My first girlfriend had dark, curly hair, barely reaching her shoulders. Five years old, she sported black Shirley Temple-esque wavy ringlets. In my memories, she wears a white button-up shirt with rounded collar, and a plaid dress. A few freckles grace her cherubic face, almost sparkling when she smiles. I remember her as fun-loving. We met in Kindergarten, Christine Harris and I. My sister, two years older, and her friends, talked a lot about “boyfriends”. I discerned there was something special about having a “girlfriend”, compared to being friends with another human who happened to be a girl. Mysterious sensations flowed through me when I was near Christine, talked with her, or thought about her. Now, seventy years later, I still can’t name them, but recognize the stirrings of an undeniable urge to couple. I told my family and other friends about her special status, receiving beams of approval all round. She acknowledged our special connection, yet still played hard-to-get. Setting a template for future growth, no doubt.
In first grade, my new girlfriend had straight brown hair, parted on the left, surrounding an unblemished face which rarely smiled. Her clothes are darker, more severe in my memories. Lynn Johnson may have been a brainy kid, or possibly just quiet. But alluring nonetheless. As with Christine, I remember no conversations, no hint that our relationship was anything other than the naming of a connection we shared. I remember neither Lynn nor Christine coming to my house, nor I to hers.
Parallel to these memories are others of grade school. Having taught myself to read at age four, I had a leg up during reading circle. I breezed through the “Dick and Jane” books we read out loud, never stumbling as the other kids did when confronted with odd spellings or unfamiliar words. Until, mid-way through first grade, we read a book about Indians in the southwest, and I encountered for the first time a unfamiliar word. I tried a phonetic reading, and was crushed when the teacher corrected my “tur-kwa-zee” for “turquoise”. The humiliation was complete, but short-lived, as the other kids constantly came to me for help with all manner of classwork. I began to realize I carried a curse, of knowing things others didn’t, of learning them faster than most others.
In the second grade I found my next girlfriend, Denise Bright. Denise was a boisterous lass, assertive, possessive, and forward in her actions. She picked me out as hers, and we shared a few play dates at each other’s homes. Another girl in the class, Leona, inspired a fit of jealousy in me. Leona left our class mid-way through the year, being advanced into third grade. Why not me? I thought. My self-confidence plummeted at the idea she might be equally adept at the game of learning. Leona did not attract me I found her eyes and cheeks out of proportion to her jawline, or something equally absurd. She was tallish and gangly, certainly not coordinated, unlike the more outgoing and physically competitive Denise.
Moving into the third grade I carried Denise along with me in my heart. I though I was supposed to have a new girlfriend every year. But I pined for her, despite her being in another classroom half the day.
My curious, searching mind led to problems. Another boy, Ivan, equally loquacious and clever as Leona and me, convinced me to engage in some prank I’ve now forgotten. We had to spend the afternoon in the school office, getting a disciplinary lecture from the assistant principal.
Later that week, at the evening dance class my parents hauled me to, I found myself waltzing with a girl inches taller than I. My right arm barely made it half-way around her waist. Not only did she insist on leading our steps, she also began to regale me with her opinion about my recent visit to the office.
“So, he paddle you?” she wondered. Dissappointed at my “No,”, she went on. “I don;t like that Ivan. He’s strange. You’re much nicer. I;d rather dance with you.”
I suspect this was a nascent draw towards the “bad boy”, and she wanted the better-looking, more popular (in her mind) one. Sarah Jane Marsh had blond, wavy hair which bounced when we cha-cha’d. She wore a light pastel dress with a frilly hem, yellow or blue (or was it green?) in my memory. We danced the night away, and I had my new, third-grade girlfriend. I found her attrsactive and vivacious, but did not shre herinterest in gossip, rather tha the “deep-dish thinking” my aunt accused me of.
