Forty Years Later I Get to Explain

Marquee

Now you know the very short story of my humiliating date with Jack M. in 1966 (previous post). I saw him at school the following week, but we didn't acknowledge each other then, or ever, and I filed it away -- just another painful adolescent memory; I have quite a collection of those.

But a couple of years ago, prompted by a discussion of "voice" at a South Coast Writing Project renewal, I wrote the story down and read it out loud to my colleagues. One teacher asked if she could read it to her high school students, certain that they could relate to it, despite the difference in our generations.She was right. Even the coolest of them had their own experiences with shyness and awkwardness, with saying exactly the wrong thing or nothing at all, with feeling sort of paralyzed and stupid. They too had sometimes gotten lost in the gap between what they felt and what they outwardly expressed.But they wondered, also, how it might have felt from Jack's perspective.

So can you imagine contacting a guy you dated (to use the term loosely) forty years ago to ask him how he felt back then? Would he even remember me? I figured I had nothing to lose. I would do it in the guise of being a writer, and I'd do it for the kids, and I'd do it, truthfully, to finally close the loop on this embarrassing incident, retroactively explaining, and perhaps even redeeming myself.

The wonders of the web. He had an uncommon last name and had stayed on Long Island. I found him easily and sent an email. I asked him if he remembered me and our...um...date. He certainly did. It turns out it was his first official date! Ever. Oh, dear.Here are a few of the things he said in the course of our email correspondence:

"I remember thinking when I asked you out that you were beautiful, but afterwards I thought you were really in love with yourself, and what a bitch! It's funny, high school is such a weird time for mostly everyone. We are trying to figure things out with hormones flowing and bodies and minds growing. But I had such a great time in high school, I didn't want to graduate."

We certainly differ there.

He continued:

"I'm sure I sulked and was perplexed for a week or so - but really there was always someone coming up saying 'guess who has a crush on you' and so you move on. However, it always stuck in the back of my mind. Was there more to it? Did I say something? Did I smell? Though I was an upperclassman I surely at that time was not confident and sophisticated as you may have thought. I guess it was easier not to talk to each other after that date and just ignore it."

In a subsequent message he added these thoughts:

"When I wrote the part about remembering you as conceited, and how I hoped you had gotten up to 300 pounds, I was trying to give you my honest initial reaction because I thought you would need that for your story. But deep down I had always hoped there was more to it, and I'm very happy to have heard from you. Don't be too remorseful about being so shy in high school - most of us were - and as for our date, I was possibly almost as self-conscious and shy or I would have made an attempt to initiate a conversation."

Who knew?

And he mused about our town:

"I drive through C.I. past my old house or St. John of God Elementary School occasionally to reminisce. Funny, most of our families couldn't rub two nickels together in those days. But I was happy, and life is grand."

Well, he seemed like a nice guy back then, and he seems like a nice guy now. We condensed the decades of our lives into a few key facts, compared notes about our grown-up children, and updated one another about friendships, marriages, and several deaths. Vietnam, AIDS, cancer. (Aren't we all just the stories of our generation?) He sent me a recent photo -- for a moment I was taken aback by the sight of a handsome white-haired gentleman, the sort you'd glimpse on a golf course. Then I remembered that I am not sixteen either.

And he's right about our families. They never had much, but they worked hard and loved us fiercely, hoping always to give us better chances than they had known.It seems so faraway and long ago, but out of all the infinite possibilities of time and place, we few were somehow thrown together, and it's fascinating to learn how the once overlapping stories have diverged and unfolded.We are the beneficiaries of many miraculous things.