{"id":2480,"date":"2011-07-10T20:26:45","date_gmt":"2011-07-11T00:26:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=2480"},"modified":"2015-09-26T13:53:03","modified_gmt":"2015-09-26T17:53:03","slug":"slow-dancing-on-the-sand-this-guys-in-love-with-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=2480","title":{"rendered":"Slow-Dancing On The Sand: This Guy’s In Love With You"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Slow-Dancing On the Sand<\/h2>\n

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

This Guy\u2019s in Love with You, by Hal David and Burt Bacharach, performed by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass (1968), encountered 1968<\/h3>\n

Buy it here<\/a> |\u00a0 Video here<\/a> |\u00a0 Lyrics here<\/a><\/p>\n

When I originally planned this piece, I expected to call it \u201cA Perfect Day.\u201d\u00a0 But then I went back and looked at the evidence. \u00a0I realized that, glorious as the day was, perfect was not the word for it.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Call her Carolyn.\u00a0 Here\u2019s her photo.\u00a0 I’ll tell you in a minute how it was taken.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve written earlier in this series<\/a> of my astonishment that mixer dances have more or less disappeared from the contemporary collegiate scene.\u00a0 In fact, on the day after this story starts, I\u2019d written it down that mixers \u201care quite necessary \u2013 if they didn\u2019t exist, we\u2019d have to invent them.\u201d\u00a0 Apparently time has proven me wrong; my collegian younger son\u2019s never been to one, so far as I know.\u00a0 Nonetheless, they were awfully important for me back in the day\u2026<\/p>\n

Well Mixed<\/h3>\n

The story starts on Friday, April 26, 1968, at the outset of Penn\u2019s version of that perennial, the college spring festival.\u00a0 Penn called it Skimmer.\u00a0 In the idealized version of this idyll, we\u2019d wear skimmer hats and sit with our dates watching rowing races on the Schuylkill.\u00a0 I did not have a date, however.\u00a0 Fortunately I had a mixer.\u00a0 Well, to be technical about it, the next institution over, Drexel Institute of Technology, had a mixer.\u00a0 And that was where I met Carolyn, good-looking, friendly, smart, a coed at Chestnut Hill College, another Catholic women\u2019s school.\u00a0 I invited her to do the riverbank thing with me the next day, followed by other Skimmer excitements.<\/p>\n

I believe first she said yes, then on reconsideration she said no to the riverbank part.\u00a0 And truthfully the weather looked iffy.\u00a0 But she agreed to come in for the evening, which I\u2019d planned to spend at my roommate\u2019s new fraternity, \u201cgetting loaded,\u201d as I dishonestly boasted to my parents in a letter I dashed off that day.[1] Come the evening, she turned up, we rode some carnival rides on the field outside the women\u2019s dorm, and then we went back to the dorm room to wait until it was time for the party.<\/p>\n

So we started kissing, but it didn\u2019t go on long.\u00a0 The next thing I knew we were arguing about kissing.\u00a0 We were arguing about roaming hands.\u00a0 But the argument was being waged while we were lying side-by-side on the narrow single lower bunk of a bunk bed, from which neither of us was actually getting up.\u00a0 I was very politely calling her narrow-minded and she was very politely getting indignant, and then we were kissing some more, and then we were arguing some more.\u00a0 Oddly, this combination was raising both the lust level and the respect level.<\/p>\n

We didn\u2019t bother with the frat party.\u00a0 It was somehow incredibly romantic, just lying there arguing about what I wanted to do and she didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Incredibly Romantic<\/h3>\n

Since she wouldn\u2019t allow me to undress her in any other way, she agreed to take off her makeup for me.\u00a0 She told me: \u201cWhen I was trying to figure how to make myself up, I didn\u2019t know what you\u2019d like, and honestly, I didn\u2019t care.\u201d\u00a0 I asked: \u201cAnd you care now?\u201d\u00a0 Her answer was to come over and throw her arms around me and give me a terrific kiss. \u00a0And allow me to take the photo above.<\/p>\n

