I wasn’t always smooth with the ladies. I know that’s hard to believe. But I always liked them, at times I pined for them, I was always aware of girls in my universe. Early on, playing imaginary games of baseball as I pitch a Spaldeen off the wood steps of 434 East 4th Street, I’m wondering if Rose Yannonne is watching from her second floor porch across the street? Is she impressed with these amazing catches I’m making? In the early grades at school I was a bit of a class clown, my antics designed to make my friends laugh and I suppose, to entertain the girls; depending on the grade, it might be one girl in particular. Thinking of those crushes, those relationships, that feeling of longing is still there, the desire for acceptance, for someone’s seal of approval is still strong.
And now? I’m a married father of three boys and that game is over for me. And I miss it. It’s funny, my wife worries about my three boys entering the dating universe, she’s worried one of them will fall really hard for a girl and then get his heart broken. But isn’t that all part of the game? How else do love songs mean so much? You can’t listen to Elton John’s, “Your Song” without thinking about….that’s what the game is all about isn’t it? Perhaps Kira’s worried that they won’t do well with the ladies? I suppose she’s worried that they will do well? I laugh, I’m envious. Isn’t that all part of the process? You often hear people bemoan the dating scene, they look back on it as a burden, something that produced pain and anxiety. I never saw it that way, dating was fun, those early courtships priceless. They don’t call it the game of love for nothing. I loved playing it, pretty much all of the time. Even those initial awkward years…
My first crush, somewhere in first or second grade, was a girl named Susan. This “relationship” was very important to me. I say to ME because looking back now, I’m sure she was unaware of my attentions. We went to our neighborhood catholic school, Immaculate Heart of Mary, on Fort Hamilton Parkway in Windsor Terrace. You can picture it, hundreds of uniformed girls and boys cuing into this 4 story, tan, brick, rectangle of a school every day. Our neighborhood in the mid-70’s, still felt like it had one foot in the 50’s…the girls wore maroon plaid skirts, a white blouse and a vest. The boys went to school every day in our white shirts, navy blue ties, navy blue pants, black belt and shoes. Out of all the girls in our class, in the first grade, identical in their uniforms, I quickly picked Susan. I don’t know what it was about Susan but thinking of her now I can still remember what it felt like to pine for her. Maybe it was her brains, she was a good student; I mean she wore horn-rimmed glasses! Could have been her pert nose, little-girl cuteness that had me head-over-heels? Sadly, after three years of having Susan on my radar, of noticing her in the classroom, and showing off for her in the school yard, she moved to Long Island or New Jersey. Her house was right across from our church, on East 4th Street, and for years, I thought about her every time I walked down that block. Isn’t it odd that I still remember this and I’m 51? Or maybe it’s not? I joked, at our rehearsal dinner the night before Kira and I were to get married, that if Susan walked through those French doors (a girl I hadn’t seen since 3rd grade) all bets were off.
Of course, there were other girls I liked along the way. Around 6th grade, when we headed out into our fenced in, rectangular schoolyard on Caton Avenue for recess, the boys usually flipped baseball cards or we played a game of tag that we called Fence. The girls usually jumped rope or played hopscotch? Winter of 6th grade, we are heading outside for recess, to burn off that early adolescent energy. I am guessing at who was the first, as it’s 35 years ago, but I know that some of the cute girls in our class, Kathy Kavanaugh, Caroline Desimone, Donna Tracey had red hats. These were your basic knit hat that you roll up on itself. In order to get their attention, a few of the boys began stealing the girls’ hats to make them run after us. This was fun for us, breathless and running away, the girls squealing in excitement…the early stages of courtship; I am pretty sure it was fun for the girls too. Timmy Boyle or Mark Bowen, maybe Matty Milbauer nicknamed these red-hatted girls the Red Hat Magoolies. And on successive days that winter, the boys “tortured” the Red Hat Magoolies. It was the highlight of our day, it’s what got me excited to go to school. The best part was, the number of girls wearing these non-descript red hats kept increasing. First there were three girls with red hats; then four, five, six... I can imagine the conversations around the dinner tables in our neighborhood. “Why do you need a red hat Jean Ann? We just bought you a winter hat that matches your jacket?” How would a 6th grade girl explain that to her parents? “Um, you see, I really want the red hat because Caroline Desimone and Kathy Kavanaugh have red hats and the boys steal their hats and make them run after them. You see Mom? Other girls are getting red hats and now the boys steal their hats too. So I really need a red hat.”
