Section 8. Romance
“I am one who loved not wisely, but too well”. Othello Act V, Scene 2.
There is one final “theme” from this time of my life that was front and center for me (and probably most guys) … girls.
Or, perhaps I should say: romance. But there’s romance, and then there’s romance. The term covers a wide swath, from innocent crushes, to dating, to all consuming adoration … not to mention the physical consummation of body-on-body. But as far as I went, I never got beyond that first level of “innocent crush”. Now, I do not claim to be unique in this matter – I’m sure there were a lot guys who were in the same boat, but I never heard of anyone else’s story that touched on so many girls, on such a variety of levels.
I don’t pretend to have done a study on the matter, but in the popular culture of the time, typical teenage romances were focused on one boy who is interested in one girl. In fact, I can think of only two exceptions: 1). In The many loves of Dobie Gillis, Dobie (according to Wikipedia) aspired to have “the attention of beautiful and unattainable girls”, with the target of his affection changing from Thalia Menniger to others from episode to episode, and 2). In the Monkees song, Look out here comes tomorrow, Davy Jones bemoans that he loves both Mary and Sandra, and will soon have to decide between the two. However, these are the exceptions to the rule.
Like Dobie, I was attracted to various “beautiful and unattainable girls” over the next couple of decades, but like Davy, I was attracted to them at the same time. But what might make my story atypical is 1). The sheer number of girls involved and 2) my classification of them into four distinct levels. Now keep in mind, I was a shy, skinny, unathletic kid with glasses and big ears – I had absolutely no illusions that any girl could ever possibly be interested in me. But that didn’t keep me from focusing on some of the prettiest and most popular girls in school. Of these, there were seven that I really fell for. And it started on the grounds of R.J. Fisher Junior High School.
1. Crushes
Up until junior high, I had no interest whatsoever in the fairer sex, and went happily about my own business with nothing other than war gaming to focus on. But in 7th grade, out of the blue and with no warning whatsoever, Mo McNeal (Fig. 3.8.1) caught my eye and I instantly became a slave to my emotions. Mo was not only a pretty girl, but she had a vivacity that really appealed to me. However, as noted above, I figured I had three chances with her: slim, fat and none. But I had one small sliver of an opportunity. My brother (then in high school) was, as befitting my father’s son, interested in golf. And in his class was another student who played golf – a guy named Gary McNeal. Now, I never actually had met Gary, all I knew of him was his existence … and what he looked like. And it occurred to me that he looked a LOT like Mo. And slowly trying to figure things out, I took my first step to emulate Sherlock Holmes and try to figure out if it was at all possible that Gary and Mo might be related. Mo and I shared the first class of the day, and one morning just before class started when she was standing by herself, I got my courage up and approached her and asked her if Gary was her brother. She replied in the affirmative (aha!) … but then I realized that I had no follow-up questions to push the conversation forward, and mumbled something like “I thought so” or “Yes he looks like you”, and wandered off, having completely shot my bolt.
So I was stymied for the nonce, but you can’t keep a good man down, and a little while later, I thought I’d try another tack. I had long been interested in anything English or Scottish, and so thought Mo’s surname might provide another opportunity to start a conversation. So again waiting until she was her alone, I again went up to her and asked if her family was Scottish. She happily replied “I don’t know”, and that was that – once again I had no follow-up prepared (regardless of what her answer might have been), and walked off, stymied. And although my crush on her continued for a couple more years, I never had the gumption to approach or talk to her again durig high school.
But having a crush on Mo didn’t prevent me from falling under the spell of two other girls. Keri Kensinger (Fig. 3.8.2) was the daughter of my Civics teacher, and may have been the most popular girl in school. Not only was she pretty, but she was very outgoing, as befitted a cheerleader – a position she held both in junior high and high school. But I was in even a worse position with Keri: we never single class in common. And so I had no opportunity to EVER speak with her, but she still became my #2 crush (both in sequence and in intensity).