Finally, we had to end the evening with a mad rush to catch the 11:30 Suburban to Chestnut Hill at the 30th<\/sup> Street Station.\u00a0 She fell down once, and even that was romantic.<\/p>\n

We couldn\u2019t get together again until Saturday, May 11, which I believe was my last night in the dorms before my freshman year tenancy expired.\u00a0 I must have done most of my packing already, because I had time to take her to a matinee of Gone With the Wind<\/em>, in revival in one of the big old movie houses downtown.\u00a0 Hated the movie, but loved the rest of the evening: dinner at a favorite pizza joint, then watching as she finished packing my trunk, at which she was surprisingly efficient.\u00a0 (The trunk later weighed in at 163 pounds.)\u00a0 We also carried my boxed-up speakers over to Railway Express in the rain.\u00a0 My description of the evening to my now-former roommate ended this way: \u201cAfter we got back, she showed me some judo, and then some more necking and back to her sister\u2019s dorm.\u201d[2] What a woman!<\/p>\n

You would not have expected that all this non-sex and judo and packing would have made us boyfriend and girlfriend, and it didn\u2019t, but it left us intrigued with each other.\u00a0 As witnessed by a letter she posted the following Saturday[3] which: a) told me she\u2019d met another<\/em> guy at another<\/em> Drexel mixer (albeit he was what she called \u201cthis idiot Greek\u201d who only wanted to \u201cdance, dance, DANCE!\u201d \u2013\u00a0 establishing there were no ties preventing her from dancing, dancing, DANCING with other guys) but b) invited me to visit her in her home town of Avon-by-the-Sea, New Jersey, if I could find a way there over the course of the summer (establishing a continuing interest).<\/p>\n

Planning The Date<\/h3>\n

We wrote back and forth for the next few weeks, including a bit of jointly working through the Robert Kennedy assassination, which befell that June.\u00a0 I made a stab at taking her up on her visit offer \u2013 with the notion that I might drop by on a scheduled stay with my father in New York.\u00a0 Had that stay gone off according to schedule, Carolyn would not have been able to take time off from work (at the local phone company).[4] But my step-grandmother died,[5] and we all had to run to Chicago Heights to deal with the obsequies and the dispersement of her things.\u00a0 In consequence, I did not get off to New York until July 8.\u00a0 And, as it happened, right at the end of that stay, there was a one-day window for Carolyn: Sunday, July 22.<\/p>\n

And that was the perfect-ish day.<\/p>\n

On this stay with my Dad, I was fortunate to have my old grade-school friend Walter with me.\u00a0 This gave me a chance to show off my East Coast world,[6] and I made the most of it.\u00a0 We trained down to Philly and visited my university,[7] we chased girls down in the Village, and we spent a lot of days up at my dad\u2019s country place in Tannersville, New York.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t quite idyllic up there because there were no girls, or at least none for us.\u00a0 My dad was in some kind of group therapy at that point, and he\u2019d brought up a friend from therapy, a hospital orderly named Phil, and Phil had brought his girlfriend Karen.\u00a0 They were in the bedroom next to the one I shared with Walter.\u00a0 And the rooms were very small.\u00a0 And yes, we could hear things that were probably Phil and Karen having sex; even if we were mistaken about that, we certainly knew it must be going on.\u00a0 That knowledge got on our nerves, and I know we were, uncharacteristically, beginning to have had enough of each other.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s me and Walter and Phil, target shooting from our carport in the country:<\/p>\n

Release and Relief<\/h3>\n

Visiting New Jersey was therefore a release to a different setting, and also, blissfully, to the company of the fairer sex for a while (as Carolyn reported she\u2019d secured a date for Walter).\u00a0 So at around 11 we boarded a bus at the Port Authority Terminal, bound for Asbury Park, a few blocks from her town.[8]<\/p>\n

