Dating : First Love?

One of the last things she said was that I needed something. I knew she was right but had no idea what it was. It took a couple more years and a steady job before I finally admitted to my parents that I still liked smoking pot. Mom didn’t want it in the house at all, and so I got my own place. It was surprisingly easy. I had my own car too, and one day in traffic Nic’s brother pulled up beside me at a light. Her brother, the mafia hitman, driving.

“She misses you, man!” he called over. “After Kenny she dated a bodybuilder, but he turned out to be a dork! She misses you. Call her!”

So we started seeing each other again, mainly as friends. Our first night out to get reacquainted we just drove around and drank some beer. She dumped Kenny. “I couldn’t trust him…” Then she dated the bodybuilder guy. “He’s not freaky or anything — just very well-toned.” She broke it off with him after they started doing too much sexually. He sent her a letter saying he hated her, and then another saying he loved her. She said to me: “Men are crazy, all of them. All they care about is sex.”

I said I was different, but couldn’t tell if she believed me. She just smiled. I asked if she wanted to see my new place, but she declined.

Then it was out to dinner at nice restaurants, movies, a couple fine plays at the Palace Theatre. We saw The Elephant Man around the time David Bowie was doing it on Broadway. We got a more local elephant man, and he was fine. Nic especially liked the tasteful way in which the high-society lady exposes herself to him–with her back to the audience.

She seemed to be more into religion than she used to be; and over dinner one night said she and a friend liked to visit services at denominations other than Catholic. One minister mentioned something about the devil she believed to be true. He said the devil was like a vicious dog on a chain: bound, but if you got too close he’d bite. She asked if I’d changed at all over the past couple of years. I said I had, and she wanted me to be more specific.

“Well, for one thing I don’t believe in your devil,” I said. “Man is the only devil I know, and hell might be right here on earth. I believe in God, just not the religious kind.”

Driving around, I was always trying to explain myself; like I was just this sexist neanderthal and she knew it. She was on some terrible, and for all I knew justified, Women’s Lib kick, and I was taking the brunt of it. Kenny and that bodybuilder must have really screwed with her head.

For instance: “Why did you invite me over to your new place on our first date to get reacquainted?”

“Just to see it!” (I should have explained what a big deal it was for me and my parents to finally get out of the house and strike out on my own.)

She claimed I remembered only “the bad things” about our relationship. The cute, funny things she used to say like a car had just peeped its horn; or being unable to pronounce the word “tastes” correctly (she always said taste-es.) I mentioned those now as compliments, and she thought I was making fun of her.

Most of my friends had significant others or were at least getting laid, so they said. I had flirtations, and so far that was about it other than Nicole. But we were just friends now, which was better than nothing.

When I arrived at her house for a Sunday evening drive to the beach, she was in the bathroom brushing her teeth. I chatted with her mother at the table, a light music with the vocals in French coming down the hall from Nic’s room. She came out and invited me down while she finished getting ready. She said it was a French pop group; she liked listening to records with vocals other than English. I thought that was pretty cool.

It was the first time I’d been in her room, and noticed on her bureau, toward the back but still standing, a framed photo of me flailing about that cross-country trail. She saw me looking and said, “Those are the times I remember.”

It was early November and getting cold, so we shared a bottle of wine along the way. She’d giggle, lower her bucket seat into the prone position, and I’d tickle her. As soon as we arrived she went running out onto the dark empty beach, and I had to catch up. Then we walked beside the cold, black ocean, and soon the conversation turned to sex.

One day she found a condom tucked away in Kenny’s wallet, “Like he was expecting it.”

What she was doing in there she didn’t say.

“You’ll never find a condom in my wallet,” I assured her. Then I said the sex — or whatever it was — we used to have was the best I’d ever experienced.

“I feel the same way,” she said. “It’s been so long though, I can’t be sure.…”

Then she said we could fool around right there on the beach if I wanted to, and we wound up down on the sand doing pretty much what we used to do. Except her eyes remained closed the whole time, and I couldn’t get at her neck because she wore a turtleneck.

Afterward, as we brushed the sand off ourselves, she said maybe we could stop on the way home and do some more, but she fell asleep on the drive.

Still, I was so happy the next day at work. On the beach! The following weekend we went out again, got some beer, and I asked if she wanted to visit one of our old parking spots. She said why not? Once there I tried to get her into the mood by nibbling on her earlobe, which she seemed to like, but she just wanted to talk.

“Did you have many girlfriends while we were apart?” she asked, settling back.

“A few.”

“Sex?”

“Oh sure, a little.”

“I enjoy being a virgin,” she said. “So few people are nowadays. I don’t understand how some can juggle more than one relationship at a time, like you do.”

I asked what the hell she was talking about, and she said the day before while shopping downtown she saw me drive by with a girl with long dark hair in the passenger seat.

“That was a small guy with long dark hair,” I said (which it was.) “I was giving him a ride” — to score some weed, a substance she never approved of — “Who do you think I am, Don Juan? I’m not. I date you only.”

Again, I couldn’t tell if she believed me or not. And for a very long time afterward I regretted not admitting to her, which might have sealed the deal between us, that I was a virgin too.