away. They had an anti-war rally here today, and I’m feeling so tense. I want to see a play, maybe walk up to Central Park.”

“How would that work, anyway?”

“I could take the train down to Meriden Saturday morning, you meet me there, then we go into the City, find a student rush matinee, it doesn’t matter which one, one with tickets. I’ll look in the New Yorker, see what’s happening. OK, please?”

He was quiet for several seconds, thinking. “Right. I can study tonight, tomorrow, Friday. What time does that train get in?”

Of course, I’d already figured this out. “The schedule says if I take the first one, I’m in Meridan at 9:12, we get into New York by 11:45.”

********

!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT!*****!!!!!

It drizzled the evening of Columbus Day as we headed to the musty theatre. I wore a London Fog raincoat my mother insisted I bring to Radcliffe, a scarf covering my hair. Jeanne sported an umbrella, while Marci just clomped along, bare-headed, rain dripping down her nose onto her tennis shoes. In her jeans, she seemed at tune with the crowds around us.

We’d misjudged the time it took to walk the few blocks to the Square. Marcia saw the line waiting to get in, observed, “I don’t want to stand out here getting wet. Let’s go buy our tickets, then wait in the coffee shop there next door?” Maybe you should have worn a hat, I thought to myself.

Inside the little cafe, Marcia seemed at ease ordering a “cup, black,” while Jeanne had no trouble with “cream and some sugar, please.” I’d never been a coffee drinker, never even tried it before, but I didn’t want them to know that. I rummaged in my brain for the safest way to try the stuff for the first time, and said, “Same,” while pointing to Jeanne. The waitress was back in no time, carrying three mugs covered with the Harvard Ve-ri-tas shield, steaming and smelling…well  it was enticing. I demurely tried a sip. A little harsh, mellowed by the cream. I added another dollop of sugar to staunch the taste.

“Anything special this weekend?” I asked

“I’m going home. I’ve got a bunch of laundry piling up, it’s starting to smell.” Marcia lived an hour away in Rhode Island and could easily get there on the train to Providence.

“I’m going to hole up and finally learn about DNA and RNA and ribosomes and proteins. They’re just starting to figure it all out, and they expect us to understand it? You?”

Mike was driving up Saturday morning. We’d have all day and evening, then he’d go back when the dorm closed. I explained all this to Marcia’s intense interest. Jeanne seemed a little distracted. I went on. “Have you heard anything about changing the dorm rules?”

Marcia seemed up on the rumors. “After that strike last year, about living off-campus, they put together a group, faculty, staff, and some students, to look at housing. A girl I went to high school with knows one of the student reps. She says they’re talking about doing away with sign out, with rules about guests, everything. The idea is, they want to encourage us to stay on-campus, to not go off-off.”

Jeanne perked up and repeated, “‘Off-off’? What’s that?”

“We already have the ‘off-campus’ living option. When you get to be a junior, you can pick a room in one of the apartments right next to campus, which the school owns. It’s not much different that being in Cabot, but it’s more like home than a dorm. ‘Off-off’ means you pay rent for an apartment not owned by the school. You still have to pay student activity fees, though. That’s already happening, and they don’t want everybody to do it, so making dorms less cloistered is supposed to …”

I interrupted. “When? When are they going to change those rules. Not that I mind, really, I like the quiet after ten, like knowing that I won’t run into a stranger in the bathroom, that I can walk around in whatever.”

“I don’t know. Maybe next semester? Anyway, I heard that with all this being planned, the RAs and the house mothers are already starting to kind of look the other way on all that.”

It was time to get in line for the movie. I’d drunk the full cup, and noticed I was starting to feel a little funny, more alive, almost like I had an electric charge buzzing around me. I hoped it wouldn’t keep me up half the night.

Mike arrived two days later, a little after ten. I was waiting for him in the downstairs lounge, reading a book our RA had told me about, The Second Sex,  by a woman named Betty Friedan. I slammed it shut and tucked it tight against my side when Mike strode in.

“What’s that?”, he asked, pointing at the book. No “Hi”, no “Are are you?”, no “I missed you.” I’d gotten used to his direct, to-the-point greetings. I knew he’d eventually smile, listen, and maybe even melt in front of me. Still, it was jarring.