And then there was Viki Bardin (Fig. 3.8.3). I thought Viki was really beautiful, but her “presence” in school was much less than Mo and Keri, so I knew even less about her … other than she was in the school play “Widow’s Walk”, where she (SPOILER ALERT!) played the villain. Like Keri, I never had a single class with Viki, and thus never had a chance to once speak with her throughout high school, but she still became crush #3.
This situation continued on into high school, when a funny thing happened. In my freshman year Mo became less interesting to me, and dropped to the #3 spot, while I elevated Viki to #1 (Keri, like the car rental company Avis, remained at #2). Then in my sophomore year, my romantic range expanded. Joy Freeman1 (Fig. 3.8.4) was in my English class – I knew Joy and Mo were best friends, but although I adored Mo, my feelings towards Joy were initially not positive – yes she was pretty, but I had no interest in her at all. And then … I can’t explain it, but sometime during that term, again out of the blue I developed a crush on her as well. And since I have a thing for odd numbers, there was no way I was going to have only four crushes. But also in that class was Lindi Burrows (Fig. 3.8.5), a ravishing creature. Other than being in the same clique as Mo and Joy, I knew nothing about her, but that didn’t stop her from becoming my crush #5. So except for asking Joy and Lindi to sign my yearbook at the end of our senior year, I never approached any of them, although as noted in the previous section, I’d ride my bike past their houses every day … without ever seeing one of them).
So throughout high school I bemoaned the absence of contacts with my crushes – at best I occasionally caught sight of them walking between classes or at an assembly, or occasionally saw Keri when she was cheerleading. This left quite a vacuum in my amorous mind, so to provide some sort of (at least visual) relief for my fantasies, a number of other girls caught my eye, who I classified into two groups.
2. Pleasant scenery
One group was a series of girls with who I shared a class, so that I simply might have someone nice to look at when whenever my attention might wander from the class subject at hand. Leaving aside PE, we had six classes per day, so over a period of 4 years, there were something on the order of two dozen girls that I might fixate on, for 50 minutes at a time. Like my crushes, I don’t remember ever speaking a single word to any of them in class, nor did I develop any romantic feelings for them (hell, I had my hands full with my five crushes) – they simply served as girls who were “easy on the eyes” that might divert me during slow times of each 50 minute class. After 50 years, I can remember only a few of their names, but one of them was Adrienne Davidson who was in my math class. Actually I did have a (very) slight interaction with Adrienne, as we both had roles in a shared scene during our junior play, The Skin of our Teeth (if you wish to consider me for additional roles, please direct your inquiries to my agent2), but otherwise we never had any interactions afterwards, other than signing each other’s yearbook.
3. The Field
And there was a third group of girls, which I simply thought of as “The Field”. These were various attractive females that occasionally caught my eye and spurred my imagination as someone who “might be great to be with”. Again, I can remember only a few of their names (Class of ’70: Lynette Latiolais, Patty McGowen; Class of ’71: Kris Bridges, Cindy Jordahl, Carole Rose; Class of ’72: Jody Nunn)3.
4. My senior loves
Finally, there was a fourth group. As noted above, Adrienne was in one of my classes in my junior year. However, after the first semester, she transferred to another class for the second term. But just as I was bemoaning my bad luck at her moving on, Nancy Curtis (Fig. 3.8.6) transferred in as Adrienne transferred out (and even sat at her old desk), and just like that, my romantic life clicked up a notch.
Unlike my many previous objects of adoration, I had no history with Nancy – just one day she wasn’t there and next day she was, and I could start off with a clean slate. It’s not to say that my self confidence was any better, but at least I wasn’t tongue-tied around her, and was able to talk to her and even kid around a bit, as I would have with anyone else. But I soon realized she was as close to my idea of perfection in a female as possible: smart, beautiful, very personable, good sense of humor, with the added kicker that she seemed to enjoy my company. So unlike the others, Nancy and I had an organic friendly relationship … and then I soon ended up falling for her like a ton of bricks. But there was one major flaw: she was a senior. So not only was I still well aware of my shortcomings when it came to attracting a member of the opposite sex, I instinctively “knew” that there was no way a senior girl could possibly be interested in a junior boy. In my mind, something like that just didn’t happen – perhaps a senior boy might date a junior girl, but it was never the other way around. So, I continued to see her every day at class, and at least was able to cultivate her friendship, while keeping my true feelings for her to myself, marking the beginning of the fourth group of girls, my “loves”. And, I say “group” because, since old habits are hard to break, soon another girl came along that I also fell for, almost as hard as Nancy.
