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I overheard Mom on the phone to another parent say, “As long as he stays out of trouble and keeps his grades up, what does that big mop of hair really matter?” They sat in the bleachers as I filed up for my diploma, big colorful bow tie around my neck, frizzy curls streaming out from under my mortarboard and over my gown. They couldn’t have looked prouder.
I invited Becky to attend the school-sponsored graduation party with me, where we ended up making out so furiously next to the punch bowl that parent chaperones twice pulled us apart to tell us to cool it. Finally we abandoned the party and continued our mutual exploration outside in Dad’s Monte Carlo. By night’s end, it was official: without even meaning to, I had a steady girlfriend. Becky was playful, flirty, curious, eager to please. Becky was on fire. Becky was exactly the kind of girl Mom wanted to keep as far away from her sons as possible. She was convinced Becky was like girls she had known growing up; they were the ones who seduced boys, got pregnant, and forced them into dead-end marriages. Besides, Becky was a Protestant, another mark against her in my mother’s mind.
Never mind that Becky was two years behind me in school and, because of a late birthday, nearly three years younger. In Mom’s eyes, she was the calculating predator and I the innocent prey.
Like everyone else, Mom couldn’t help noticing Becky’s impressive breasts and the intoxicating effect they had on males.
In one famous family encounter, my long-divorced uncle Artie was at our house for a Sunday cookout and hit it off so well with Becky that I asked them to pose for a photo. Uncle Artie gladly obliged, slinging his arm around Becky’s shoulder and pulling her close to him. He pressed his face to hers and they both beamed into the lens. “Okay, big smiles,” I coached. Through the lens, it looked like the perfect shot, and when the prints came back, the shot indeed was almost perfect. There they were, looking like best pals, my sixty-year-old uncle and fifteen-year-old girlfriend.
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Only one small thing was amiss, and that was Uncle Artie’s eyes.
Specifically, where they were aiming. The photo showed Becky and Uncle Artie smiling directly into the camera, but with my uncle’s eyes rolled sideways and down, nearly popping from their sockets—eyebrows forced upward into a salacious arch—staring directly into Becky’s cleavage.
My brothers and I found the photo hilarious, and even Becky had to laugh. She was used to such odd male behavior and didn’t seem to mind the attention. Mom, on the other hand, was not amused. The snapshot only reinforced her perception of Becky as a seductress who could use her physical attributes to short-circuit the brains of otherwise levelheaded males, forcing them to forget every last lesson their mothers had taught them. Whenever I brought Becky around the house, Mom was careful to be pleasant, but I could tell what she was thinking. To Mom, Becky’s breasts were powerful man-seeking missiles in the arms race to conquer her youngest son’s moral character. She had nothing in her arsenal of rosary beads and holy water that could begin to compete. Mom’s singular mission in life became to keep the two of us from having any unsupervised time together. This, too, proved a losing battle.
Dad, on the other hand, was completely unfazed by Becky’s breasts. He seemed oblivious to their existence. He was kind and fatherly to her, and if he in any way disapproved of her, he never gave a hint. Becky loved him for it.
That summer we saw each other nearly every night and often during the day, too. We would go to movies, go to the beach, shoot pool. I’d tag along with her on babysitting jobs. Wherever we ended up, whatever the activity, it always concluded the same way, with us mashing and groping and working each other into nervous powerhouses of barely contained, unconsummated sexual energy.
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One day we took the sailboat out and made it only a quarter mile offshore before I succumbed to Becky in her bikini. I dropped the tiller, pulled her into my arms, and slid down onto the floorboards with her as the sails flapped and the boat turned in lazy circles. When we got back to the dock, Dad was standing there, looking puzzled. He often walked to the beach to watch me sail, studying my form on the water and then critiquing it after I returned to shore. Usually he had nothing but praise. Today, though, he was perplexed.
“What the heck happened out there?” he asked, genuinely baffled. “It looked like you were clipping along just fine and all of a sudden everything went haywire. I could see the sails luffing and the boat turning.”
Becky and I sneaked grins at each other. “That? Oh, that. We were just goofing around,” I said. “I let go of the tiller for kicks, just to see what would happen.”
Dad appeared to buy my story. If Mom detected a potential pregnancy-inducing liaison in every unchaperoned moment, Dad seemed blissfully unaware that sex before marriage was even possible. The fact that Becky and I would choose to interrupt a perfectly good sailing tack for no reason other than “kicks” simply reinforced his conviction that teens were strange and inexplicable life-forms best given a wide berth.
Mom, meanwhile, was praying fervently each night to the Virgin Mother to keep me chaste. Much to my chagrin, her prayers seemed to be working. For all our hot and heavy foreplay, Becky and I still had not had sex. More times than I cared to count, we came tantalizingly close, but never all the way. My hot-blooded girlfriend had mastered the art of seduction but was less sure about surrendering the goods. And how could I blame her? She was still a virgin, and even more confused than I was. Night after night she would accompany me to the brink of intimacy before backing off. Summer was winding down, I would soon be off to
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college, and I remained a virgin. A crazed and highly frustrated virgin.
