[Treasure of the Moment]
After R_ B_ told me that a girl from Laconia, who had seen me at the youth-in-government conference at Dartmouth, thought I was "cute," I asked him to find out how I could get in touch with her. R_ was dating a girl from Laconia, driving down to Laconia, about 30 miles from Plymouth, on his motor scooter. A short while later he told me that the girl was S_ E_, whose family (her father recently died) owned a grocery store in Laconia. I knew the store, a small "Mom and Pop" variety store on a corner in downtown. He gave me her address. I wrote to her. This was a somewhat difficult letter to compose because I had not seen the girl, and despite R_'s lengthy description of her, I could not get an image of her in my mind. So I wrote a letter, in the early spring 1959, which recounted how R_ had told me about what she said (in fact I was so forward as to write that she said I was "cute," which I appreciated) and said I would like to meet her; I could drive to Laconia. I received a return letter saying okay. (Later, R_, whose girl friend knew S_ well, told me that S_ wouldn't have gone out with me except that my letter charmed her.) She suggested that I meet her at the family store and she would show me how to get to their home; the directions to the house were rather too complicated to write out. So I drove to Laconia (a friday or saturday evening?) in the family car (the Olds station wagon?). I walked into the store not knowing whom to expect. She didn't look at all like the image I had created in my mind (Lord knows what I looked like to her). But she was pretty. Short (surprisingly short, perhaps 5' 2"), dark hair, dark Mediterranean skin, big busted, very pretty. I must have passed the quick inspection; was I introduced to her mother there at the store? Or was her mother at home? I don't recall.
We drove to her house (in my car) as dusk settled. The route seemed complicated to my mind, used to the simplicity of the village. Her house was in a new housing area, with ranch-type houses strung like Christmas lights along curving streets with wooded landscaping. By the time we arrived I had tried to memorize the route.
Her house was relatively new. We sat in the living room and chatted for a while. We seemed to be getting along swell. What did we do for the rest of the evening, I don't know. Did we go out somewhere? Probably, but I don't remember. I am reasonably sure that we held hands. Perhaps this first date was when she took me to a nearby lake park. It was a cool evening (yes, yes, now I recall, it was this first date), and the lake appeared cold. Winter was only a few weeks behind us. She had some connection to this park at the lake, but I can't recall what. Her high school class was going to have a party there, perhaps? The walk at the lake filled me with a mood of wonder, and optimistic expectancy. The park seemed hugely romantic--deserted, gray and brown in the mid-evening. A sense of the Winter past lingered on the ground, which had not yet pushed new growth. We held hands. Did I take her hand, initially, or she mine? I don't recall. I do remember walking past the park entrance which had some refuse barrels, and holding her hand. Small and cool. And wonderful, warming up as our combined body heat overcame the cool air.
I was feeling something for the first time--some emotion, I had not experienced before. It was not falling in love, it was not a "crush" on her; it was not, indeed, such an intense and focussed emotion. It was, more, an enlarging feeling, a mood of sweet deliciousness, a mood that everything was all right and that I could luxuriate in this feeling without fear. It was a feeling perhaps similar to the overall relief one feels when one lies down on a bed after a long, strenuous exercise, and one's body sinks in to the supporting comfort of the mattress. Here, I suppose, this emotion of relief came after several weeks of wonder, whether I would meet this pretty girl who thought I was "cute."
This was a mood S_ created in me, and for which I shall ever be grateful to her. She had handled my rashness in my letter and my imposed invitation to meet her with all the grace and confidence of a major-league short stop scooping up a hard-hit ball and tossing [it] to first base. And in all this, she like me!
How did this evening end? I don't recall. Did we kiss? I don't recall. Perhaps a chaste goodnight kiss, perhaps not. But I remember thinking as I drove home, that I was vastly lucky; I had met a girl from another town.
We had agreed to another date before this evening ended. During the week, I wrote to her, the first of a number of letters we exchanged during our dating. I had a long experience writing notes, passed to M_ R_ during halls, and used this experience in these letters. With S_ I discovered, about myself, that I loved women, loved thinking about them, loved concerning myself with them. I loved their smell, the warm fragrance mixed of body odor, soap, and perfume; loved their bodies, all the mystery, the places of their bodies promised to me; loved the emotion in me that loving them gave, the eternal optimism of the woman's body. For girls I began writing my first serious work that was not school assignment. For M_, mash notes in study hall; for S_, letters carefully thought out in terms of their audience's response (surely a definition of literary writing); for S_ W_, next year, my first poems. Women were the muses who inspired and nurtured my desire to write. It does not matter that I am not a great writer, not even a published literary writer at all.
What matters is that literary writing, of which I have done enormous quantities, is my way of organizing my life and my understanding of my life. And this vehicle was evoked, brought to life, and nurtured by girl friends.
Our next date followed quickly. I drove to Laconia, finding my way to her house only with the greatest intensity of concentration. (I am trying to retrace the route now in my mind, visualizing the city of Laconia, and I can't do it.) As I drove up to her house, I saw a fellow get into his car and drive off. I was a little surprise. I figured she could get her other boy friends out of the house with a little better timing. He was a Laconia high school football player she had been dating, she explained, and he had dropped in unexpectedly. As I said--a thoroughly graceful ball player, she was.