I believe I was supposed to phone ahead before we left, but the line was busy when I tried to place a call from the Terminal, so we were fretting all the way down that Carolyn might have thought we\u2019d stood her up.\u00a0 Worse still, the bus was over an hour late, as we seemed to be going round Robin Hood\u2019s Barn making additional stops that didn\u2019t appear on our schedule.\u00a0 But when at last we alit in Asbury Park, I found a phone, called Carolyn, and she said she\u2019d be there in a few minutes.\u00a0 I walked back to Walter, shared the good news, and we both sort of collapsed.\u00a0 There was hardly a cloud in the sky.<\/p>\n

Then we heard a honk, and there was Carolyn\u2019s freckled face beaming at us from behind steel-rimmed sunglasses out a car window.\u00a0 She whisked us out of the touristy downtown and took us somewhere residential, where Walter\u2019s date lived.\u00a0 And at the front door was Jan, a girl-next-door with something mischievous in her eye.\u00a0 Jan went to yet another Catholic women\u2019s college somewhere in New York, which she described as a place where they didn\u2019t do anything but drink legal beer and make out.\u00a0 An auspicious introducing comment for Walter.<\/p>\n

Better news yet: the girls had planned for us to spend most of the day at the beach, which meant, in the first place, that we got to spend most of the day at the beach, and secondly that we guys weren\u2019t going to have to spend much money, a not inconsiderable thing.\u00a0 Jan gave us one for the road (though I abstained).\u00a0 We sat around chatting about the movie of Rosemary\u2019s Baby<\/em>, just out, which only Walter had seen, but everyone wanted to.<\/p>\n

The Beautiful Beach<\/h3>\n

Then we all piled back in the car and drove to Avon (pronounced Ah-von).\u00a0 Carolyn lived with her mom in a bungalow with a sort of stolid Irish interior: big solid chairs, family photos, a Blessed Virgin statuette.\u00a0 We put something on the record player (Days of Future Passed<\/em><\/a>, I think it was), and I helped Carolyn get lunch together.\u00a0 Alone together in the kitchen, Carolyn embraced me suddenly and told me she was glad I\u2019d come.\u00a0 We took lunch out to the awning-covered front porch and sat and ate in the breeze.\u00a0 I don\u2019t remember what we ate, but shortly afterwards we all went upstairs and changed into beach stuff.\u00a0 When the girls emerged from their room, Jan was wearing something in two pieces, yellow and sexy, and Carolyn was in something brown and demure.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo [as I wrote], off to the beautiful beach.\u201d\u00a0 Walter and I then made our only cash outlay for the entire day, bar our bus fares: $1.75 each for day-badges which entitled us to use the beach for \u201c22\u201d only.\u00a0 Then we were actually on the sand.\u00a0 I took of my shoes and buried my toes.\u00a0 Bliss!\u00a0 Walter and Jan ran on ahead, threw down their stuff and dashed into the water.\u00a0 They were as good-looking as models in a suntan lotion commercial.\u00a0 Carolyn and I couldn\u2019t compete on that kind of looks, but I felt no envy.<\/p>\n

Shortly, the two of us joined Walter and Jan in the water.\u00a0 We dove in the waves, and did the traditional water fights with the girls mounted on the boys\u2019 shoulders.\u00a0 Then we lolled in the sand, letting the sun and the wind dry us.\u00a0 Now you, gentle reader, may have had tons of this in your past, and it may all seem quite standard-issue to you, but that would be one area in which we differ.\u00a0 I had never before played in the surf with a date.\u00a0 So you can imagine how sexy and exciting the whole thing felt to me.<\/p>\n

Eventually Carolyn and I went off on our own, down as far as the beach went, and wandered out onto a fishing jetty protecting the outlet of a channel (the Shark River, I\u2019ve since learned) that flowed under a drawbridge just behind us.\u00a0 (There’s a great photo of the scene today here<\/a> and a useful aerial view here<\/a>.)\u00a0 We talked seriously.<\/p>\n