Still, I wanted to be prepared just in case. One morning when I knew it would be quiet, I headed to Dandy Drugs and—after lurking in the aisles for what seemed hours, pretending to read the labels on Pepto-Bismol and Old Spice bottles—summoned the nerve to buy a three-pack of condoms. After eighteen years without the need for a single prophylactic, I could not fathom ever requiring more than three. Three condoms seemed wildly optimistic. Three condoms, I was convinced, would last the rest of my life. I slid one into my wallet and hid the other two above a basement ceiling panel where I knew Mom and Dad wouldn’t find them. I was ready when Becky was.
Then the unexpected happened. One week before I was to leave for college, the doorbell rang, and on the front porch stood Anna. Her skin was the color of cocoa from a summer of sun, her hair a shimmer of tight, frizzy curls. She wore shorts and flip-flops and a loose muslin smock, a small silver Star of David around her neck. The instant I saw her, all the feelings from the previous autumn came rushing back. Anna, Anna, my God, Anna.
“Hi,” she said with a smile that told me the feelings had not left her, either.
“Hi,” I answered.
Then we were walking through the dark, hand in hand. We walked down Erie Drive, across The Outlot to the beach, stopping along the way to fetch a blanket from the boat. Neither of us needed to say a word; we both knew where the night would take us. I led her to a grassy place beneath one of the giant oak trees, and together we spread the blanket and sank down on it.
“I missed you,” I whispered. It had been eight months since our last kiss, but the transition was seamless. Here we were again, our lips and torsos and limbs pressed together as if no time at all had passed. The humid night air surrounded us and
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distant lightning flashed silently in the sky. I pulled my face back far enough to look into her eyes.
“You’re sure?” I asked.
“I’m sure,” Anna said and pulled my face back to hers.
That’s when I felt a wet, cold jab on the back of my neck. I jolted upright and turned. Shaun lunged forward and began licking my face. He was wildly happy to have found us, and was pant-ing and prancing about. “Aww, pu
ppy,” Anna cooed and reached up to pet him.
“No! No, wait,” I said. “Quick! Button your shirt! Sit up!” If Shaun was here, that could mean just one thing.
I stood up, pulled my shirt down, and looked around. From the direction we had just come danced a flashlight beam, growing brighter and bigger as it drew closer. I waited until it was nearly upon us.
“Hi, Dad,” I said. “Over here.”
The beam fell on us briefly and then went dark.
“You remember Anna,” I continued. “My friend from New Jersey? She’s back visiting.”
Dad said hello to her, then turned back to me. “Your mother’s concerned,” he said. “She sent me down to check on you.”
I paused to marvel at my mother’s ability to sniff out possible hanky-panky from hundreds of yards away. As far as I knew, she hadn’t even seen Anna come to the door. From the pained tone of Dad’s voice, I could tell this was the last thing he wanted to be doing on his Saturday night. He had been ordered here against his will, Little Napoleon’s foot soldier. I could tell he was embarrassed to be caught in the middle.
“We’re just talking, Dad. Catching up.”
“Why don’t you catch up at the house. That would probably be better.”
“Sure, good idea,” I said. “We’ll be right up.”
“How right up?”
“Twenty minutes?”
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He hesitated in the dark. I could picture his face, and I imagined it grimacing. I could see him weighing what he would tell his wife when he returned alone. “Twenty minutes,” he said.
“Twenty minutes. Promise.”
“Okay then,” he said and flicked on his flashlight and walked away.
We both sat frozen until the flashlight beam disappeared on the other side of The Lagoon. Then I was on my feet, pulling her up onto hers.
“Come on, quick,” I said. “We don’t have much time.”
“John,” she said. “We can’t. What if he comes back?”
“I have a place,” I said. “A secret place we used to go as kids.”
I threw the blanket over my shoulder and led her down into the water. “Watch the rocks,” I warned as we waded knee-deep along the shoreline. Ahead of us, a small peninsula jutted out into the lake, thick with underbrush. I led Anna around the little spit of land, which separated the neighborhood beach from a private home. On the other side, a steep stairway led up the em-bankment to the house, but first, on the edge of the water, was a tiny secluded beach. Just big enough for two people on a blanket.
Tommy and I had discovered it years earlier.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“I think it’s perfect,” she said.
Within seconds we were out of our clothes. She lay down on the blanket and pulled me on top of her. The sensation of our bare flesh pressed together was like nothing I had ever imagined. I was delirious with desire.
“My condom!” I nearly shouted. “I have a condom.”
I fumbled for my wallet, and she helped me put it on. I sank back on top of her, felt our skin make contact again, her breasts against my chest, her stomach flat against mine. It was as if our bodies had always been meant to fit together. I was so excited. So incredibly excited.
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Too excited. My orgasm came in a matter of seconds. It came with no warning. It came before I was even fully inside her.
“It was still wonderful,” she said.
But I knew it wasn’t. I lay motionless on top of her. She traced her fingertips along my spine and whispered in my ear. I don’t remember what she said, but whatever it was, it gave me all the encouragement I needed. Seconds later I was ready for her again and she for me.
