Tales of the Sixties: Homecoming [by Alan Ziegler}

    At a dance during my senior year in high school, I hang around the ticket table, where a junior named Gabby is on duty in case there are late arrivals. I have seen her around school and been looking for a chance to approach her. On the table are loose rubber bands, and she offers me one. I put it on my wrist, and she puts one on hers. “We have matching bracelets,” she says, and we talk the dance away.

    I call her the next day. My sister has advised me to make some notes, and at the top of the list is “rubber bands.” Her laughing response gives me the courage to ask her out.

    In the movie theater on our third date, with my arm around her heavy sweater, I maneuver to her breast and she doesn’t resist. I recall the phrase “her hard nipples” from somewhere, and I try not to smile. I will never again experience a nipple that hard, nor do I experience it now, as I finally realize it’s her elbow. After a few more dates, she allows me under her bra, but no lower.

    One night, alone in her house, making out on the couch, we are interrupted by a phone call from her mother. “No, mom, I am not kissing that boy.”

    After the senior prom, we go to the beach and I notice blood on the crotch of her white pants. This will not be the night, she says.

    The next night she calls to tell me she has listened over and over to the Bob Dylan record I gave her and there is one phrase that makes her think of me every time: “somebody thinks they really found you.”

    Found then lost. She told me, early on, that her strategy for getting out of a relationship is to act so badly that the boy will break up with her. It takes a week of nastiness before I put two and two together. Still, I valiantly try to save us. “Like a Rolling Stone” has just been released, which I preview for her by bellowing, in the back seat of a convertible during a double date: “How does it feeeeeel?”

    She says she feels like she can’t do it anymore—be nasty, or be my girlfriend.

    The rest of the summer I learn how it feels to be on my own, a complete unknown, until I take the direction away from home, north to college.

    That winter, Gabby starts to write me friendly letters, hinting that she wasn’t ready for a sexual relationship. She writes that she heard somewhere that people light matches when they’re horny; enclosed is a book of matches, half of them spent and taped back in. I light the rest and send her the empty pack.

    Gabby accepts my invitation to Spring Weekend: Louis Armstrong on Friday night and Otis Redding on Saturday. I book a room in the Travelodge. We will stay together; it’s time, she says. The editor of the school newspaper doesn’t have a date and must vacate his fraternity room because his roommate does; I offer to let him stay in my dorm room, more to brag than out of generosity. The editor asks me three times if I am positive I won’t need my bed, and I assure him I won’t. It’s time.

    After the Friday concert, Gabby and I make out on the Travelodge bed. She allows my fingers inside her for the first time. As I am putting on the condom, she starts to cry. She explains that it has nothing to do with me, her uncle died the other day, she shouldn’t have come up but she didn’t want to disappoint me, she needs to go home, she’ll take a morning bus, she’s so so sorry but she really needs to be alone.

    I leave the motel, stunned, with no bed to sleep in. I sneak into my room, but the editor wakes up and mocks me for being there. “And you were so sure you were getting laid tonight.” Impulsively, I hold my finger to his nose, then curl up on the floor in a corner.

Comments

[JBReiter]

If I were that girl and read this now, I'd be really glad I didn't go all the way that night. She let you be intimate with her at a vulnerable time, and your response was to let a total stranger sniff her body fluids, so you could brag about scoring. Your teenage self might be excused for thinking it's cute, but you should be old enough to see women as human beings.

[Alan Ziegler]

The word "cute" or anything implying "cute" is no where in the piece. Anyone who infers "cuteness" should question her or his attitudes. (The person you refer to as "that girl" was--and is--a woman; also, she didn't "let me be intimate"--the physical intimacy was begun mutually and ended mutually. The piece is written in present tense--in the voice of my teenage self. My "old enough" self is no where in the piece. Maybe you should read more of my work before you publicly state that I should be "old enough to see women as human beings." Then again, maybe don't.

[JBReiter]

Well, I apologize for the snarky tone, but I was just taken aback by the finger-sniffing. I was enjoying the light-hearted reminiscences up to that point. I felt that it was a breach of trust to expose her to a stranger like that, when she had confided that she was grieving about her uncle (that's what I meant by vulnerable) but your younger self didn't seem empathetic about it. There were passages where the older present-tense narrator did seem to be in evidence, as in the funny bit about the nipple that was an elbow, so I was hoping for a little reflection like "Gee, I was kinda self-centered and uncaring back then." (Maybe not explicitly, but tone can convey a lot, and I didn't sense any remorse.) I'm sorry it just struck me the wrong way. As I said, if I were the girl in that encounter, I would have felt humiliated to discover this essay on the Internet. I can't speak for her, I guess, but it's worth considering whether some stories should just stay between friends.

[Alan Ziegler]

I hope that every reader is "taken aback by the finger-sniffing." It was an impulsive and horribly obnoxious gesture, and that's what the piece is about. It's interesting that you assume it was the death of an uncle that made her feel vulnerable, or that there even was a death of an uncle. This happened almost 50 years ago.

[JBReiter]

OK, thanks, I'm glad you see that the same way. It was not as clear as it might have been, I think, because you just recounted the anecdote quickly and ended the piece. I was shocked because I had trusted the narrator's good intentions up to that point -- which perhaps was what you intended after all. It brought up painful memories of boys bragging about sexual conquests in my high school, which boosted their reputations but ruined those of my female friends whose privacy was violated.

It is always a challenge when writing about a character whose sexist attitude is reinforced by the culture at large, how to present it in a way that encourages critical judgment instead of suggesting that this is normal "boys will be boys" behavior. I'm not sure you totally met that challenge but I am sorry to have spoken hotly in haste.

I'm perplexed you thought I was "assuming" her uncle died -- the narrator says that she told him this to explain why she stopped the sex. Are we supposed to infer she was making up an excuse? Again, obviously people bring different assumptions to a text because of life experience, but I thought you portrayed her as a nice and believable person, not a manipulator. Anyway, thanks for engaging in a tough conversation.