“Nothing. Something for class. Let’s go upstairs, show you my room, OK? How was the drive, any trouble?”

“It’s freeway all the way, on Saturday morning not too many trucks on the Turnpike. Even driving here over the bridge, no problem. I parked right outside on Walker Street.”

We spent the day in Boston, walking through the theatre district and by the Old North Church downtown off the Commons. He was fascinated by the old cemeteries salted amongst the buildings.

“Look at those gravestones! The oldest ones, they have that devil face. Then later, mid 1700s, it starts to soften a bit, like a Jolly Roger with wings. Maybe death was getting less frightening?” 

Boston, especially on a weekend, is filled with college and university students, maybe 50-60,000 of us. Mike and I we felt at home in some ways. Our clothes, though, stood out a bit. We still sported slacks and skirts, button down cotton shirts, clean overcoats. The wave of dressing down, outfitting yourself at the surplus store, had started. 

After dinner at Durgin Park, slabs of roast beef all around, we took the T back to Cambridge, for my second viewing of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Mike was quickly drawn in to the fast-paced black and white sci-fi fantasy in which a middle-aged man in small-town California finds everyone around him acting strange, numb, slow. He discovers that giant pea pods are being laid next to his sleeping neighbors, replacing them with perfect replicas who act like unfeeling robots. Near the end, as he goes a little crazy, he trys to stop a truck load of pods from heading out of town, towards Los Angeles. A police man, actually one of the pod people, hauls him off the truck and begins to beat him with a night stick. With that, the crowd in the theatre starts booing, hissing, even throwing wadded up paper at the screen.

Befuddled, Mike asked, “What are they doing? What’s that all about?”

I was beginning to learn it was my job to bring Mike out of the ‘50s into the ‘60s. He seemed stuck in a backwater, oblivious to changes happening around him. “The police – pigs,” I whispered. “We had a demonstration here last week at the Square, against the war. Cops started beating some kids, making them all bloody, arresting them. Didn’t you hear about that? Isn’t anything like happening in CT?” The movie had ended, credits rolled, and I went on, normal voice now. “Nobody likes the cops here. They’re the bad guys.” Mike looked puzzled. “Didn’t you hear about the Mobe?” Mike’s befuddled expression grew wider. “The mobilization against the war. Like last spring, when they marched on Washington. A bunch of people are going to march on the Pentagon, from the Lincoln Memorial. Phil Ochs is going to sing. Dr. Spock, that pediatrician, he’s going to speak. I’d like to go, but I’ve got so much stuff I have to study for.”

Mike was pensive the whole way back to Cabot, saying nothing. I walked beside him. As we left the Ave, he laid his arm around my waist, squeezed me a little, and finally said, “Yeah. I guess the war’s not right. But what can we do? We can’t vote, not yet. We – I – want to stay in school, need to get those grades to get into med school.”

“But people are dying. Not just us, all those people who live there, too. And the ones from here, the ones who have to go, they don’t have a chance like you do, no college deferral. The poorest people, the ones who live in the ghettos, the blacks – they’re the ones who are dying, and for what? For what, Mike?”

“I know, I know. I always thought the police were the good guys, though. Every little kid wants to be a fireman, or a policeman, right? Why do they have to sound so hateful, those people at the movie? Are you turning into one of them, one of the protesters?”

“I know, I know. I always thought the police were the good guys, though. Every little kid wants to be a fireman, or a policeman, right? Why do they have to sound so hateful, those people at the movie? Are you turning into one of them, one of the protesters?”

“I don’t like the war. Like you say, it’s not right. But last some point, we have to act on what we think what we feel, don’t we?”

Mike stayed quiet, as if he were mulling two sides of an argument over and over in his mind, just as he would for a debate, trying to find the answers, the right things to say, for both sides. It was nearly ten, and he had to leave. I patted his cheek, he rubbed my nose, and off he went, down the stairs and back out on the road.

“I don’t like the war. Like you say, it’s not right. But at some point, we have to act on what we think what we feel, don’t we?”