Meeting the Mom<\/h3>\n

In her letters to me she\u2019d mentioned having awakened recently to certain what she called permanent aspects of her character.\u00a0 I wanted to know what she meant.\u00a0 Not surprisingly, it had to do with another guy she was seeing (this one from West Point) who had taken her out on this same jetty in the moonlight, and I guess had beguiled her with notions of sharing an urbane life; she said she had realized then that she was at heart a country girl.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure it will not surprise you to learn I couldn\u2019t focus very well on the country girl aspect of the discussion; I was stuck being envious of Mr. West Point, whoever he was.\u00a0 I was helped past this juncture by Walter and Jan, who joined us.\u00a0 We talked about my writing, and about Anna Karenina<\/em>, which Carolyn had just read.<\/p>\n

Then Carolyn had to take a break and pick up her mom from work, as Carolyn had commandeered the family car for our excursion.\u00a0 Walter and Jan stretched out on the sand, obviously ready to be alone for a while, and I decided to go for a walk.\u00a0 I strolled north on the beach, then back south on the boardwalk, luxuriating in the feel of the grained wood beneath my feet.\u00a0 When Carolyn came back, we all caught a ride back to the house.<\/p>\n

When we got back there, we met Carolyn\u2019s mom, a dentist\u2019s receptionist.\u00a0 She had a polite but disapproving look.\u00a0\u00a0 I sensed I was being sized up; well, I could size up back.\u00a0 To my instincts I was looking at the source and pattern of the boundaries of what Carolyn would allow in our embraces.\u00a0 As a parent nowadays, of course, I have more sympathy.\u00a0 But I wasn\u2019t thrilled right then.<\/p>\n

We boys showered in an enclosure in the back yard; Carolyn had a laugh by popping open a window directly above and proffering Walter a towel when he was in the nude, which annoyed him.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think she actually glanced at him, but the joke was had.\u00a0 Walter, as it happened, had just been musing about Jan\u2019s swimsuit: \u201cI could see her nipples and everything.\u201d\u00a0 So arguably Carolyn\u2019s joke was a case of turnabout being fair play.<\/p>\n

The girls came down and packed dinner, and Walter and I carried it out to the car.\u00a0 Carolyn tried to sneak some beer into the cooler past her mom, but failed.<\/p>\n

Transistor Radio<\/h3>\n

We drove back to the beach again, setting up camp near the base of the jetty.\u00a0 A little later, I had some words with Carolyn about her mom.\u00a0 I criticized what my journal dubbed \u201cthe parochialism of her mind.\u201d\u00a0 I cringe when I read these words; I was a teenager who had never earned a penny looking down my nose at a woman putting two daughters through college without a dad.\u00a0 I feel a little better when I read the next thing I wrote: \u201cCarolyn was quite right being upset with me.\u00a0 I was just shooting off my mouth.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a repast of chicken washed down with soda, since Carolyn\u2019s mom had interdicted the beer.\u00a0 We turned on Jan\u2019s transistor radio and listened to WABC, and danced in the sand.\u00a0 I remember the feeling of utter peacefulness holding Carolyn in my arms, as we moved to the sound of Herb Alpert singing This Guy\u2019s In Love With You<\/em>.\u00a0 We played leapfrog.\u00a0 And then we sat down and entwined toes in the sand.\u00a0 When the game stopped, Carolyn\u2019s toes and mine remained entwined, and then we held hands.\u00a0 For a while the only sound was the radio.\u00a0 We heard Alpert\u2019s song again.\u00a0 (Playlists were short in those days.)<\/p>\n

Time to Wrangle<\/h3>\n

And then the sun sank behind us.\u00a0 The holding hands turned to kissing, and the blood was pounding in my temples.\u00a0 Walter and Jan realized it was a cue to absent themselves.\u00a0 When they were gone, I wondered aloud, phrasing it delicately, what kind of liberties Walter might be getting away with.\u00a0 Jan had been discussing French kissing before, and I mentioned it.\u00a0 When Carolyn seemed deliberately to misunderstand me, I rephrased more explicitly.\u00a0 She responded that I seemed never to pull my conversational punches.<\/p>\n

