Can't Remember, Where we Met? (a light teenage romance)

(Christopher Hunter) I was fourteen years old when I met her, it was the summer of 1961, in October I’d be fifteen, and her, she I think was all of 16-years old when we met. I never blamed her for not meeting me at the tree, or calling me thereafter, I didn’t search for her either, she did ask now and then though about me, throughout the years, she ask how I was, if I was alright. I never talked about her to anyone, what for, it was just a summer romance, perhaps a lost summer, and the only one she and I, Nancy Pit and I would enjoy the fruits of youth together with.
Perhaps I was stupid, but a beautiful young man when I met her, Jill set me up, wanted me to meet her; Jill lived across the empty lot from me, I hung around with her brother somewhat, I suppose we were all friends in the neighborhood back then, Jill, Donny, and the other twenty or so young kids, and me, and here comes Nancy, a stranger but Jill wanted us to meet. And I liked her fresh long wavy red hair, some freckles. She was peaceful to be with. We both seemed to be free as birds, but of course, no one is free when they fall in love, or think they are falling in love.
My body, I remember was hard, and my mind had a stone wall around it, it seemed. I was weightlifting, and this one day, I was bringing dirt back and forth from the empty lot to Jill’s father’s house, in a wheelbarrow. And she looked, I mean looked with staring and blazing and desirable eyes at my sweaty body, my muscles glowing as afternoon turned into dusk. She followed me, told me she like what she saw. She looked at me as if I was so much, not a nothing, but much, perhaps much more than what I really was. She had thought I was her age, as we had met and talked for the first month of the summer, then she found out she was two years older than I and left well enough alone.
She was the first girl I suppose I ever dreamed of, one I could become comfortable with anyways.
The summer of 1961, was a hot one in St. Paul, Minnesota, and a growing one for me, we, Nancy and I, went to the drive-in-movies together, her and I and Jill and her boyfriend that is. We even went to Indians Mound (over a nearby hill, and across a walking, wobbling, wooden bridge, old as the Civil War), with the neighborhood gang, and drink. It was during the second month of this summer I and she laid down under the gazing stars, foliage all around us, leaves piled high against thick old trees with thick bark on them, and she lay on top of me, and we rolled about, and I felt myself become excited, thus, I stopped. I never regretted it, I think she did though, but I never exactly understood it, why I did stop.
She could have had any guy in the neighborhood, but her heart was alive for me, so it seemed, she even seemed to need me, and was never ungrateful; she made me feel as if I had some magical power over her, that she was breathless over me.
She often rubbed my back, I liked the touch of her doing so, and those were the last nights, and the last month of the summer, she seemed to pick up that habit.
After we left that last night, the night she and I carved our names into a tree by my grandfather’s house, where I lived, we told each other we’d meet in six years, I knew it was the last night, the door was closed, I didn’t want her to go, but that was impossible, she was leaving, going back to where she came from. Funny, I don’t remember where we met, only why, and that we did, and that Jill introduced us. She’d ask about me in years to come, but I had dreams, many of them, and perhaps she knew that, and she got married, I heard unhappily, but it must of worked out later on for at about 19-years old, I never heard of her again.


10-30-2007