Mike stayed quiet, as if he were mulling two sides of an argument over and over in his mind, just as he would for a debate, trying to find the answers, the right things to say, for both sides. It was nearly ten, and he had to leave. I patted his cheek, he rubbed my nose, and off he went, down the stairs and back out on the road.

!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!

Conversation was easy with Jeanne. I started with that college staple, “Know what you’re majoring in?”

With what I would come to know as her characteristic self-assurance, she said, “I’m going to be a doctor, so I guess it’s got to be biology, right?”

“A doctor? What kind?”

“Probably a pediatrician. I really like working with kids, watching them grow, helping them. But I’m also thinking about psychiatry.”

“Medical school? Aren’t you anxious it’s hard to get into? And what about being a women there?”

“My father knows a little bit about admissions, he says things are changing. Like at his school in St. Louis, there were only five women admitted two years ago, they’re over ten now, and it keeps rising. He says, “I’d rather you become a doctor, than marry one.’ It’s funny, I know, turning the cliche around. It does feel like we’ve got more of a chance now, don’t you think? What about you?”

Inwardly, I was jealous she was aiming so high, and a little in awe she did not seem perturbed that almost everyone in medical school would be male.

“I like psychology, that’ll probably be my major.”

“Well, why aren’t you thinking about medical school, too, about psychiatry?”

That was a tough question. Despite my valedictory status at high school, my stellar test scores, all the support I’d received from teachers for academic success, no one had ever suggested, “Sarah, you should be a doctor.” When I joined the “Health Careers Club” at Avondale, sophomore year, all I heard about were the opportunities in nursing. Then I met Michael. Somehow, when I learned of his ambition to be a psychiatrist, I didn’t want to be competing with him, or people as smart as him, in college or medical school. I saw “Psychologist” as a more humanistic path to follow, one which opened up the breadth of the human mind and spirit. Medicine required a narrow science track, limited to only what could be observed and counted, measured and treated with drugs. But I didn’t know how to tell her all that, so I just said, “Funny, that’s what my boyfriend wants to do, be a psychiatrist.”

We were heading towards the Square, the Coop, almost at Mass. Ave. Under one of the elm trees,  Jeanne, turning to face me, pulled up short and demanded, “What? What do you mean, ‘boyfriend’?”

It might have been the warmth of the afternoon sun, but I could feel my forehead start to sweat. I thought, “That’s what an aristocrat would say, ‘sweat’.  ‘Perspiration’, that’s a peasant talking.” I gave a nervous giggle, and stepped into the shade. “Uh, yeah, he’s a sophomore at W now. He’s coming up Columbus day weekend.”

“Why? Why do you want to be tied down with someone, now, when you’re starting college. Do you think you’ll really have time for that?” When I didn’t answer right away, she went on, “What’s he like?”

Words started tumbling out. “He swims. He’s always moving around, can’t sit still. Doesn’t like people, but get him out of his shell, and be turns on a charm switch. Then, when he starts talking, he won’t shut up. He knows everything, or at least thinks he does. He’s like me in that way, but we’re really not the same at all…”

She interrupted, “What’s the best part of being with him?”

“He’s funny. He writes poems. He doesn’t push me. Mostly, I just feel calm with him, like I don’t have to be somebody I’m not. I feel like the real me, I guess.”

No-nonsense, she asserted, “Well, don’t let him walk over you. Don’t let him get in the way of where you want to go, who you want to be. There was a boy last year, in high school, I guess maybe he was my boyfriend for a while. We went to the prom. We were both a little out of it, socially, it was our one chance to feel normal, going to that dance. I never felt close to him, though, didn’t feel anything magic or sparkly going on, like other girls seem to talk about. And then he started acting like he owned me, telling me what to wear, I should grow my hair, I didn’t know how to drive, stuff like that.” She looked at me expectantly.

“Mike’s not like that, I don’t think. He knows exactly where he’s going, what he wants to do most of the time. But he listens to me, like I’m the one in charge, sometimes.”

“Like?”

“Well, like, I showed him about the New Yorker. He thought it was just the cartoons, but after reading it a few times at my house, he went out and got a subscription, to go along with the Sports Illustrated he gets every week. And plays. And movies. His family is so midwest, his mother came from Iowa, his dad Montana. Not big city people at all. So I get to teach him all these things he hasn’t really been exposed to. I feel like the smart one then, the sophisticated girl.”