Soon, Sarah Jane and I were torn apart when the school moved me, like Leona, into the next grade. In the upper elementary grades, we sat at actual desks, old wooden affairs with metal scroll work on the side and a shelf underneath for books. The top lifted up, revealing a privat cavern their pencils, erasers, paper, whatever. The desks themselves were probably thirty years old (meaning from the ‘20s) and had not been painted or varnished in all that time. They were scratched and worn, their dark brown wood polished smooth by decades of young greasy hands. Near the top, on the side, a round receptacle reminded us that long ago, students had inkwells into which they dipped the nibs of their pens.
At one of those desks I first met Kathy. A quirk of the alphabet placed me behind her in the fifth and sixth grades, and despite the yawning difference in our ages (she of course was one year older), I adopted her as my next girlfriend. By this time, I had learned the nuances of speaking to and entertaining others, and she did not reject this. My approach began with her hair.
Kathleen McNeil had luxurious, long, wavy black hair, usually free or in a ponytail. I found it irresistible. I would slowly, reverently stroke it, which she found soothing. At least, she let me continue.
I had been moved from the third to the fourth grade in part because I becaome visibly bored and unproductive in school. My grades dropped. I didn’t care about doing the work which in my view was childish. Fourth grade was more challenging, and my performance perked up. But I still suffered episodes of boredom, gazing out the windows across the asphalt playground in front of school to the cars rolling past on Montgomery Pike. Through the oak trees, past the repurposed swing set which served as a parking lot for bicycles, to the Presbyterian church and cemetery on the other side.
Then Kathie would shift in her seat, dark hair flowing side to side as she adjusted her position while Miss Leeds took us through the day’s Social Studies lesson. My social studies including grasping Kathie’s ebony locks, caressing their smoothness, admiring the lazy coils descending from her neck. I’d stroke, she’d lean back, and we both enjoy the sensuous connection.
One day stands out forever. On a field trip – to where I can’t recall – we shared a seat on the school bus transporting us. An extended opportunity to melt in her eyes left me mesmerized by her gaze. Her eyebrows, as dark and full as the hair above, presided over a face often gripped by a serious, knowing look. On the way back to school, she gave me an extended precis of the movie she had recently seen, “South Pacific”. She didn’t mention Nellie Forbush and her French plantation paramour, Emile DeBeque — their connection was a bit too mature for an eleven-year old. Rather, she talked about Bloody Mary and her daughter, Liat. Kathie seemed particularly entranced by Liat’s infatuation with Cable, the brainy lieutenant who challenged existing restrictions to spend more and more time with the exotic Polynesian beauty.
Kathie said, “I want to her them sing together again,” bu I was too dense to pick up on the opportunity. Instead, I planned a Christmas party as a boy-girl affair, convening at my house, then walking up to the Pike to the Monte Vista theater where “Lil Abner” played. After all, it also was a musical, and based on a cartoon to boot. I intended to walk side-by-side with Kathie, sit next to her in the darkened auditorium. My sister told me boys and girls did that, but she didnt tell me why.
On the way back home, Kathie walked with her best friend, Shelby Cooper. I dragged behind, listening in as they giggled about Sadie Hawkins day and traded guesses as to which boy each girl in the crowd would ask to their imaginary dance. When Shelby asked Kathie for her choice, she hesitated, turning around to find me, and silently smiled.
I discovered among my father’s record albums, a curated collection of classical music , “modern” jazz, and the odd set of show tunes, a colorful sleeve picturing Mary Martin and Ezio Pinza on the cover. This was a double album, which folded open like a book, and many more photos appeared inside. I devoured the ones of Liat and Cable, imagining Kathie and I in their fated affair. “Bali Hai” and “You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught” especially resonated, evoking that forbidden island and its potential girlfriend. The romance of their story stayed with me far longer than Kathie did.
I visited her house, in upscale Amberly Village a mile north of mine, once in our sixth-grade year. I remember the scent of freshly washed linen, and we sat before a wooden doll house, sharing a fantasy through the family who lived in it, little plastic people with bendable arms and legs, clothed in tiny cotton pants and dresses.