As much as I enjoyed the contest, the adventure, the adrenaline rush of the chase, my first “real” girlfriend was thrust upon me, pretty much. As we entered 8th grade, my buddies and I were suddenly “cool.” At least we thought we wereJ We started misbehaving (more) in school and a few of us started nosing around the girls more seriously. Right around this time, we were free to roam the neighborhood, away from the watchful eye of the moms and nosy neighbors on our block. Large groups of adolescents, boys and girls, started to gather in East 5th Street Park or maybe one of the local school yards, like P.S. 130. You can see now, that it was puberty, hormones, driving our activity. As my friends were starting to pair off with girls, I stayed on the bench pretty much. I was too scared, clueless or not interested enough to make a move. The one girl I really liked in 8th grade was Carolyn Leaver. But for the most part, I didn’t really know what to do, if she was to become my girlfriend. In retrospect, I liked the idea of a girlfriend more than I liked the real-life, girlfriend. Suddenly, I had no choice. With John Tracey and Jimmy Quinlan, two of my closest friends, paired up with girls (and making out like their ship was going down every chance they got) my fate was sealed. I flew under the radar initially but eventually, they started to put pressure on me. This was the time of Spin-the-Bottle games whenever we could find an empty basement or if one of the girls we hung out with was babysitting. If only Mr. and Mrs. Munoz knew what we were doing in their house while Sandra was babysitting her little brother Eddie…
Now the wild card in all of this was my sister Julie. Julie, 15 months younger than me, was in 7th grade while I was in 8th. As a guy, and a budding adolescent, it’s really good to have a sister one grade below you. Those 7th grade girls thought my friends and I were actually cool, go figure. And the girls were aggressive. I didn’t have to do anything. That fear of failure, thankfully, hardly weighed into it for me. One day, my sister came home from school, and she actually seemed pleased when she said, “Jayne thinks you’re cute.” Stuffing a Yankee Doodle in my mouth as I raced out the door to play roller hockey, I placed that with the other information that wasn’t about the Mets. I could kind of recall who she was, which wasn’t a good sign. The one girl in my sister’s class I liked, was Cathy, who awkwardly enough lived on the same block as Jayne. Now Jayne was very nice and all, and had all of the qualities prized by the superficial young male, but I couldn’t say I was particularly interested in Jayne, or Cathy for that matter. That romantic chemistry thing is very funny.
Winter of 8th grade, my sister’s friends and my friends are hanging out. Once my friends, specifically John Tracey and Jimmy Quinlan, got wind of the fact that Jayne liked me, the full-court press was on. What made matters worse, at least according to them, was that John and Jimmy were already making their way around some of the proverbial “bases” with their girls and I was still in the batter’s box.
Quinlan: “Don’t you like her? You’re in. Your sister says you’re in. What are you waiting for?”
Me: “Uh, I don’t know, I’m not really sure that I like Jayne, I mean she’s nice and all but…”
John: “Have you ever even kissed a girl Spinner?”
Me: (Now I had no choice but to tell the truth here because I spent almost every minute with John and Jimmy, they already knew the answer) “No.”
Quinlan: “So go with Jane. This is your chance to kiss a girl. Unless you’re scared?”
Me: “Well……I don’t really know what to do.” With your close friends, you can admit this stuff. And my boys were actually tender, understanding, they coached me…
John: “You can just let her lead, she’s probably kissed a few guys already (not really a selling point) so let her take the lead.”
Quinlan: “You just kind of stick your tongue in there and wiggle it around a little bit. I bet she knows what she’s doing so just follow along. It’s easy.”
How could I go wrong with expert advice like that?
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Hide & Seek
Hanging around. We did a lot of that in those days. For the most part we spent time in people’s basements, on street corners, in the park. What to do? Some couples would pair off in a secluded spot and make out. Some would lean against a parked car, in front of everyone, and wrestle each other. I was a little too self-conscious to do that. At some point, my sister’s friends, and my friends, are hanging on my front porch. We’re busting chops, kidding around when someone says, “We should play Hide & Seek!” This seems odd to me, I’m thinking, why would we play this kid’s game? I mean we’re teenagers now. A little slow on the uptake, Quinlan and Tracey pull me into the hallway of my house: “We’re not really playing Hide & Seek, you are going to run and hide with Jayne. Tweety’s going to go with Risa, I’m going with Cathy and then we’ll get to make-out.” Gulp, what do I do now? My knees are knocking, my palms are sweaty and Jimmy and John can see that... “Just let her lead Spinner, you’ll be fine.”