“Sounds like you might be too good for him.”

“I don’t think so. He’s the first guy – the first person – I’ve ever known who could hold his own with me. He was on the debate team, it’s impossible to win an argument with him. Best you can hope for is a grudging draw. And, he writes. He’s so good with words, talking and writing.”

By this time, we’d been walking down a crowded Mass. Ave. a while, almost to the Common. Hundreds of people, many of them young, were heading in all directions, disgorged every few minutes from the “T” station underground a few blocks ahead. Across the street we saw the Coop, and headed over. We both had our lists for the classes we planned on taking, and gravitated towards the psych section. We’d be in Psych 101 together. As we pawed through the stacks, a taller raven haired girl joined us. Seeing the lists in our hands, she asked, “You two in psych as well?”

I nodded, so she went on, “Hi! I’m Marcia, I guess we’re all freshman?”

She seemed just as nervous as I felt. In what sounded like my mother’s voice, I introduced myself. “Janie. Janie Stein. I – we” – indicating Jeanne – “ we’re both in Cabot, and taking psych 101.”

“Me too!” Her smile drained all fear and awkwardness from our encounter. She had a little bit of Boston in her words, not like the flat mid-western speech I was used to. “I’m up on the fifth floor. It’s a long climb, but I like the exercise.” Lean and graceful, Marcia moved easily between us and grabbed a thick textbook, holding it up triumphantly. “Found it! Here, one for each of you.”

Leaving the Coop together, our little band aimed south, past the law school, curved east with the Ave, and found ourselves at the edge of Harvard proper, at Brooks House. Walking past the red-brick walls, I asked, “Where’s all the ivy, then?”

Jeanne took me literally, explaining they had to tear much of it off, it was eating at the stone, making it crumble. Marcia laughed, and pointed ahead.

“There’s the Yard. Come on, I want to see Widener.”

We sent the next 30 minutes exploring our academic home for the next four years, pointing out the various building where we would be taking classes, the Houses where all the Harvard men lived, the massive library where all the knowledge in the world might be stored.

Exiting to the south, we found ourselves back on Massachusetts Avenue, near the Square. Spying a small theatre I raced across the street to examine the posters for upcoming movies.

Once Marcia and Jeanne arrived, I pointed at it, and asked, “‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers.’ What’s that?”

“I think it’s one of those sci-fi things from the ‘50s. When’s it going to be here?” Marcia said.

“Looks like the week of October 12-18. Columbus Day is a holiday, isn’t it. Want to go see it? We could probably use a break, some laughs, by then, I bet.” Jeanne said this. Well, maybe there’s more to her than just a serious side, I thought.

********

!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT *****!!!!!

Two weeks after Labor Day, we headed off to New England, me with my parents, Mike in his red Lancer. We’d agreed to meet a few weeks later after school started, Columbus Day weekend, for a day together in Cambridge. I needed some time to settle in, get oriented to my dorm, classes, the whole adventure of coming to Cambridge, of watching summer turn to fall in Boston.

Tuesday afternoon, the day before registration for the semester, we arrived at Cabot house, one of nine freshman dorms at Radcliffe. On the east side of the quad, it rose five stories above the somewhat ratty green lawn, topped by a cupola, above which a weather vane drifted lazily with the changing autumn breeze. Built of red brick with with white stone trim, it resembled my early grade school in Cleveland, but much larger, and without an asphalt playground in front. We walked up five wide stone steps, through a small portico flanked by two columns supporting a second floor balcony protected by iron railing. Inside, confused and eager freshman-to-be, most shepherded by one or two parents, milled around a large reception cubicle built into the far wall. There, a calm and studious grey-haired women, whom I would soon come to call “Mother”, methodically checked each girl against a list on the desk in front of her. To most, she proffered keys and a paper pointing them to the stairs. A few were in the wrong house, and those she directed back out to the quad, sending them to the proper dorm.

Off to one side, I saw a slightly chubby girl with short dark hair sitting in one of the over-stuffed leather armchairs, surrounded by a professorial-looking man on one side, and an East Asian woman on the other. I eased over to her, drawing my own parents in my wake. I stared down at the instruction card I’d been mailed, looked up, and asked her, “Is there any order to all this?”

