{"id":1898,"date":"2011-02-15T21:31:46","date_gmt":"2011-02-16T02:31:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=1898"},"modified":"2015-09-25T20:22:08","modified_gmt":"2015-09-26T00:22:08","slug":"i-got-you-babe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=1898","title":{"rendered":"“Kate, Part I”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Theme Songs Page<\/a>\u00a0| Previous Theme Song<\/a>\u00a0| Next Theme Song<\/a><\/p>\n

“Kate,” Part I<\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I Got You Babe, by Sonny Bono, sung by Sonny & Cher (1965), Encountered 1965<\/h3>\n

Buy it here<\/a> | See it here<\/a> and here<\/a> | Lyrics here<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There are some stories that sprawl over more than one of my theme songs.\u00a0 This is one.\u00a0 It\u2019s a tale about girls I\u2019ll call Ella and Zsuska and especially Kate.\u00a0 And about how, just as Chris Rock said in the remark I quoted at the beginning of these essays<\/a>, you are always going to love the music you were listening to when you first got laid \u2013 or actually, in this case, kissed.\u00a0 Same difference, actually.\u00a0 So this and the next two entries you can call my Kate story.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The Rhythm Room<\/h3>\n

It starts in a setting we know from a thousand songs is where romance begins: at a high school dance.\u00a0 It is a Saturday night in early September 1965. I am just beginning my junior year of high school.\u00a0 It is my first visit to a mysterious loft-like place called The Rhythm Room atop the attached elementary school.\u00a0 I am out of my comfort zone \u2013 well, is there such a thing as a high school dance that\u2019s in anyone\u2019s comfort zone?\u00a0 How truly Doc Brown in Back to the Future<\/em> calls them \u201crhythmic mating rituals\u201d!\u00a0 And mating, as we know, however tentative and inconclusive, is a serious, anxiety-filled business.<\/p>\n

The most uncomfortable thing you do at a high school dance is stand around.\u00a0 I did that for an hour and half, while friends who had dates were dancing to the music of the high school\u2019s one rock band (my impression was and is that every school has one rock band, seldom two, and this was our school\u2019s band).\u00a0 They weren\u2019t very good, and I had to be content to talk with an English teacher.\u00a0 But eventually the band relented for a while, and someone started playing records.<\/p>\n

Cue Sonny and Cher\u2019s I Got You, Babe<\/em>, with the ostenato double two-note oboe (or is it a clarinet?)[1] figure that positively begs you to dance.\u00a0 Cue Kate, a tall ninth-grader, darting around the room with a friend.\u00a0 I had seen her around the last few days, had registered the new arrival in the high school, had been struck by the thick red mane parted in an unusual direction, and by a quality I could not name then but would later recognize as an art student air.\u00a0 She looked unconventional, different enough so I had to ask myself if she was attractive or not.\u00a0 Listening to that song, I knew the answer: very, very attractive. \u00a0\u00a0And yet, cursing my ineptitude, I could not get up the courage to put myself next to her and talk, let alone ask her to dance with me.\u00a0 But oh, I wanted to!\u00a0 Then the not very good band started to play once more.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This moved fate into my corner, because the band had left a ukelele on the stage. Picking it up and plucking at it, I found I could more or less fake my way through a melody along with the group.\u00a0 I worked my way over to the window where Kate and her friend were standing, picking along.\u00a0 Kate\u2019s friend broke the ice, and asked me if I played.\u00a0 No, I said, but we started to talk.\u00a0 I mentioned the band, probably praised them beyond their deserts in order to be saying something, and the friend told me that Kate was stuck on one of the members of the band.\u00a0 And sure enough, in a moment Kate was consulting the friend about ways to get a chance to talk to the band member.\u00a0 And in another moment after that, Kate was off to flirt with the guy.<\/p>\n

Scrrratch that ambition!\u00a0 However, the friend wanted to talk, and could do so easily.\u00a0 I also noted the girl\u2019s odd but attractive combination of finely-chiseled face and big bust.\u00a0 (Well, give me credit at least for noticing the face!)\u00a0 Whereupon the chair of the Social Committee, sponsor of the dance, happened past and more or less ordered us to dance.<\/p>\n

You can see where this was going.\u00a0 The girl was comfortable as a talker, stiffer as a dancer.\u00a0 But I had picked up a certain sophistication about dance steps recently, and I was able to keep us on an even keel.\u00a0 Ella really wanted to sit.\u00a0 We ended up in a darker area, and then we danced some more, and then we sat on the stairs, and then we found some of the wooden playground things, a slide I think, and sat down there, and I asked \u201cWhat do we talk about now?\u201d\u00a0 It turned out we shared an interest in bowling, and promptly made a date to do that.\u00a0 Back on the dance floor, we limbered up, and, now that I was safely partnered with Ella, Kate came back and chatted with us.\u00a0 Another one of their classmates asked me to dance with her, too.\u00a0 I\u2019d been interested in Kate, but I was suddenly paired up with someone else, which suited everyone\u2019s agenda, including mine for the moment.\u00a0 At one point, Ella let me hold her hand, and I let Ella order me to accompany her to her locker for her ride home. \"\"<\/a>\u00a0So we had definitely reached the point of public flirtation.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In Due Course<\/h3>\n