Sixth-grade marked the end of elementary school. Next up: Junior High. In our city, there were two choices. The first was Schroeder, a mile away from Pleasant Ridge elementary school, for 7th, 8th, and 9thgrades, then on to the local high school, Woodward. But, those who scored in the top fifth in the school on a special test had the option to travel seven miles into the city, taking the #4 bus down Montgomery to Walnut Hills, a college prep institution, for 7th through 12th. My parents never gave me an option.
When I talked with Shelby and Kathie about the choices, I was shocked to discover that, while Shelby had opted for Walnut Hills, Kathie would be staying close to home at Schroeder. She explained that, as an only child, her parents did not want her traveling so far away. I thought that a bit strange, and tried to talk her out of it – I did not want to lose my Girlfriend! Looking back, I wonder about other reasons: maybe she didn’t meet the qualifying standard for Walnut Hills. Or maybe, her parents didn’t trust the neighborhood. Walnut Hills was the center of the Black “ghetto” at that time, and had a reputation among those living in the rarefied suburban fringe where the McNeil’s had their acreage as not the safest place to visit.
No matter, I was devastated. Especially when I read, years later, on a visit home from college, that Kathleen McNeil had been crowned “Miss Cincinnati” and would represent our city in the Miss Ohio contest, hoping to be selected to compete in Atlantic City. Her talent was listed as “violin.”
********
Entering a six-year high school as an underage, undersized brainiac, I lost my magic touch with girls. I had relied on them seeking me out. With a larger pool of potential beaux, an endless selection of older guys now on the make, they ignored me. I kept my head down, blending in with the fading green paint covering the walls of our campus. Wearing braces for those six years and joining the Book-of-The-Month Club didn’t seem to help.
I sought solace during summer on the Indian Hill Club’s swim team. But I only stared longingly at blossoming girls learning how to expose themselves demurely in Speedo racing suits. I hadn’t learned how to even start a conversation, much less differentiate myself from all the bigger, older boys around them.
At age 15, I finagled myself onto the lesser of the city’s two AAU swim teams, sponsored by Coca-Cola. My world expanded beyond the local club swim meets to out-of-town competitions, requiring long car rides to Columbus, Dayton, and other venues. On one such trip, coming home after dark, the father driving us asked who would volunteer to ride in the back of his station wagon. Seeing a chance to maybe sleep a bit during the two hour ride, I said, “Sure,” and hopped in via the tailgate.
I rested my head on my gym bag, and covered myself with a large beach towel, double wide for the multiple times we needed to dry off after heats during the meet. As the other kids distributed themselves in the front and rear seats, I dozed off to their rustling and murmuring. Seven swimmers, plus the driver meant two in the front, three in the rear, and me, so I was not surprised when another body flopped over the rear seat into my lair. A few swim bags and towels came flying back as well. I realised this might not have been the most comfortable choice.
A short body topped by ginger hair winnowed its way under the nest I had built. After the car started up, the interior lights flicked off, and the back became cave-like in its gloom. The rear seat in front of me hid the other giggling kids from my sight. Tom C. and Bruce D. talked softly, comparing the ribbons they had won. Each had made the finals, Tom for backstroke in the 13-14 age group, and Bruce, a bruiser, for butterfly, also 13-14. Two “older” (15) girls sat up front, and one other shared the back with our Toma and Bruce.
As I leafed through the passengers in my mind, I realised that Tom’s 12 year-old sister Judy had drawn the short straw to ride in back with me. Or maybe, she had finagled her way to me. Soon, a hand searched for my neck, my cheek, pulling me towards her. She kept questioning with her fingers, exploring under cover of the darkness and the beach towel. Her hands asked what I was made of, sought to find out what this mysterious older boy was like. We ended up snuggling and kissing most of the way home. All the while, I worried the driver would look in the rear-view mirror, turn on the light and ask what was going in the back.
To my surprise, that never happened. To my further surprise, Judy kept exploring while I wondered, “Why me?” I concluded I was available, closed my eyes, and accepted her curiosity.
