It

I couldn’t be sure just which spring it was when I first did “it”.  The more I reflected about this time, the more I discovered in those reflections wavy memories distorted by the glass of time.  Did I lose “it” in Greenwich Village to that married high school teacher or was it on the Cape in a rented cottage in Brewster?  If it was on the Cape then it would have been Brian McMillan.  I had met him on a weekend in Washington with my roommate.  I didn’t remember a lot, only walking in the rain in Georgetown and then going back to Brian’s law school room.  He was quitting law school to join the Peace Corps.  Brian was quitting and Maggie was quitting.  They were quitting and beginning while I was continuing along.

Brian had a powerful build, cute buns and the tenderness and temper of a good Irish Catholic.  He wrote wonderful letters.  Perhaps that was the best part of the relationship, the long, romantic letters that we wrote each other.  Distance allowed things to be said, created, mused over and finally sent.  When Brian and I finally saw each other, we were shy with one another.  There was a hesitancy that was in our bed that wasn’t in our letters.  Had I lost “it” with Brian?

Or was it that night in Charlottesville?  I had a blind date with a UVA boy.  Was I asking for “it” dressed in a black turtleneck sweater and black skirt and black tights?  I had my Fred Braun shoes on.  I stuck out like the Yankee that I was.  My date’s room was draped with an Indian bedspread that covered the room and made a tent.  I had a few bourbon and cokes.  I had never had bourbon before.  In Connecticut I was taught to drink Scotch.  Here in Virginia the drink was bourbon, or sometimes a fraternity party’s mixture called “Purple Jesus.”  Had I lost “it” in the Indian tent in a frat house on bourbon and coke and desire?  Did I just like sex, trying it all out?  I really didn’t feel loose or cheap.  I was just trying to figure “it” out; sex and everything that went with it.

Did I really remember the first guy, and which time it was and where?  Or did we girls back in the early sixties convince ourselves each time we did “it” with a different guy that it was kind of a first time?  Am I alone in remembering “it” this way?  I wonder…how much of it was memory and mysticism and incense and dark cars and studio couches and tents and sand dunes and pine needles and greasepaint?  Truth and memory.  Again.  Truth and memory.

from a memoir in progress The Mermaid in the Cornfield