In due course there was a bowling date, and another dance with Ella.\u00a0 And some other things.\u00a0 Given the sexual precedents being set by others in my class, it might be surprising how slowly Ella and I were progressing, but in the silent negotiations that determine these things, I think Ella and I were nearly in accord about the pace.\u00a0 I knew that whatever love was, I wasn\u2019t in it with her, but felt that she was worth keeping with for the moment, to \u2013 I hardly want to say to see what I could get.\u00a0 That makes it seem a lot darker and less respectful than it was.\u00a0 But I wanted to try out physicality, gently.\u00a0 And looking back, I think she probably thought it would be fun to go a little farther.<\/p>\n

At this point we had been dating for four weeks.\u00a0 And then we came to a football Saturday night. Football was not the big sport at my school; that was reserved for basketball, where we were really competitive.\u00a0\u00a0 As for football, that year\u2019s yearbook writeup of the team began: \u201cEven though this year\u2019s team did not win a large number of games …\u201d To be precise, we won two games that year, one of them on the evening we now turn to.<\/p>\n

I wrote in my journal that Ella and I had \u201cprearranged to sit together,\u201d but didn\u2019t.\u00a0 Throughout the first half of what would be a 25-0 victory for our team, I sat with the junior boys and she with the freshman girls, and she wasn\u2019t looking in my direction.\u00a0 Actually, to be brutally frank, I wrote \u201cevery way but in my direction.\u201d\u00a0 I have to conclude now that if there had been any better male prospects out there that evening, the night probably would have ended differently.\u00a0 But apparently there weren\u2019t, and meanwhile I was all determination.\u00a0 So when the juniors mainly took off for McDonald\u2019s, and Ella was standing alone in the bleachers, I made my move.\u00a0 I went up, we sat together second half, and then, as it came time to walk away, bliss.<\/p>\n

I took her hand, and she pressed the back of mine against her thigh, where I could feel the complicated underwear girls wore then to hold up their stockings.\u00a0 We went on holding hands while we waited at the gate of the field for the bus that would take us back to the school.\u00a0 There was a dance then, presumably up in the gym this time, where she pressed her breasts against me, no longer holding back as she had that first night.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The Big First<\/h3>\n

As it happened, she lived three blocks from the school.\u00a0 So I got to walk her home.<\/p>\n

Not too long ago, I retraced those steps on a similar night. \u00a0I was struck by how dim the street lighting is, and I\u2019m guessing, it probably always was.\u00a0 Perfect for my purposes.\u00a0 By now the physical closeness I was asserting and she was acceding to could only lead to one conclusion, even for as inexperienced a boy as I was.\u00a0 \u201cBaby,\u201d I said \u2013 I actually said, \u201cI\u2019m going to put my arm around you, do you mind?\u201d\u00a0 She simply responded by putting her arm around me.\u00a0 I could have died and my life would have been complete right then.<\/p>\n

Well, actually, what with me being taller and she being shorter, we had to rearrange our arms.\u00a0 We weren\u2019t talking about much; by then our bodies were doing the important dialogue.\u00a0 Up the steps to her front door.\u00a0 I squeezed her as we walked through.\u00a0 And then we sat for a while in the living room off the front hall with her mom, who had a gentleman caller of her own.\u00a0 The mom was gracious and seemed to like me.\u00a0 (I understood that she was divorced and worked for the University administration.\u00a0 She kept the house as neat as a pin.)\u00a0 After a while I got up to go, and Ella accompanied me into the hall \u2013 and out to the porch.<\/p>\n

And we stood in the dark facing each other, and I put my arms around her and started to tell her I was going to kiss her, but got cut off because we were already suiting the word to the deed.\u00a0 My lips on her neck, hers on my cheek.\u00a0 And then there was this cat that had followed us home, and was staring at us, and Ella commented about it, which I interrupted by pulling her to me again.\u00a0 I wrote \u201cI honestly don\u2019t know whether we embraced or whether we kissed again.\u00a0 But we were still holding hands, and the fingers came apart, one by tantalizing one.\u201d<\/p>\n

And there you have the First Kiss.\u00a0 Looking up at the house today, it looks much the same, if a lot dirtier.\u00a0 Ella\u2019s neat-as-a-pin mother has left the building.\u00a0 (Like my own mother, she has left all buildings now, as I later learn.)\u00a0 It\u2019s just beat-up student housing now.\u00a0 The tiny porch and the big sitting-room, probably carved from some primeval larger porch, are still there.\u00a0 It\u2019s sacred ground \"\"<\/a>nonetheless.\u00a0 The first kiss just matters.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 One Little Problem<\/h3>\n