********
Grades 7 through 10, ages 11 through 15, I had zero girlfriends in my life. After that, relationships got real. Girls no longer were playmates with dresses. We began rehearsing roles as life mates. From now on, names will be changed to protect our memories.
First, Elsie S., daughter of a doctor residing in upscale Amberly Village. For reasons never explained, she invited me to a “Sadie Hawkins” dance. She was a year behind me in school, meaning the same age as I. A lean, lithe cheerleader, her dark hair, corralled by a headband, flew side-to-side as she urged on the Eagles at Friday night football matches. She took her task seriously, never smiling while jumping with arms spread out and up, her sweater pulled high above the short pleated blue skirt shimmering down below.
I had a screw loose somewhere. The shock of being approached was total, blotting out any thought of a future between us. I don’t remember any conversations between us prior to the phone call inviting me out. I did not remember even being in the same room together. I did have the sense to say, “Yes” when asked, but remember none of our date. Only that we must have danced and talked and ridden in a car together. Whether I drove or her father, I can’t recall. Only a sense that I was shy and quiet, and not what she’d expected.
It never occurred to me after our attempt at slow dancing that I should reciprocate and ask her to a movie the next weekend. I’d gone so long without a girl in my life that I couldn’t imagine letting one in again. I fell back into solitude, a caterpillar awaiting release from his cocoon.
That came a few months later when Janie S. appeared at debate team practice one night accompanied by her sidekick Beth D. Like Elsie, they occupied the upper echelons of the class behind me. Newspaper editors, honor roll members, one a dancer, the other a brilliant bon vivant. And they both wanted to be cheerleaders, of a different sort than Elsie.
“We think the debate team is cool and should have as much attention as the football and basketball teams,” they said when Miss Foley let them into her apartment where we prepared one evening for our competitions. They’d decided to adopt us, to attend our competitions, and “cheer” in a manner fitting the buttoned-up, rules-bound nature of debate tournaments. They would be our timekeepers.
Once again, as with Kathy, Judy, and Elsie, I didn’t quite understand what was happening. I took them at face value, that the idea of the debate team was what attracted them. My partner, Bob, lived directly behind Janie in Clifton, another upscale part of town. He was our Big Man on Campus, elected “Best All Around” in our senior poll. He already had a girlfriend, Page. I should have figured out he was not their quarry. And since Beth already had a boyfriend of her own, anyone with his eyes open would have seen that Janie was after me, Beth and Bob scheming to make that happen.
The veil hiding Janie intentions didn’t lift from my brain until they sent us a telegram after our victory at the regional debate tournament, signed “Love” with Janie’s name first. That finally triggered the tom cat in me, and I called her up. I started writing poems to and about her, fantasizing about her, adopting her interests and aligning mine with hers. All the things a teenage boyfriend ought to do.
I’d tell the rest of that story here, of the next five years, but I’ve already written a book about it, an “Imagined Memoir” called Love Rhymes [available in print or on Kindle from Amazon].
********
Two years into Janie’s reign as my girlfriend, I became entangled with Molly J. I worked as a lifeguard for three summers, age 19-21, at a local private swim club. A dangerous place for a barely-out-of-his teens young man. Surrounded by scores of younger girls in bathing suits swimming and sunning away the days, I had little mental space to recall Janie. She was gone much of the summer of ’68 at Martha’s Vineyard with her family. We communicated by letter, lots of letters.
Three weeks into that first summer, I was standing by the entrance station, on a 15 minute break, chatting with several of the other lifeguards. A deeply tanned brunette, caught my attention as she walked away from the morning’s swim practice with a gaggle of girls. Wet hair streamed down her shoulders, resting on the narrow straps of her racing suit. Tall, nearly my height, she had the sloping shoulders and lithe build of a powerful swimmer. As she talked with her friends, I became convinced she was sneaking glances at me.
I couldn’t contain my curiosity. I nudged the swim coach next to me, and asked, “Who’s that? The one in the Pepsi Marlins suit…”
Mike gave the crowd of girls a considered glance, and said, “Oh, that’s Molly J. She tore up the league last year in 11-12, and is gonna do the thing this year.”