One day as I was turning the northwest corner of the library building, I suddenly came face to face with two people coming right at me: a guy I knew from our class and a pretty girl who was a stranger to me. The guy introduced us, and that’s how I met Paula Hollister4, another senior. Although Paula and I were complete strangers to each other, we weren’t totally unfamiliar with each other. Paula recognized my name because she enjoyed the “Senior Will” that my brother wrote up upon his graduation the year before5, while I recognized her name since a mutual friend of ours previously mentioned her to me. I wasn’t immediately smitten by her, but again she represented a clean slate, and we became friends. And just as I had done with Nancy, my feelings of friendship rapidly progressed to love … but with the same “doomsday gene” implanted, as both of them were slated to graduate within five or six months, leaving me in the dust when they went off to college.
And when I fell for this pair of seniors, almost instantly my feelings for my five previous crushes sort of crumbled into dust. Don’t get me wrong – I was still very fond of all of them, but their emotional pull suddenly evaporated as I focused on my two new loves … with one exception.
One day during my senior year, we had a half day of school. Since I had a free afternoon with no plans, and I ended up doing what I usually did with my free time, and went on a bike ride, and chose to go up one of the hilly roads east of town (either Shannon or Kennedy). It was a steep hill so I was moving slow, huffing and puffing, when a car came up from behind me. As it began to pass the driver slowed down, one of the kids on the passenger side yelled something at me and squirted me with a water pistol, after which the car sped up and disappeared ahead. Well, this might have been a lack of respect, but I had so little self respect at that time it really didn’t bother me that much. Besides, I figured it really was just a matter of some guys having a little fun, rather than specifically an attack on me. So I didn’t take it personal (besides, it was a warm day, and the spritzing of water actually felt kind of nice). But I suspected that the car might soon be retracing its path, and I tried to prepare some type of verbal riposte when it did so. Sure enough, within five minutes the car came back downhill towards me. But this time, instead of receiving a second volley as it drew level with me, the car slowed and the left rear window came down and I saw Lindi, who apologized to me for the squirting. Well, I was dumbfounded. First of all, I hadn’t even seen her during the car’s first pass (she being on the driver’s side of the car). But more strikingly, I was not prepared to have one of the most beautiful and popular girls in my class apologize to me for her companions’ actions. So I never got off my riposte, and was left with my jaw hanging wide open as they continued back into town. And although I was now focused on the two seniors, that incident did further endear Lindi to me6.
There was one final kicker regarding Nancy and Paula. Since I met them independently, and never really hung out with either of them (although a couple of times Paula did stop and enjoy my classical music “broadcast” described in section 1) as far as I knew the only thing they had in common was my affection for them. At the end of the year, I decided to attend their graduation ceremony (standing off at a distance, as I didn’t want to intrude my presence on them) to see them off. During the ceremony, the seniors walked a type of processional around the perimeter of the seating area, then paired up for the final path down the middle aisle and thence out to their seats, the tradition being that the grads got to choose who they paired up with. So you can imagine my surprise when during that final march down the middle aisle I saw that Nancy and Paula were walking together – indicating that they not only knew each other, but that they had to have been pretty good friends. As I said – the coincidence of them knowing each other that well STILL blows my mind, 50 plus years later7.
Coda.