There was a fly in the ointment, though, as I confided to my journal a week later.\u00a0 You could sum it up in two words: What next?\u00a0 (You can bet I used a lot more than two words in the journal, but that was definitely the gist.)\u00a0 I didn\u2019t want to go steady with Ella.\u00a0 Kate was still the one on my mind.\u00a0 Yet the only one who would kiss me was Ella.\u00a0 And probably Ella was having the exact same dialogue with her journal \u2013 or with Kate.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sure now that something of the sort was in her mind, though, paradoxically, I found her subsequent behavior extremely upsetting.\u00a0 For two weeks she \u201csprinted\u201d \u2013 my contemporaneous word for it \u2013 in the other direction when she saw me coming in the halls.\u00a0 I did catch up with her the night of the next football game, and asked her to sit with me.\u00a0 She told me she\u2019d be bringing a friend.\u00a0 Same deal as the previous time: first half with our respective classes and genders, second half together, but with the friend, a girl from another school.\u00a0 In the fourth quarter I took Ella\u2019s hand, and, as my journal flatly reports, it was \u201climp and she seemed to be a little frightened.\u201d\u00a0 And then she got a tiny bit friendlier.\u00a0 She let me dance one dance with her back at the school.\u00a0 Then began a complicated business with the friend, who turned out to be a half-sister, in which, rereading the details, it is painfully, painfully clear they were trying to get rid of me and I couldn\u2019t be gotten rid of.\u00a0 I followed them home, but, needless to say, received no repeat goodnight kiss on the porch.<\/p>\n

No more Ella after that.\u00a0 By early November I was reassuring my journal that we weren\u2019t going steady.\u00a0 By December, she had said NO firmly when I invited her to a party I was giving. \u00a0(My comment: \u201cI know she never wants us to speak again, and I\u2019m agreeable.\u201d) Not too long after that, she turned up wearing maroon bell-bottoms at a dance with Tim, a guy from my old school, plus<\/em> the half-sister.<\/p>\n

So that was Act One.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A Kiss Is Still A Kiss<\/h3>\n

Why on earth do I associate with the episode that song that was playing before it even really started?\u00a0 Perhaps it\u2019s time I proposed Gohn\u2019s Theorem of which Rock\u2019s Principle is merely a special case: Any music addict will always have to find some music to love whenever anything important happens.\u00a0 The whole thing really started the moment I realized that Kate was something special, and that was the song that was playing at that moment.\u00a0 It was handy; it bonded itself to the experience, both the Kate half and the Ella half.\u00a0 And both halves were important.\u00a0 A kiss is, after all, still a kiss, even if hedged around with all the qualifications I am forced to acknowledge on this one.<\/p>\n

Nor am I knocking Sonny Bono\u2019s composition, which deservedly made it to Number One.\u00a0 But it is interesting that the lyrics and the performance (see the videos hyperlinked at the top of this post) are all about a kind of assurance between two lovers that is about as far as you can get from what existed between me and either of those girls.<\/p>\n

HIM: I got flowers in the spring<\/address>\n
I got you to wear my ring<\/address>\n
HER: And when I’m sad, you’re a clown<\/address>\n
And if I get scared, you’re always around<\/address>\n
HER: Don’t let them say your hair’s too long<\/address>\n
‘Cause I don’t care, with you I can’t go wrong<\/address>\n
HIM: Then put your little hand in mine<\/address>\n
There ain’t no hill or mountain we can\u2019t climb<\/address>\n
HIM: Babe<\/address>\n
BOTH: I got you babe<\/address>\n
I got you babe<\/address>\n

I may have scored a kiss, but I was a long, long way from finding that kind of love.\u00a0 And I was still hoping that maybe I could find it with Kate.<\/p>\n

[Continued in the next entry<\/a>.<\/em>]<\/p>\n

\n

[1]\u00a0\u00a0 In the second video listed above (the first is a mere lip-synch), the instrument seems to be a clarinet.\u00a0 But when I hear the sound, I\u2019m thinking oboe.<\/p>\n

Copyright (c) Jack L. B. Gohn, except for commercial images<\/p>\n

\u00a0Theme Songs Page<\/a>\u00a0| Previous Theme Song<\/a>\u00a0| Next Theme Song<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And yet, cursing my ineptitude, I could not get up the courage to put myself next to her and talk, let alone ask her to dance with me. But oh, I wanted to! Then the not very good band started to play once more. This moved fate into my corner, because the band had left a ukelele on the stage. Picking it up and plucking at it, I found I could more or less fake my way through a melody. Kate\u2019s friend broke the ice, and asked me if I played.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,968],"tags":[2070,2263,2261,2262,2270,2044,2264,2268,2265,2266,2258,2267,2269,2260,2259,2271],"class_list":["post-1898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-closeup","category-theme-songs","tag-2070","tag-back-to-the-future","tag-cher","tag-chris-rock","tag-clarinet","tag-dances","tag-doc-brown","tag-first-kiss","tag-high-school","tag-high-school-dances","tag-i-got-you-babe","tag-kiss","tag-oboe","tag-sonny-cher","tag-sonny-bono","tag-ukelele"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1898"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5475,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1898\/revisions\/5475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}