There was always a gathering that summer, usually in the North end of the city. Some nights, if we wandered from the Dairy Queen parking lot, we found ourselves at Canatara Beach or Lakeview Cemetery. Never too far from the sand and water. There was a break between parents and their kids : a snap from parental control as the press saw it; a generation gap. I witnessed it firsthand the night I met her.
Her family was old money in Canadian terms. Furniture and funeral homes. Her parents certainly had the pretenses of money, and so staged a good show. Members of the Riding Club, The Golf and Curling Club, bridge and poker foursomes, a cottage summer, and lots of property in the South end. Her paternal side was rich with the beach front, her maternal side was solid middle class. At fifteen, she despised her mother, her older sister and her life with them. I never saw what went on, but she'd leave the house slamming the door, red-faced and breathing how much she hated her mother. I couldn't understand. We loved our mothers. They stayed home, and their homes and families were their lives. I once tried to get her to see mothers the way I knew them, but it was futile. The generation gap was real. Relations didn't improve over the next two years, and I bore up well with it, being confused, but supportive.
Bob and I wandered with purpose from the Dairy Queen to Charlesworth St., so he could meet up with Lynn at a backyard gathering. It was 1970. A group our age was already there; Northend kids; their school, Northern. It was the summer of grade 10 at St. Pats, and a beautiful July evening with the last flares of light in the sky. That entire summer Bob and I went to the beach every day. In the sun, under the clouds, in the rain and wind. It didn't matter. We met a regular group of Northern kids there, and became friends. They were cool... cool enough. The Northern kids were different. Their hair seemed blonder, their skin more tanned, their clothes more expensive. Some had Daddy's car, a few drove their own. They had beach towels. We arrived at the beach with our own assets, the cutest girls from our school. Both sides were interested in the other, friendships developed, and romances flickered.
Lynn was a small curvaceous girl, and Bob, a handsome, strawberry blonde, well-built boy of sixteen. Being from the south end and Catholic us interesting, but not freakish. The northern/Northern kids never snubbed or derided us. They were genuinely friendly and inviting. Our two groups soon became one. And so, we were invited to the backyard gathering at Lynn's house.
About eight kids were standing around an open fire. There was Shelley, Cindy, Debbie, Lynn, Wendy, Ann, and a few boys. I hadn't seen her before, she was never on the beach. Frankly, I was more interested in Shelley and Cindy that night. The previous week I had something of a date with Shelley when we met at the Kenwick-on-the-Lake concert. We kissed. Cindy and I had some sessions at her house while Bob and Lynn occupied the other couch. Shelley was two inches taller than me, and Cindy was experimenting with a different kind of rebellion, so my interest in them was quickly waning. My involvement never went any further than my introductory kisses, after years of yearning. Seeing her changed everything I knew about girls, or, wanted to know. It's still unusual and unexplainable. The attraction was instant, unavoidable and permanent. I wasn't even trying. At the risk of sounding trite, I caught her eyes, green as wet jade, in the firelight, and knew, really knew, I'd never be in love with another.
I stepped away, moved towards the back porch, and lit a cigarette. She followed and asked for a haul. She wasn't the prettiest girl I'd met that summer. I didn't like her hair, and, even for me, her nose was a little big. Her hair sun-bleached, her cheeks high and glossy, and she wasn't tall. It was still early, around 9:30, just deepening in the dark, but she had curfew. It was her own fault. Summer school! After her morning classes she was commanded home for the afternoon to work on the day's lessons in English and Math. Her attendance at Lynn's was her brief window of opportunity to get away from her mother. Was I her method of rebellion? I'll never know her reasons. I walked her home that evening.
I was self-conscious around girls. I expected them to approach me. I never ventured for fear of rejection. I wasn't good-looking, and certainly not tall or moneyed. And my nose...
So, when I say I expected girls to approach I mean they would have to make it obvious they were interested. That seldom happened, but when she asked for a haul, I knew we would be inseparable.
It was a brief ten minute walk to her house from Charlesworth to Cathcart. What I remember from that walk was her intense feelings towards her family, and her classes at summer school. English. How ironic. I wondered how anyone could fail a high school class, let alone English. She was an avid reader. By thirteen she read all of Agatha Christie and more. Because of her I began reading, and you know where that lead. All I ever did to pass school was the basics. She was truly an enigma. A northern/Northern ******* Cathcart Blvd. Who despised her mother and failed English. I was bewildered and hooked. A real blur. As I walked the distance back to Kathleen Ave., three Dobermans chased me up a brick pillar that was entrance to a suburb off Colborne Rd. Other than that, nothing but she crossed my mind.
She started going to the beach occasionally, but always in shorts and a top. She wasn't supposed to be there. Sometimes she'd change at Lynn's or Shelley's so her mother wouldn't find out. When summer school ended, she came every day. We became a couple. Every night we'd meet, alone or with friends. Whenever the occasion arrived we'd drink or smoke. Whenever the opportunity and money were in synch. Otherwise, there were house gatherings, the Dairy Queen, dances, movies and walks through the cemetery. My summer job at the Humane Society provided us with money, and she babysat and worked at a day care centre, at the top of Kathleen Ave., in the basement of a Lutheran Church – same as her family's leanings. Our togetherness continued til the end of summer. I was so confused about her. I certainly didn't bring her home to meet Mammy, and so I broke it off. I feel the same now about that as I did then. I loved her, but I didn't want to be with her. The day after our break-up, I talked things over with Mammy. Amazing that I could do that. I never, ever, spoke to my mother about such things, and yet I felt compelled to tell her all about “the girl,” her family, and her situation. Mammy suggested that I'd better go to the day-care and see her... NOW.
So I did.
She was working that day and I couldn't hurry up the street fast enough, worried she'd already be gone, but there she was working patiently with the children, and I stood in the doorway watching her every move, and listening to her voice. She turned, just like in the movies, and looked right at me.
Two weeks later, at a fall high school dance I broke-up with her again. We planned to meet there and we both went, but I ignored her, didn't speak to her, didn't approach her, didn't even acknowledge her presence. She was shunned. Nothing she did. It was me. I loved her, but I didn't want to be with her. She did the same, probably out of confusion. Several times during the night she would place herself in my line of vision. Once, while standing near the stage to watch the band, I turned around to scan the room and we looked at each other. She was standing one person behind me. That was the last time I saw her for eighteen months. Well, there was one other brief encounter between us in the meantime.
I was boarding the city bus at the library, arms full, and heading home. She was sitting on a bench with a red coat (that's what Bob and I called the hockey players from Corunna who always wore their red hockey jackets). I believe the two of them were on a date. We looked at each other briefly and I sat down near the front, with my back to them. From the curb at my stop I saw the back of her head through the window. How I loved her still. Years later that red coat told me she was impossible to date, as there were three of us present. I dated a number of girls during that eighteen months, but it was purely filler. I was enjoying my time with my friends, and I knew I needed to do just that. By the autumn of my grade twelve year I called her.
We were virgins still.
Prosetry: Something like poetry in prose.
We married, had three children, now separated.
