Young Love

by Martha Patterson

When I was young, I was lucky to be accepted into a Seven Sisters college in Massachusetts. In the 1970s I looked forward to escaping from under my parents’ roof and making new friends and finding my niche in college. And I suppose I was hoping to fall in love for the first time. For years afterwards I imagined I did.

It was just after the holidays and I, a 19-year-old theatre major, was wearing a Christmas- y sweater. He was tall and dark, leaning against a pillar at a college mixer. I stood nearby hoping he’d ask me to dance, and he did. I was enormously attracted to his handsome face and build.

Afterwards, we sat in the room below the auditorium. I was nervous; my hands shook like leaves in the wind. I told him I planned to become an actress, a field he knew nothing about and seemed uninterested in. But he interested me. His own major was radical economics. He spoke of the need in society for economic justice. He said women in third world countries were unwittingly being sterilized while getting abortions, which he thought an outrage.

At the dawn of my own feminism, I was impressed that he cared so much about women's reproductive rights. He stroked my knee as we sat in front of a hot radiator, and he described his ideals. He was working class; his father was a plumber, and I think it was the fact of growing up in a Vermont college town full of rich girls that made him so aware of economic inequality. I came from the middle class and had earned a scholarship; I wasn’t spoiled. He told me, though, that he had to do a work-study for his education and was unhappily employed at his university’s bookstore.

Afterwards, we walked to my dorm in the January snow, and he lifted me in his arms and gave me my first real kiss. I felt all the passion of someone who’s only 19 and has never experienced physical union with a man. But he never, the few times we dated, spent a penny on me – no cups of coffee, no dinners out. Was he just cheap? I think he thought no woman deserved to be treated generously. And he refused to open the door for me when we approached a movie theatre entrance. That wouldn't have seemed like being a feminist to him, I suppose.

I invited him to go with me to a new Italian film directed by Lina Wertmuller that was causing quite a stir -- “Swept Away.” About a privileged woman held captive by her macho employee after her yacht has an accident, they’re trapped together on a desert island. At the end of the movie, the woman returns to her rich husband, instead of staying with this diamond-in-the- rough she’s grown to love. In one of the last scenes she departs in a helicopter, leaving him clutching the ring she’s left him as a token, shaking his fist as she disappears into the sky. Full of classic images of male/female domination and subjugation, the movie is political and very sexual.

As we walked away from the theatre afterwards, my friend said, “The problem is, the film doesn’t present any solutions.” I answered, “Art isn’t supposed to do that, necessarily – it only needs to ask questions.” A girlfriend of mine later told me that “Swept Away” was a surprising movie to see on a first date, being so suggestive. I think my date found it provocative. Anyway, he invited me over to the apartment he shared with three roommates, all of whom shared his political persuasions.

He talked about "dialectics," and books about philosophy and deception, which I promptly bought and devoured. He was reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Persig, a book about two men, one who thinks you should know how to repair your motorcycle if you’re going to ride one, the other who believes going the easy route and visiting a repair shop is the answer. My new friend thought it was a fantastic book about an argument.

He told me he had a fixation about Joni Mitchell, the folksinger. I think he loved her confessional lyrics and flutey voice, as well as her considerable beauty. But he didn’t ask me anything about my own creative endeavors. I wanted to fill him in on my aspirations as a performer but didn't suspect he'd even be interested.

After a few dates he wanted to make love, and I wasn’t ready. He stopped calling me. Lonely, I often wandered around my college campus by myself, wondering why he gave up on me, and I starred in some theatrical productions, then finally I graduated and moved to San Francisco.

But later, still hungry for his attention and respect, I looked him up in Massachusetts and wrote him a letter about the high, brown mountains of California, and the "living for the weekend" mentality of Pacific coast residents. To my happiness, he wrote back from Boston, and my hands shook as I opened the envelope. He told me about another book, The Magus by John Fowles. I read it. The novel is about a woman who pays back a man for having a one-night stand with someone else by playing an elaborate trick on him, involving travel and a large cast of characters. It posed the question of men’s and women’s rights in romantic relationships, a somewhat political subject I imagined my friend took seriously.

He wrote that he might visit me in California, and signed his letter “Love,” leaving me with high expectations. I corresponded with him a second time, thinking I’d be ready for a relationship now. But a few months later, he wrote again saying he’d met a special woman and couldn’t fly out after all. I folded up his letter and stashed it in a drawer. I tried to put him out of my mind. I was sure he meant more to me than I ever had to him.

Afterwards I went out with musicians—they inhabited my world, show biz. And I was disappointed by all these faithless performers. They never measured up to my college pal. I moved to New York City for a decade, then at last, not as successful as I’d hoped to be, gave up on performing and moved back to Massachusetts.

I hadn’t seen my college friend in years, though at one point I had a hurried encounter with him on a Manhattan street. But while working in publishing in my 40s, I got his phone number and we chatted for a few minutes. He’d gotten married. I can’t remember what we talked about; but I knew he’d written a book about living in El Salvador and helping that country recover from its war. He said he missed El Salvador. He was fluent in Spanish and had made friends in that country. We hung up and life went on...I dated a few men, but they had little influence over me and seemed superficial.

Then, out of the blue and still nostalgic for a man I’d once thought I loved, I called this old college boyfriend six years later to invite him out for lunch. I wanted to reconnect, if only to be friends. It was raining when we met, a drizzly day. But strangely, like two people who no longer know why they’re in touch, I think we both felt awkward when we saw each other again. After all, he’d had a family of his own and seemed settled. And I was single, feeling a little lost. My parents had both died.

We spent an hour over Thai food and talked about old roommates. I told him I was now trying to become a serious writer. He didn’t ask me much about myself – he never had. But I was still interested in the political job he had and that he hadn’t changed his direction in life.

Yet I no longer felt the attraction I’d always had to him – time changes things, and life unwinds in unexpected ways. He seemed grumpy and tired of his work, and I wondered why I’d had such a fascination with him for so many years. He showed me a photo of his two kids, who were young and cute. I paid for lunch and, afterwards, he invited me across the street to the Boston Public Library to check out the bookshelves. He clearly still loved reading. I pulled a couple of volumes off the shelves to glance at, but then told him I was headed home.

When he and I first dated, he’d gruffly said we had nothing in common. That hurt my feelings but was probably true. Had I wasted years dreaming of him, idealizing his goals and what I’d thought was his good nature? It seemed so. Why would one fixate for so long on a particular person, only to give up that attraction years later in middle age? I felt disappointed in myself, as well, unrealistically, in him. My own former aspirations of performing, though creative and artistic, seemed self-interested by comparison to his ambitions. After all, as an actor you get onstage, win applause, and receive a good review in the newspaper – you aren’t necessarily benefiting society beyond providing entertainment.

My old, radical, would-be lover and I parted with a hug in Copley Square, Boston. I felt a little depressed as I walked away. I haven’t seen him since.

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