We sat in the living room of her couch talking. I sat close to her, and--well, unexpectedly and suddenly--we were kissing. We had our arms around each other and were kissing enthusiastically. I don't think I had ever kissed so long or so passionately before. The kiss was open-mouthed, just slightly with lips parted. We may have french kissed--touching tongues gently. But we did not deep tongue kiss--that lusty exploration waited until later in the summer and dates with D_ G_. But S_ and my first kiss [with her] was good enough that she was surprised at it, and said so. She said I had not looked like I would be all that great a kisser. Well, I surprised myself, too.
Where we went late in this second date, I don't recall. We may have gone to a movie, but I can't be sure. In our dating over several months, we went to outdoor movies perhaps three times (of course, for the privacy), visited a friend of hers once, and I think we had a double-date with R_ and his girl friend.
Our visit to her girl friend was a scenario out of the 1950s. Her girl friend was recently married and lived with her husband in a small cottage on the lake. Why was she married? Either she got pregnant, or thought she was. Anyway, S_ wanted to see her, and introduce me. I knew our relationship had passed some kind of special point when she wanted to introduce me to a friend. She was becoming more serious about me. Her friends rented cottage was small, dark, and panelled with pine-veneer wall sheets. There was a gas space-heater. The living room was small. The husband collected guns (he wasn't home when we dropped in). I don't remember a baby. I did not feel much happiness in the little house, rather a mind claustrophobia of closed doors and shut-in lives and expectations. I was relieved when we left. I think I would be shocked and saddened if I could, as the 38 year old man I now am, go back and see the seventeen-year old married couple in that small house, whom we visited.
Eventually, S_ and I began going to drive-in movies. She made the suggestion; I had never dated at a drive-in (in fact I had only had my [automobile driving] license for six or seven months). The first time we went to the drive-in (The Weirs Drive In in Weirs, outside Laconia), we got ourselves into a heated necking session. We were tongue-kissing, and pressing our bodies against each other. This was a definite stage in our dating. Her notable breasts made a notable impression on me. I had a ferocious erection. When I drove home I had, for the first time, "lover's nuts;" my balls seemed swollen and tender from the unrelieved arousal.
The second time we went to the drive-in theatre, our necking progressed to petting. While we were kissing, and starting to crawl all over each other, she took my hand and placed it on her breasts. I think my heart must have nearly burst out of my chest. She had beautiful breasts--large, lifted and youthful, firm and full. I felt them all over, and she moaned and gave clear evidence she was enjoying my stroking. Besides the obvious thrill of feeling this woman, I was elated by her willingness to trust me with her body, by her desire to have me give her pleasure. I felt truly privileged, and came close to worshipping her at that moment.
After a few minutes of feeling her breasts through her blouse, I began unbuttoning it. She was wearing a front-buttoning shirt. I felt her bra-covered breasts for a second, then reached behind her back to unclasp the bra straps; she leaned forward to give my hand room. After an interminably long time, and vast amounts of fumbling with the clasp, her bra unhooked. I then stroked her freed and bared breasts. She was beautiful, her breasts were beautiful; I felt like a knight allowed into the princess's treasure room.
The privilege of stroking her breasts did not imply to me that I could take greater liberty with her body. I don't know what more she may have wanted in that moment, or of a similar moment on our next drive-in theatre date. I would have liked her to touch my body, but I was not similarly bold enough to guild her hand to my pants. Genital petting did not seem the next step. She did not request me to touch or stroke her vagina or posterior and I did not attempt to do so. The treasure of the moment was treasure enough. And about all I was ready to handle and appreciate.
Where did this dating and relationship with S_ go? Ah--more fool me! I had begun my summer work at Grossman's [a hardware and lumber store] and my enthrallment with D_ G_. I could not deal with two girls at once. So I wrote to S_ and broke off our relationship. Ah--more fool me! I recall her last letter--she was greatly disappointed. She said that she was really beginning to like me much. I caught a slight hint that she hoped our dating would go onto more things. I was not sensitive enough or wise enough to detect her hint that our petting would have advanced to a more intense stage, that she wanted more. Looking back on that letter--or at least of my memories of it--I realize how that she was giving me a woman's promise: as the heart goes, so goes the body. But I wasn't ready to hear the message.
I felt awkward and embarrassed in breaking off. I did not tell her why; I did not say to her, as I should have, that she was wonderful and that I liked her greatly. That she made me feel privileged. I felt, in a word, an old-fashioned word--like a cad! My embarrassment lasted a long time, slowly transforming itself into guilt: a nice guy wouldn't have broken off in so crude [a] way.
I did see her again. She went to the University of New Hampshire and one day I met her on a path on the campus. She smiled and was pleased to see me. I had forgotten how short she was. I felt a surge of guilt, and unable to handle it, I merely compounded it; I said a tense hi! and walked by her. I remember her confused last glance.
I'm sorry, S_. It was taken nearly 20 years, and the privacy of this journal to admit to myself what a jerk I was, but I admit it. I invoke the memory of your womanhood and the wonderfulness of your body you shared with me. I hope you don't think there was anything wrong with you. And I'm sure you don't even remember me at all. Where-ever you are now, and whoever you are now.
[Years after writing this journal entry in 1981, in a conversation with my journalist friend, R_ A_, who lived and worked in Laconia, R_ said that S_ had returned to Laconia, married, and lived here. She had--I recalling him say--five children. That knowledge gently increased my regret for her lost love, because I wanted more children than the two children I had.]
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Lessons in Love
- Love Doesn't Understand Anything
- Treasure of the Moment
- Still a Virgin
- A Woman Could Do This To Me
- Illicit Love
- My First Time
- Hurtling Toward Marriage
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