“Grab another condom,” she whispered.
I froze. “Another condom?”
“Yeah. Hurry.”
“Um. I don’t have another one.”
“You only brought one?” The disappointment in her voice bordered on annoyance.
“I didn’t know.”
From the way Anna recoiled on the blanket, I knew what she wanted to say: What kind of an idiot would carry only one lousy condom? What she said was: “Just hold me, okay?”
I racked my brain. “We could try to use it over again,” I offered.
“No,” she said, clearly appalled at the idea. “That won’t work.”
In the end, we did what high school kids for eons have done, and that was to err on the side of recklessness. We made love with no protection at all. Afterward, we lay together and I cradled her face in my hands. “You are so beautiful,” I said.
We were late. It was time to go before Mom sent Dad in search of us again. At the house, I called inside, “Back!” I saw Dad in the living room check his watch. Anna and I sat on the porch and talked, then I walked her to her car.
“I’m glad you came back,” I said.
“I am, too.”
She unclasped the Star of David from her neck and put it around mine. For my birthday that year, Marijo had given me a
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silver cross with the word Alleluia stamped on it, and I removed it from my neck. Anna held her hair up for me, and I fumbled to clasp it around hers. We both started laughing.
“This will drive the parents insane,” Anna said.
“Yours and mine both,” I said.
We stood in the dark, rocking gently in each other’s arms, our foreheads pressed together. The first hint of autumn drifted on the breeze, and with it an awareness that my life had reached a juncture. Everything was soon about to change—or perhaps was already changing. I was leaving home in a week, leaving my parents’ nest and the childhood they had given me. I was leaving without my virginity and with no concept of the irrevocability of life’s chapters.
I kissed Anna on the lips. Once, twice, three times. And then she was gone. Back to New Jersey, to college in Boston, to a life that, as it turned out, would remain fully separate and apart from my own.
p a r t t w o
o
Breaking Away
Chapter 18
o
By 1982 I was three years out of Central Michigan University, where I had finally gotten serious about academics and graduated cum laude with twin majors in
journalism and English. I was working as a reporter at a small newspaper in the far southwest corner of the state, covering murders, robberies, rapes, and lesser crimes. I lived alone in an apartment carved out of the second story of a turn-of-the-century house perched on a bluff above Lake Michigan. And I was still dating Becky. Or perhaps more accurately, Becky was still dating me.
Just as she had instigated that first kiss in the hallway of West Bloomfield High seven years earlier, Becky continued to be the driving force that kept us hanging on as a couple. I followed the course of least resistance, going along for the ride—and for the sex, which finally came to pass in my dorm room at Central Michigan after Becky went on the Pill and persuaded her mother to drive her the two hours to campus to spend the weekend.
That visit marked a watershed in my struggle for candor with my parents. I had never grown comfortable with the lies and
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deceit, and once in college I was determined to be more forthcom-ing. But my parents seldom rewarded my attempts at honesty. I learned that over and over, but never as much as I did during that Homecoming weekend when Mom called while Becky was in the room with me, waiting for her mother to arrive to take her home.
“So what’s new?” Mom asked.
“Oh, not much,” I said.
“Nothing at all?”
“Not really.”
“Surely you must have something to report,” she said, not ac -
cusatorily but with enough zeal to make me think, Oh God, she knows.
“Well,” I said, “Becky’s here for the weekend.”
Long pause.
“Becky? There with you?” Mom asked.
“Yes. Her mom brought her up for Homecoming.”
“For the day?”
“No, for the weekend.” I glanced over at Becky and could tell from her expression that I was making a grave mistake. But my pride was on the line. I wasn’t going to lie to my mother in front of my girlfriend and roommates. Besides, I was an adult now, old enough to vote, and figured it was time to be my own man. “She’s actually here right now.”
“She is? Where did she stay last night?” Mom asked.
“Here at the dorm.”
“Where at the dorm?”
“Here in my room.”
“Your room? Then where did you stay?”
Now it was my turn to pause. It was the moment of truth. I could easily lie and tell her I bunked across the hall, or I could be a man and tell it straight. “Here in my room, Mom.”
A drawn breath, and then: “John, what are you trying to tell me?”
Before I could answer, she started in about the sanctity of
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marriage, and the need for God’s blessing of sexual relations, and the repercussions of one irresponsible act. It was time to abandon ship. The SS Honesty was going down.
“Mom,” I interrupted. “Nothing happened. Nothing at all, okay? She slept in my bed and I slept in the beanbag. We just slept, that’s all.”
“Do you expect me to—?”
“Not a thing, Mom. Not a thing happened.”
I quickly got off the line before the grilling could resume, but the fallout from that moment of candor continued for weeks, with Mom lamenting the decision to send me to public schools and Dad threatening to make me live at home while attending a local Catholic college.
On my next visit home, I sat with them in the living room, looked into their eyes, and repeated my lie with straight-faced sincerity: “Honest, nothing happened.” I repeated the words over and over, like a hypnotist.