Hoping that she thought this directness of mine was a good thing, I went on in the same vein.\u00a0 I asked if we should go steady.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t exactly requesting it; I was trying to make sense of where we were.\u00a0 Indeed, the next thing I said was that I didn\u2019t think we should.\u00a0 I thought we were too different.\u00a0 In my blundering, vainglorious way, I said something about me being an intellectual \u2013 with the other term of the equation implied.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t trying to be offensive.\u00a0 And this time I didn\u2019t offend.\u00a0 Her eyebrows had shot up when I said what I said, but her response was that she was surprised that I felt that way, and that she had come here to tell me the same thing.<\/p>\n

Then it was my turn to surprise her, as I said that I\u2019d known that that would be her attitude.\u00a0 And I guess if I hadn\u2019t known it in advance, I could not have spoken out, so I think I was telling the truth.<\/p>\n

The two of us sort of danced around the reasons why we didn\u2019t want to go steady.\u00a0 Eventually, I more or less summed it up: \u201cI could never see being married to you.\u201d\u00a0 She agreed, saying she\u2019d thought about it, and all she could see was such a marriage falling apart.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know if her own family experience played into that remark.\u00a0 (Mine certainly had played into mine.)<\/p>\n

Of course that mutual revelation begged a question we naturally both turned to: what were we doing buzzing each other with all the kissing and the slow dancing?\u00a0 She said that it might just be sex.\u00a0 I said, thinking back to my recent near-miss with Cindy<\/a>, that if I just wanted sex, I could have had that.\u00a0 This pleased her, and led to some more kissing.<\/p>\n

The conversation then went back to French kissing.\u00a0 She said she\u2019d tried it with someone else (not me), and she said that now she couldn\u2019t oppose it on the grounds of morality, but just didn\u2019t care for it.\u00a0 (You have to understand, we were both Catholic school kids, or issue of the morality or not of the practice simply wouldn\u2019t have arisen between us.)\u00a0 And then, with this sexual issue and my jealousy as a trigger, we each said some stupid things which I won\u2019t replay here.\u00a0 It is apparent, rereading my journal after forty-plus years, that as honest and forthright as Carolyn generally was, we\u2019d reached a place where she couldn\u2019t be entirely honest even with herself.\u00a0 I\u2019d say that for someone who wasn\u2019t twenty yet, she was doing pretty well in accounting for her actions and reactions, but that damn Catholic training was making her say things that could not be reconciled with each other.<\/p>\n

And then too she lashed out at me — and took it back almost with the next breath.\u00a0 I think I betrayed some pain at her remarks, and she was rueful about that.\u00a0 She seemed to turn on a dime, and to be telling me things to make me feel better.\u00a0 If that was the thinking, it worked.\u00a0 And so eventually our upsets were smoothed down.<\/p>\n

But we were still looking at the question of where we went from there.\u00a0 And it soon became clear neither of us had moved on the not going steady issue.\u00a0 But we wanted to keep up a special connection at the same time.<\/p>\n

If You’re Ever In The Area Again<\/h3>\n

While we\u2019d been wrangling, the lights had come on along the boardwalk, and clouds had rolled over the stars, and we were in the dark.\u00a0 Through my sweaty glasses, everything was suffused with a soft glow.\u00a0 Everything was lit like a love scene in a sophisticated movie.\u00a0 Somehow the visual cues also made me happy, as if I were in a love scene, instead of \u2013 whatever I was in.\u00a0 (It isn\u2019t a very conventional love scene when you\u2019re resolving to be friends after you\u2019ve both married other people.)<\/p>\n