She looked up, shook her head, and said, “Not that I can see.” She smiled as she spoke, but I noticed her eyes retained a downward tilt which, without the upturned lips, might be interpreted as sad, or resigned. She stood up, offered her hand, and said, “I’m Judy.”

In the weeks before I left home, I’d thought about adopting my first name, Sarah, here at college, but never came to a conclusion. Instinctively, I said, “Jane. Janie, really.” Looking back at my card, I asked, “Um…what room are you in?”

“212”

“I think we might be neighbors! I’m in 221.”

“I think that’s right across the hall. How did you know?”

“I didn’t. I was just looking around for a friendly face, you were the first person I saw.” We both laughed, a hint of childish giggle underneath. My mother, ever forward and friendly, turned to the couple and said, “We’re George and Francis. Stein. Janie’s parents.”

The ice broken, we quickly learned he was a physician, she was housewife who had been a nurse, they were from St. Louis where he was on the Internal Medicine faculty of Washington University Medical School, and that Judy was an only child. We all approached the desk together, receiving a smile when Mother learned she could check two boxes off at once, and give only one set of directions.

Eagerly,  Judy and I trooped up one flight to the second floor. Our rooms were indeed right across the hall from each other. My mother and father had been left behind along with Judy’s parents to organize the transport of our belongings without the aid of an elevator. Our rooms were indeed across the hall from each other, hers right next to the bathroom, mine opposite. That was our first stop, to discover the intricacies of communal living. Two bathrooms on each floor, 3 sinks, 3 toilets, 3 showers in each, for 24 freshman girls.

“My mom bought me a new bathroom kit. I’m glad she did. Looks like there’s no room anyway to keep anything. Not even towel shelves.” Judy observed. I nodded, sniffing the air, which smelled of disinfectant.

Back in her room, which faced the quad – mine had a window looking out on Walker Street – we sat down, she on her bed, me on the straight-backed wooden chair tucked under a spartan desk. Next to that was a fading dresser, two small drawers on the top, three more below. That constituted the entirety of the furniture in our rooms. A small closet opened next to the entry door, sporting a single bar with no hangers or hooks and a shelf I could barely reach. Judy, three inches shorter than I, might need a foot stool. Simultaneously we sighed, looked around, and laughed. I remembered visiting the school in the summer over a year ago, peeking into the unadorned rooms, and fantasizing about how I might decorate one. I had brought a cover for my bed, a few books, my favorite pen, and a cloth wall hanging. Besides my clothes, the only other connection to my life before Radcliffe were two small framed photographs, one of my family at the Vineyard, the other of Michael.

Just then, three boys stomped in, carrying Judy’s suitcases and a packing case. A similar troop dropped my stuff off across the hall. The dads gave each of them a few bills, and the gaggle raced back downstairs to find load. Apparently, townies took advantage of the lack of mechanical lifts here every fall to collect some extra cash. I said to Judy, “See ya in a bit, OK?” and walked over to join my parents. My mother had already laid the suitcases out on the bed, and began opening the dresser drawers. She’d already noticed the lack of hangers. “I’ll send dad out to get some. Anything else you want?”

In less than thirty minutes, everything I’d brought had found a place, and my parents were looking adrift. My mom ventured, “Honey, we were talking with Judy’s parents and think we’ll go out for lunch, before we start back home. Do you two want to come along?”

It felt awkward thinking about saying goodbye in a restaurant. I shook my head, no, and tears began to well. I grabbed her, squeezed hard, and pulled back, wiping my eyes, sniffing a little. “Mom, I think I want to get used to things a bit. Let’s say good-bye here, OK?” She and dad didn’t seem nearly as distraught as I felt, but they had been through this three times already.

Judy, seeing that I was sending my own parents off, raised to her full height, and smartly announced, “Right, Janie and I are going to take a walk outside, look at the campus, go to the Coop and get a few things. We’ll be all right.” Her mother smiled, relieved, while her father checked his watch. With that, we sent them off to their empty nests, heedless of how they might be feeling. We had our own portal to pass through, into the next four years.

********