Every time I have seen the phrase “teenager in love” – starting with the first time this prompt appeared in Retrospect two years ago – I have read it as teen-A-ger, with the accent on the second syllable, rather than TEEN-ager, the usual pronunciation, with the accent on the first syllable. In contrast, if the word “teenager” appears and is not followed by “in love,” I of course accent the first syllable. The reason for this deviation in pronunciation is the unforgettable song by Dion and the Belmonts.

Wikipedia tells me the song was released in March 1959, which is very surprising to me. I was seven-and-a-half years old at that time, not even close to being a teenager and certainly not in love. I suppose I first heard it because my older sisters listened to popular music on the radio and sometimes bought 45s that they played at home. But this song must have had great staying power, because I’m sure I was still hearing it on the radio when I was in my teens.

As a teenager I was always in love with someone. First it was Karl, whom I wrote about in Sadie Hawkins Dance. The next year there was a boy with red hair named Steve. He was a senior when I was a sophomore, and we played bridge together but that was all, except in my fantasies. There were others whose names I can’t even remember any more. I would walk past the locker of the love object du jour, hoping to bump into him. I would doodle his name in the margins of my notebooks. Sometimes (oh horror of horrors) I would write Mrs. with his name, or even worse, Suzy with his last name. Seems crazy now, but I think that was commonplace back then.

As the lyrics of the song say, one day I felt happy and the next day I felt sad. It all depended on whether I managed to bump into him when I walked past his locker, and whether he smiled at me. Even in college, where there weren’t lockers any more, there was still the fine art of figuring out how to bump into the love object, in the dining hall, or outside a class, or just walking through the Yard. Or better yet, getting invited to the same parties, and hoping he would notice me there. And while suffering through all of this, I was indeed always asking the stars up above “why must I be-e a teen-A-ger in love?”

So glad those days are long past!

The last time I saw Kelly, he’d been dead for over a year. In yet another dream, he was sitting next to me on a bus.  “You have to let me go,” he said.

When I met him, in 1966, Kelly was a junior in high school. He was outrageous, audacious, charismatic, and sexy as hell.  I studied chemistry that year, my sophomore year, but I really learned about chemistry from him: a heart-stopping attraction that made my stomach flutter.

One night, Kelly and I and a group of kids went to a concert to see Cream and some other loud bands I forget. I made sure we sat next to each other. With the music and my heart pounding, I turned to look at him, my eyes begging for a kiss. He leaned in. We moved up a few rows, past the dope smokers in the balcony, and spent the rest of the concert engaging in the advance and retreat of passionate exploration.

Kelly pretended to be asleep on the way home. He didn’t acknowledge my presence the next time I saw him, or the time after that.

But then I saw him at a party and the electric-blue bellbottom outfit I was wearing caught his eye. He drove me home. We kissed in the car, and then he took off. I waited for the phone call that never came. Still, I was drawn to him, helpless. His exuberant laugh, his twinkly blue eyes, those strong hands, that husky voice. I looked for him everywhere, hoping for more of him. Didn’t get it. I moved on.

The next summer, after I’d broken up with a bad boyfriend, I wrote Kelly a plaintive letter in the form of a short story. It recalled a magic evening in the upper balcony during a Cream concert. A few days later, I got a reply—a poem illustrated in his unique style. He had a way of drawing letters that made them appear to ooze and flow into one another. A work of art, just for me.

We began seeing each other after that. We saw all there was to see, actually, spending sweet hours tangled up together. He told me that the graceful curves of the rolling hills where we lived reminded him of me. Then, one night, I went to his house, down to his room, and by the light of a candle blinking wax down a wine bottle, we ended up in his bed.  I wouldn’t call it making love, exactly—it was more frantic than romantic.

After that, we spent most of our time horizontal. I smoked his cigarettes and I thought we were a couple. But things changed. There were lies. Some awkward moments. I heard he was seeing another girl. And there was his drinking. So one night, over the phone, I told him it was over. I cried for an hour.