My feverish thoughts ground to a halt. She’s thirteen?
I did not want other people – I did not want myself – to think that I had any interest further than “guy trying to keep the pool safe”; “Guy trying to be friendly to all the paying customers”; “assistant swim coach interested in his team members.” But her magic attraction persisted. I could not shake it, and nor keep it secret from Janie. No doubt that contributed to our dissolution.
I stayed connected to Molly for a long time, and that is worth a story by itself. Just not here, not now. She still occasionally appears in my dreams. Cryptic notes from two of those visitations follow:
MJ Dream 12-18: I’m visiting something like Disneyland, or a sophisticated fair. MJ’s here, but she kept her own counsel. As I exited, down a wide spiral ramp with lots of people, (maybe a double helix structure?), She walked down the other side. I called her over, and asked her if I could hug her, as it had been decades since we’d seen each other. The hug was deep on my part, but perfunctory on hers. Nonetheless, she stayed with me, smiling and talking She was SO MJ in her openness, humor and attention.
Make-up enhance her face, with bright dark red lipstick and a bit of mascara on the eyes. Hair not quite to her shoulders, clean, dark, highlighted, and bouncy. She wore a midi skit, stockings which went from sheer to fish net during the dream.
We exited into Downtown Cincinnati, where I told her we didn’t have far to go.Excited about our walk and where we were, she walked quickly away into a powerful front flip, layout position, with arms and legs each making a circle as she spun – a pinwheel effect. She moved up a hill covered with blackberries, only a narrow path through them. Tumbled away from me, her legs emerged from that long flowing skirt. She got stuck in the blackberries, her hair, her clothes, her stockings snagged in stickers. She freed herself, with no injuries except to the stockings (which went from sexy sheer to fishnet during the process, getting a few snags. As we walked further on in some debris, she hopped on a skateboard and executed several graceful athletic moves.
12-20 dream. MJ reappears, this time walking with me in a downtown @ night. I tried another hug, this time fuller, and averted my eyes afterwards. I thought that was it, we were never going to see each other again. Started walking away. She pulled me back, gave me a full on lips kiss, smiled, and left.
********
Beth D. led the high-kick chorus line in our school’s variety show junior and senior years. She lived a mile away from me, but, being on the opposite side of the elementary school boundary, we never met until she showed up with Janie to announce they were the debate team cheerleaders. Janie was the brains of the outfit, Beth the brawn: Janie went to Radcliffe, Beth to Mt. Holyoke; Janie graduated summa cum laude, Beth regularly made Honor Roll; Janie was the Thumb of the senior girls’ council, the Five Fingers, Beth the little pinkie; Janie got the college guy as her boyfriend, Beth had Leon, a year behind them in high school; Janie went on to a Ph.D in clinical psychology, Beth a Master’s in social work.
Janie and I parted ways in Los Angeles, September 1970. I spent the next eight years at the USC Medical Center, and she returned to Boston. In May, 1971, Beth wrote to me, saying she would be attending University of Oregon graduate school in English the next fall. She said she was toying with the idea of spending the summer on the west coast to enjoy he weather before starting a dreary Pacific Northwest winter.. She asked for advice about where to stay. I had plans to stay in a classmate’s uncle’s house in LA that summer, and asked him if there was a spare room. I elided the gender of the person, and when he learned they was a she, he nixed the idea, saying his uncle would not allow it. This was a few days before Beth was due to arrive.
We had to scurry to find an apartment, securing a one-bedroom near Highland and Sunset in Hollywood. I took the couch; Beth got the bed and private room. She found a waitress gig while I spent my days in the child psychiatric clinic at the Med Center.
I’d never considered Beth anything other than a friend of Janie, with whom I could be relaxed and friendly. However, we both were 22, sharing the same space and pheromones. So one night I wasn’t really surprised when she left her bedroom, and started cuddling with me on the couch. Score another girlfriend, I guess.