We gather on my front steps, a place where I’ve played so many real games of Hide & Seek, but now our game is a ruse to allow us to be alone with our “girlfiends.” The irony, the symbolism of the moment does not escape me. Someone is chosen as “It” and begins to count, “1, 2, 3…” we scatter. Jayne and I run across the street, up the alley between two houses and hide in the hedges on the left side. We are in close quarters, out of breath, on top of each other. Jayne has been chasing me for about three weeks now, letting everyone know that she digs me. I’ve been flitting around her, like a drunken butterfly and now finally, I’ll be forced to land. We giggle, suppressed laughter, I glance up the alley, it’s instinct, I continue playing the game. I’m listening to the counting, “22, 23, 24” and I realize I can’t put it off any longer, if I come out of this without kissing Jayne, I’m done for. My first kiss is happening. We move closer together. I can still see her denim jacket, the feathered black hair, the expectant smile. We look awkwardly at each other, we move towards each other and then we go for it. I tilt my head to the right, she tilts hers to the left, and just like my buddies said, she leads. There’s a lot of tongue waggling, I’m not sure what to do. In and out? Around? Up and down? I am overwhelmed by the taste of Bubble Yum bubble gum. We kiss for a little while. I’m thinking, I’m not sure what the big deal is. We stop. I look up the alley to see if anyone is coming. A brief respite and I think, alright, I can do this. We look at each other, shrug and then go for it again. Then, I think, I kissed a girl! I’m all proud of myself for passing this milestone. Eventually, we come out. I suggest, acting like I know what I’m doing, “Next time, maybe you should take your gum out.” What a jerk right? Of course I would act cocky rather than admit I had no clue.
The game ends, night is falling, dinner is coming and the girls have a long walk home. Jimmy Quinlan and I decide to walk the girls home. As we are walking the streets of our neighborhood, there’s awkward silence. Like a nervous parrot, I begin filling the space with questions. “Do you have brothers and sisters? Where does your family go on vacation? How do you get along with your parents?” The others begin to chime in, Cathy talks. Jimmy pipes in. We meander through our neighborhood. We pass our school and I’m wondering how we’ll react to each other the next time we see each other at school. Are we now boyfriend and girlfriend? Eventually, we get to their block. We say good-bye. None of us risks a kiss because the girls’ parents might be watching.
As Jimmy and I begin the trek back towards our neck of the woods, Jimmy looks back, makes sure the girls are gone, then he gives me a verbal biff off the head. “What are you doing asking her all those stupid questions? Nobody wants to talk about that stuff!” Jimmy could always make you feel totally uncool.
“What do you mean? I’m trying to get to know her.”
“How many brothers and sisters do you have? Where do you go on vacation? What kind of questions are those?”
“Why wouldn’t I ask about her brothers and sisters? I wanted to know where she goes on vacation? Maybe it’s near where we go and then we’d have something in common.”
“No, that’s just not cool. That’s not the kind of stuff girls want to talk about.”
Oh crap I’m thinking, I really have no idea what I’m doing…………………………………………………………………….
And that’s a lesson on cool from Jimmy I did not learn, I did not cotton to. Throughout my dating life, with each new girl, friend, I continued to ask about her family, where she grew up, what kinds of books she reads, favorite movies… If you looked at the women I’ve dated, and personally I thought I always picked higher off the tree than I deserved, somehow I did okay for myself. I’ve been lucky enough to somehow convince some very nice girls to spend some quality time with me. Luckily for me I didn’t follow Jimmy’s advice on how to be cool. I would think among my friends I have a reputation for having a “decent rap.” But I never considered it a rap, or I never considered “using lines.” Sure I’d try to make a girl laugh but my real goal, in high school, college, at work, in a bar even, and it all started in 8th grade, was to get to know the girl.
And I think in the end, that made a world of difference for those relationships. Maybe it was because I treated it like a game, like a competition, that made it fun? Because we actually got to know each other, some of those friendships still exist, independent of the initial romance. What do we like about the game? The uncertainty? The flirtation? The give-and-take? The planning? The response? The analysis of what she said? And then what I said? Those, If you go out with a girl on Saturday night, don’t call too soon, maybe Wednesday kind of rules were fun. Love as a game of strategy. We started with passing notes. Some point we went to email. Now kids are texting and instagram but in the end it’s all fun, I think.
And now I no longer play the game. Well that’s not true, I suppose I play the Game of Love with only one person, my wife Kira. I do still find myself flirting occasionally, Kira says I like the attention. I guess I’ll agree with that. People talk of past relationships as “baggage” with a negative connotation but I don’t see it that way. I think of our experiences in the Game, prior to meeting each other as our history, there are layers to each of us, going back over past relationships, courtships, break-ups, good behaviors, bad behaviors that make us who we are today, as a boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife. I know that some people, while in a relationship, really don’t want to hear about past boyfriends and girlfriends. I’ve never been like that because it’s a window into the person you are with now.
As I said in the beginning, my goal was to remind you of your experiences as you began playing the Game of Love. I certainly hope I succeeded. Let’s hear about a few…
"Let's hear about a few...". "Sorry, pal".
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