After he graduated, Kelly joined the Coast Guard and shipped out to Alaska. Since he wasn’t going to college, it was the best way to avoid getting drafted. In the meantime, I had started dating someone else—a guy who deftly caught me on the bounce and gave me a shoulder to cry on. He was a much more attentive boyfriend, and patiently waited for my heart to heal.

Kelly wrote me from aboard ship and his letters were wistful, beautiful, and poetic. I kept them all in a special box.

It was inevitable that we’d see each other when he came back to town. One night at a party he grabbed me by the arm (away from my boyfriend) and pulled me outside. “Tell me what I did wrong!” he howled. “Please—just kiss me one more time!” He was roaring drunk, but I did kiss him. And then I told him how he’d lost me. He turned around to pee and I just left him there.

A few years went by. I married the boy who rescued me and adored me. We heard Kelly had gotten particularly drunk on our wedding day.

I saw him at the local market a couple of years later. He saw me too, and ducked down another aisle. The Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood” wafted through the store, adding to the awkwardness of the situation.

Kelly died in a car accident in the spring of 1977. Seeing our old friends at the church, gazing at his flag-draped coffin, I got knocked over by a huge wave of grief.

The dreams started then, and they were pretty much the same every time until I had the dream where we were on the bus. Just like at the concert so many years ago, I turned to him–feeling the heat of longing–only this time it was me saying, “What did I do wrong? Kiss me one more time!”

That’s when he looked at me with sorrow and said, “You have to let me go.”

My time with Kelly was just a few short months, decades ago. I have only one picture of him: that dimpled smile, those lively blue eyes—basking in the sunshine of my love.

 

RIP RJMK

Is this retirement? I ask. Nah.
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Sammy was my first love (and my first heartbreak). I had just turned 14 and was in the ninth grade at a small coed school where I was not popular with boys. Sammy, the cousin of a classmate, went to a different (all boys) school. Our mutual infatuation was quick and intense. We were inseparable, at least as much as two kids in different schools could be. We talked on the phone nightly and saw each other every weekend. Sammy did not have an ID bracelet (the uniform code for “going steady” in 1965), so I wore his watch. Walking around school with that too-big watch on my wrist I felt special, and loved.

We both had curfews, but Sammy’s parents were stricter than mine. After a date (a parent must have driven us, at least at the beginning before Sammy turned 15 and could drive), Sammy would drop me off, go home, sneak out and come back. (We lived only a few blocks apart.) We would make out on the living room couch for hours–in a chaste 14-year-old over-the-clothes (mostly) and above-the-waist kind of way.

We never got caught, but Sammy’s parents began to think we were too serious, and they started to put limits on how much he could see me. We suddenly could only have contact over the weekend. During the week I would write down everything I wanted to tell him. And, experienced sneakers that we were, we also managed to see each other at other than the allowed times, at such exotic and forbidden places as the public library.

Our romance lasted through tenth grade. Then in the summer Sammy broke my heart. I was caught completely by surprise. I had what I’d describe through my adult eyes as an acute grief reaction. I felt punched in the stomach; I would wake up happy in the morning and then remember that my world no longer included Sammy, and I’d feel broken.

Luckily, even then I had close and supportive female friends. One of them was a friend from summer camp who lived in a different city. She invited me to visit her to recover. While there, she set me up with one of her brother’s friends. Though I had a bit of a crush on her brother (which resulted in a make-out session a couple of years later), I didn’t particularly like his friend. But I did begin to recover.

Then wonder of wonders—Sammy had second thoughts and wanted to get back together. I was thrilled, so we did. But—the spell was broken. Though we stayed together a few more months, it just wasn’t the same. So we parted ways again—mutually this time.

I haven’t seen Sammy since high school. I suppose today, with Facebook and such, I could manage to track him down and see what he’s up to now, but I’d rather not. Some memories should just be left alone.