We traveled to Sun Valley where my sister lived, to the beaches along the South California littoral, to my family’s home in Colorado. She was in the car when Ida had a stroke while we drove up Wildoak Road to the house. And when classes started after Labor day, she spent a week or two with me in the house I had rented, along with four other medical students across downtown from the hospital. One of them, V___, claimed to have a quasi boyfriend, Michael, living in Eugene. Thinking she was being helpful, she asked Michael to offer a room in his place to Beth, to ease her start in the new city.
Beth and I wrote letters, talked on the phone, and began making plans to re-connect over Thanksgiving break in Eugene. V___ and I drove up on Wednesday. Things didn’t go so well. Beth pleaded abstinence due to a yeast infection, and Michael kept leaving the house to go for a run in the pouring rain. Returning to LA, V___ started eying other guys, and I became, in the words of another classmate, “a monk”.
I guess pheromones can only take you so far…
********
Winter in the Sawtooth Mountains hits heavy. Short days and freezing nights keep many people away. In the 1970s, almost no one lived north of Ketchum, Idaho, where my sister spent 15 years after college enjoying the Sun Valley resort. She and her fiancé, Stephen, invited me up for a weekend of skiing, with a side trip to Robinson Bar Ranch, 80 miles north over Galena summit, after passing through the hamlet of Stanley.
I arrived during a break between medical school clinical rotations. My life was filled with frequent night call and long hours running menial errands for the resident physicians who were our teachers. “See one, do one, teach one…” was the mantra at LA County – USC Medical Center. Leigh had promised a night at Robinson Bar’s hot springs uphill from the wild Salmon River.
“Oh, and a friend from college is coming through as well. From my sorority, Delta Gamma. She’s a field agent for them now, visiting all the chapters, making sure they have what they need from the national.” I can’t remember her name, so let’s call her “Jenna”.
Getting to Robinson Bar required not only a risky drive over the pass and along snow-packed US 93 in Stephen’s BMW 2002, but also a one-mile hike carrying our suitcases up the winding unpaved road through ruts made by the Ranch’s jeeps in 18 inch snow cover. We arrived just in time for the family style dinner of elk and tubers, fortified by wine Leigh insisted on ordering.
I was still a neophyte at drinking, having evaded that activity while at college, and then being indoctrinated in mind-altering vaporous refreshment once I got to Los Angeles. So only one glass of the red was enough to loosen the constraints 18 years of schooling had instilled. Seated around a rough-hewn picnic table on backless benches, I began feeling a little light-headed.
But the wine did little to loosen my inhibitions. When my sister pointed out that the hot springs were au natural, I hesitated, not sure I wanted to expose myself in front of my sister, her worldly boyfriend, and Jenna.
“Why don’t you have another glass?” Leigh suggested. “The cold walk there won’t bother you so much, and it’ll feel all the better when you get in!”
I took her advice, and by the time we got up from the table, my head was swimming as if I’d been spinning on a kids’ merry-go-round.
We all headed back to our rooms to get the towels and robes provided by the Ranch. I sat down on the edge of my bed, hoping to re-group a bit before facing the hot springs. I had my shirt, pants, shoes and socks off when the dizziness hit again. I fell back, trying to capture the room before it spun out of my control. The walls were dark honey pine, varnished smooth. The bed was a freestanding frame of aspen logs with a rickety headboard below a velvet-Elvis style painting of Redfish Lake in the fall, leaves flying off the trees, falling amidst the pine duff on the shore. The ribs of the rough white cotton duvet provided a stabilizing center as I lay back and drifted away.
The bed bounced roughly, and I jerked awake. Jenna, in her fluffy white cotton robe, sat next to me, shaking my shoulder.
“Leigh sent me back to check if you were coming,” she said. “You OK?”
I had my glasses off, and could only make out a vague outline of her features as she pressed closer to assess my condition. Before I could answer or move to get up, she pivoted over me, siting on my thighs. Her robe fell open as she pulled at my underwear, exposing my tumescence.
“Well, what were you dreaming about?” she asked as she pulled some sort of wrestling move, ending up on her back with me on top.