Walter and Jan rejoined us at this point, walking along the boardwalk, hand-in-hand.\u00a0 One of them sang out \u201cWhere have you two been?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe ain\u2019t gone nowheres!\u201d I replied cheerfully.\u00a0 So we started picking up and carrying things back to the car.\u00a0 Carolyn and I went ahead, and as we neared the boardwalk, she reproved me: \u201cYou said we hadn\u2019t gone anywhere; I think we\u2019ve come a long way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Things happened quickly then: back to the house, clean up, pack up, say goodnight to Carolyn\u2019s mom, and then Carolyn and Jan took us sightseeing and showed us the bright lights of Asbury Park, what everyone would come to know in a few years as Bruce Springsteen territory.\u00a0 We ended up in a park opposite the bus station; our bus was already there.\u00a0 Carolyn and I crossed a little bridge over a pond , and we looked out at Asbury Park\u2019s twinkling lights.\u00a0 We allowed that we were anxious for college to begin again.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going to be good, having something real to go back to this fall,\u201d she said dreamily.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd what we have, if nothing else, is real,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

And then it was time to board the bus.\u00a0 I\u2019d given Carolyn some money to hold for me, and she brought it out, saying in a loud voice so the other passengers could hear: \u201cHere you are, Mr. Gohn, here\u2019s your change, and if you\u2019re ever in the area again, give us a call!\u201d\u00a0 The girls broke into hysterics.\u00a0 Then, after a few moments they were gone.<\/p>\n

Well, almost.\u00a0 We parked ourselves on the street side of the bus, and it was very quiet.\u00a0 Suddenly they drove past us, shouting out the window again: \u201cIf you ever come this way, give us a call!\u201d\u00a0 I smiled and waved goodbye.<\/p>\n

Then sleep.\u00a0 A little waking.\u00a0 Lights.\u00a0 Faces.\u00a0 More sleep.\u00a0 And then the Port Authority Terminal, and the walk back to the 7th<\/sup> Avenue IRT.\u00a0 The next morning we were on a homeward-bound plane by 10:30, and by 1:00 we were back in Michigan.<\/p>\n

So was I right?\u00a0 Was it real?\u00a0 Part of the answer will have to await other pieces in this series.<\/p>\n

Not Perfect<\/h3>\n

But it would only have been a perfect day if we had shaken hands on going steady rather than on not going steady.\u00a0 We should have resolved to try being together.\u00a0 It was telling that the reason she didn\u2019t want to, and the reason I didn\u2019t want to, was that we couldn\u2019t see being married to each other.\u00a0 We should never have been thinking in those terms.\u00a0 But for neither of us could serious dating be conceived except as a part of a process that led to marriage.<\/p>\n

Blame our upbringing. Blame it for the contradictions in the things she was saying, for the endless alternation between embraces and pushing away.\u00a0 Blame it, probably, for the string of young men Carolyn had assembled, me and the West Point boy and the \u201cidiot Greek\u201d and perhaps others.\u00a0 Safety of a kind in numbers.<\/p>\n

You look at that photo of Carolyn at the head of this piece, and you see someone who could develop in all kinds of ways.\u00a0 She could have got fat, could have got thin, could have become a lady or a peasant.\u00a0 Whatever was next for her, it was going to be interesting to watch.\u00a0 That was clear enough.\u00a0 And we had what it took to find out what was next together.\u00a0 She was bright enough and honest enough and pretty enough to have kept me engaged, and I flatter myself I had much to offer her \u2013 at least for a while. \u00a0But having to think about each other as possible marriage partners made that kind of commitment too risky.\u00a0 Thank you, Catholic Church!<\/p>\n

And while the pledge of eternal friendship we carried out of that date looked real, our lives were about to demonstrate whether it was proof against one of us finding real sexual and emotional intimacy. \u00a0(Spoiler alert: it was not.)<\/p>\n

In the meantime, taking the short, hedonistic view would have been so much better for both of us.\u00a0 Billy Joel didn\u2019t release Only the Good Die Young<\/em> for another nine years.\u00a0 But he hit the nail on the head.<\/p>\n