Although I never spoke to Mo during high school, I finally did talk with her at a couple of our high school reunions. To this day I have never spoken with Keri, although we’ve become Facebook friends. I ran into Viki at a checkout lane of a local supermarket a couple years after graduation, and when I mentioned that I recognized her from school, she replied that she had been very shy in high school (implying she didn’t know me from Adam). But in 2024, I finally had a pleasant talk with her at our “’71 at 71” class event held at Vasona Park – and I swear she looked just as she had in high school. I had only one contact with Joy post-high school (when I phoned to encourage her to attend our 50th class reunion). I saw Lindi at our 10 year reunion; a few years ago I also had a lovely phone conversation with her, when I was overjoyed to finally get a chance to tell her of my appreciation of her kind behavior that day up in the hills east of town. In all of these cases, I was struck at how friendly and nice each and every one of them were … so perhaps I unconsciously sensed their positive qualities “back in the day” when I first fell for them; in any case, it was great to confirm that all of them were all as wonderful as I had long thought them to be.
After Nancy and Paula graduated, my romantic feelings for both of them continued during my senior year, as well as for some time after. I think I saw Nancy only three more times post high school8, including once when she was attending UC Davis, while the last time I saw her was when I was in grad school (1989 or ’90), by which time she had acquired both a husband and some kids. I’m happy to say that we maintained a friendly relationship the whole time, even though our interactions had been quite minimal. However, it was a harder for me to shake loose of the pull Paula still exercised on me. We began writing letters after she graduated, and I saw her a number of times over the next 20 years10 with one interesting follow-up story11.
And I also credit her with a change in my disposition. Before I met her I had always been a left-brained, shirt tucked in type of guy, believing rules were rules and should always be obeyed. But her influence (probably best summed up in a Dostoyevsky quote she sent me: “You have no tenderness, nothing but the truth, and so you judge unjustly”) had a major impact on how I viewed people and situations thereafter, and I definitely emerged as a better person.
But as distance invariably wins out, eventually I was able to get over her … and then was subsumed by a whole NEW raft of impossible loves, starting during my collegiate days, as I will discuss in the next chapter.
[Don’t stop here – the endnotes are on page 51]
1 Years later, Joy informed me of an obvious factoid that I had no clue to up to that point: her father (Gerald) had been my pediatrician!
2 Luigi Fercotti: see Introduction for contact information.
3 I was friendly enough with Lynette, Kris and Carole to actually speak to (though not the others), but I certainly never made any sort of advances in their direction.
4 A pseudonym: I never received permission to use her name.
5 I later asked Ned what he wrote – he couldn’t remember, but he rather thought it was something to do with gun running.
6 Recalling this incident here in such detail may strike some as a bit much. But I choose to do so because it does point out the “power” (if you will) that the slightest kind act can have on someone for years afterwards … much as Bob Croall’s consideration of me at his sister’s party had on me (see Overview of this chapter). It also is a vivid example of the power of memory, reminiscent of Mr. Bernstein’s exposition from one of my favorite movies, Citizen Kane: “A fellow will remember a lot of things you wouldn’t think he’d remember. You take me. One day, back in 1896, I was crossing over to Jersey on the ferry, and as we pulled out, there was another ferry pulling in, and on it there was a girl waiting to get off. A white dress she had on. She was carrying a white parasol. I only saw her for one second. She didn’t see me at all, but I’ll bet a month hasn’t gone by since I haven’t thought of that girl.”
7 Years later I learned they had met in PE playing field hockey.
8 When we first met, Nancy lived on Summit Road9 (a good five miles south of town, where the only direct road was via Highway 17, a narrow, curving, heavily trafficked route with at least one curve that had a deadly reputation for car crashes). It was only years afterward that I came to wonder how in the hell did kids up there adapt to such a long daily commute. I learned there was indeed a school bus that serviced that region, but it made only a single circuit, immediately after school was out. But how a would student with any extracurricular activities (or who would want to hang out with friends after school), deal with that? Get a ride with their folks or a neighbor? Hitchhike? The mind reels.
9 See section 7.
10 Also referenced in section 7.
11 See Chapter 7 (section 9).