Wide awake by now, and fully armed, I understood what was really meant to happen that evening, why Leigh had brought us out here. Tthe wings of Jenna’s hips pushed up against me, a fevered motion which only grew firmer, faster. As we sped up, the bed began to shake, to creak as the weakened springs tried to handle to quickening waves of our joining.
And then… WHOOMP! The bed collapsed, its undercarriage giving way to our combined weight. The mattrass hit the floor, the headboard sagged forward and dropped down, threatening to pin us.
As the shock wore off, we began laughing. My instant thought was, We’ve got to get this bed back together right away! dI didn’t want my sister to know, what I’m not quite sure. Di I want to hide what Jenna and I had been up to, or did I not want to have to face the others with an unexplained broken bed.
We began assessing the damage, Jenna in her unopened robe, and me still naked. I pulled away the bedclothes, and shifted the mattrass. We put the slats into grooves along the frame, pushed the headboard back up, and struggled to hoist the heavy mattrass back onto the superstructure. We almost had the sheets in place when Leigh and Stephen came clomping up the hall.
“Jenna? Al? You guys coming?” Leigh asked as they turned the corner into my room.
“What happened here?” Stephen asked, watching us tuck the bottom sheet in place.
“Uh, the bed broke…” I started.
“What…how?” Stephen began
We stood there dumbly, obviously in flagrante delicto.
“Oh…” observed Leigh.
••••••••
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 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 intrigued me with her combination of shyness and depth. Our time together was tentative, spent mainly navigating the broad variation in our cultural experiences. Compared to her, I was worldly and undisciplined, despite the single-minded ambition I had followed for 12 years towards an MD.
In the end, my desire for a partner with whom I could go out and have a little fun fell victim to her ingrained fear of what a wild white guy might be up to. In the end, it turned all we had in common, beside 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 dutifully accompanied me to movies, to friends’ weddings, to Southern California attractions including Disneyland, Orange County beaches, the Farmers’ Market, and the Santa Monica Pier.
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 was 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.
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 religiously followed the rule to never have any overnight guests.
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 Janie and Molly, the two girls I remained 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, and following a vestigial waft of fading memories, 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, meant to be together. I also knew that geography, age, and life interests formed a potentially impenetrable wall between us, despite the inner spark 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.
Hearing her guardede laugh, seeing her casual smile, I caught a hint she had not yet found 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.
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During this odyssey I must have learned something. But I never took the time to discover the lessons. I accepted that girls were part of life, and would occasionally fall into mine. I had a vague yearning for love, and a family, but did not explore how I might find, might systematically create that state.
However, when the promise of lasting love arrived in the person of Cheryl H., I apparently was ready. All I knew when we found each other, being together was easy, fun, safe, and secure. I forgot my past connections, never took the time to learn how each of them might have prepared me to take advantage of what life with Cheryl offered. Now, fifty years on, I have glimmers of what a girlfriend is, what we can be, together.
Those other girls gave me confidence, I see now, that I was lovable, attractive, and ready to be steady with one girl, with the right girl.
There are many ways towards love. Most of them fizzle and reach a dead end before arriving at that final place of safety, security, and contentment. There are several doors into the maze. Once in, various paths can be taken through other doors, all of which must be found and opened before the final exit is before you.
A relationship can start many places. With Molly, it was infatuation. With Janie, friendship. Beth and I began as companions, roommates. Jenna offered a quickly aborted physical attraction. But with none of them was I able to travel the whole way.
I don’t know that any route is the best, I only know the journey must be complete, before the door marked “Love” appears. Cheryl and I began with safety. Each of us felt comfortable in the other’s presence. I didn’t know that would lead anywhere, but she felt safe enough let our friendship quickly grow. We moved in together, companions. I became infatuated with her, on a much deeper level than anyone before. I wanted her forever. It took years of moving repeatedly through all those doors, spiraling higher towards a moment when it became obvious we were partners, in love, ready to build a life together, to create more of us.