Come out Virginia.\u00a0 Don\u2019t let me wait.<\/address>\n
You Catholic girls start much too late<\/address>\n
But sooner or later it comes down to fate<\/address>\n
I might as well be the one<\/address>\n

When all\u2019s said and done, though, that\u2019s not the song that makes me think of Carolyn.\u00a0 Unquestionably it\u2019s This Guy\u2019s In Love With You<\/em>, which we must have heard five times on the day we slow-danced in the sand (I bought my copy of the album as soon as I got back).\u00a0 Perhaps I should have avoided that association.\u00a0 Contrary to the title or the lyrics, I didn\u2019t declare then that I was in love with her, nor did she, then or ever, declare love for me.[9] And I think over the years my associating that song with that date has pulled a filmy gauze over the experience, similar to that hazy view of the boardwalk lights through dirty glasses.\u00a0 Deceived by that softened view, over the years I had allowed it to morph in my head into a perfect day.<\/p>\n

It had many of the aspects of perfection.\u00a0 Against odds, we found the time to get together, we had the double date, we played in the surf, we had two meals and lots of dancing and necking on the beach.\u00a0 And yet, in the end, it should have been more.<\/p>\n

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[1] One thing I have never been good at is drinking.\u00a0 But I was at least good at talking the talk.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[2] I\u2019m pretty sure the sister in question must have been at Drexel.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[3] When I was discovering Baltimore<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[4] There were such things as local phone companies in those days.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[5] The one who had had the antiques store pictured in the footnote in the first of the memories<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[6] More fun than sharing it with \u201cPatricia\u201d as a kid<\/a>, but the same impulse.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[7] That\u2019s him looking in the dorm window in the photo here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[8] There seem to be four little hamlets: (proceeding north to south) Asbury Park, Ocean Grove, Bradley Beach, and Avon-by-the-Sea, each separated from the next by a little lagoon, each a few blocks\u2019 thickness, top to bottom.\u00a0 Carolyn told me that each had been settled by a different denomination, and that Avon was where the Catholics lived.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[9] I did write her one making that declaration, but it went unsent.\u00a0 The one that went out instead used the word love, but love, as we all know, has many meanings, and I was pulling my punches the way I used the word.<\/p>\n

Copyright (c) Jack L. B. Gohn<\/p>\n

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It had many of the aspects of perfection. Against odds, we found the time to get together, we had the double date, we played in the surf, we had two meals and lots of dancing and necking on the beach. And yet, in the end, it should have been more.<\/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":[2689,2860,2872,2865,2869,2878,2880,2876,1942,2853,2875,2857,1013,2868,2856,2870,2861,2863,1943,2850,2874,2858,2859,2805,2866,2879,2877,2855,2864,2820,2862,2867,2871,2854,1711,2881,2852,2851,2464,2873],"class_list":["post-2480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-closeup","category-theme-songs","tag-2689","tag-30th-street-station","tag-anna-karenina","tag-asbury-park","tag-avon-by-the-sea","tag-billy-joel","tag-bradley-beach","tag-bruce-springsteen","tag-burt-bacharach","tag-carolyn","tag-catholic-upbringing","tag-chestnut-hill-college","tag-chicago-heights","tag-days-of-future-passed","tag-drexel-institute-of-technology","tag-fishing-jetty","tag-gone-with-the-wind","tag-greenwich-village","tag-hal-david","tag-herb-alpert","tag-jealousy","tag-kissing","tag-making-out","tag-mixers","tag-new-jersey","tag-ocean-grove","tag-only-the-good-die-young","tag-perfect-day","tag-port-authority-terminal","tag-railway-express","tag-robert-kennedy-assassination","tag-rosemarys-baby","tag-shark-river","tag-skimmer","tag-tannersville","tag-the-beat-of-the-brass","tag-this-guys-in-love-with-you","tag-tijuana-brass","tag-university-of-pennsylvania","tag-wabc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2480","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=2480"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5509,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2480\/revisions\/5509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}