Teenage Romance

                                                          Teenage Romance

But now, back to the Journalism Club. Miss Hayward’s influence on her proteges extended in various directions. Recognizing my lack of self-confidence when I was interacting with girls, she placed me in situations where I was forced to work with them. As a matter of fact, most of the members of the Annual staff were girls. When I attended my first Journalism meeting she introduced me to each of the other members and, somewhat to my embarrassment, added some kind of complimentary information about me when introducing me to certain girls in the club.

I will mention one incipient relationship that was engineered by Miss Hayward, because it provides a typical example of her machinations. When she first introduced me to the other members of the journalism club, she spent an inordinate amount of time acquainting me with the girl who was destined to become the editor of the literary magazine. I was informed that she had a gift for writing poetry, and actually had a poem published in a national poetry journal. Out of politeness, I asked her which poet was her favorite. “Shelley”, she said. Then she returned the courtesy, and I replied, “Keats”. These brief remarks eventually led to friendly discussions about English poets. She preferred Shelley because he expressed his feelings emotionally, even dramatically. I thought his poetry was too personal, and that the poetry of Keats, in his devotion to beauty in all forms, expressed a higher, more universal, experience.

After this auspicious introduction, we often chatted, not just about literature, but about all of the many things we had in common. We were both in the literary club; she was active with the literary magazine; I was the editor of the annual. We both belonged to the Junior Thursday Morning Music Club – a student society of lovers of classical music, which did not meet on Thursday mornings, but on Friday evenings once per month. However, most of this chatting did not take place at school, but sitting in her living room on a weekend evening.

These interests in good music did not brand us as “intellectuals” either in our own eyes or in the eyes of others, as it probably would in this day. We were in the “academic” track in our high school, which consisted primarily of students who intended to attend college, and consequently our course schedules were more challenging. They included two years of algebra, a year of natural science, English literature, grammar and composition, American history, civics, etc. Although being on the academic track conferred a certain distinction, there were many others on the academic track, and so in that sense we were not different from the others. And yet we were different. We were both so involved in that literary world, and our relationship was in ways like those of Victorian England. Each of us was so shy, self-conscious, inexperienced, unsophisticated that the relationship would have formed the premise for a sit-com in this day of teenage super-sophistication. We would probably have been a considerable source of amusement to the other students if they had been aware of our relationship, but we kept our contacts pretty much outside of the school, and besides everyone in the Journalism club was involved in his own problems: meeting deadlines, studying for exams, and sending out college applications.

Nevertheless, the other members of the club did play a practical joke on me once, when we were in New York attending a conference of High School journalism students. They woke me up in the middle of the night and took a photo of me with a pair of girl's panties in my hand, where they had placed them. The entire group was there in my room, prepared for a big laugh, but they only got a small laugh, because I was too sleepy to react they way they had hoped. I just smiled weakly, threw the panties away, rolled over and soon went back to sleep. Even the next day, I didn't feel embarrassed or humiliated, because I knew the prank wasn't intended that way. It was just a little joke among a group of teenage friends. Surprisingly, I actually felt better as a result of that bit of fun, because it made me feel that I was truly part of the group, as they knew that I could take a little good-natured teasing.

Fortunately, my girlfriend didn't have such a trick played on her. She was quite sensitive, and I'm not sure she could have handled it. However, she did manage to get into a somewhat embarrassing situation once. Along with several of the other journalism students, she attended a seminar at Washington & Lee University – a set of lectures for both High School and college students. I didn't attend, because I was busy with the Annual affairs, and I just didn't see journalism in my future. After the formal talks, the college had planned an informal “mixer” to give the students from different institutions the opportunity to meet and get to know each other. Refreshments, in the form of cookies and punch, were served. Now, I should emphasize that my friend took herself very seriously. At times she appeared prim – even staid. Apparently, that evening she was quite thirsty because she consumed several cups of the punch, not realizing that it had been spiked by one of the college students. As a result, she gradually began to titter, then giggle, and then laugh out loud at anything that could remotely be considered funny. She didn't do anything outrageous, but there, for just a brief period, she was transformed into a completely different person, to the vast entertainment of the other students who knew her sober, sedate self.

Both of us were still relatively new at boy-girl relationships, so we proceeded slowly, with a few dates during summer vacation and into the fall months, since we were enrolled in the same college. Our conversations were platonic, about literature, schoolwork, classmates, and not about our feelings; but each date ended with a cautious kiss - not just a peck, but neither an act of passion. We held hands in the movie theater, and I was allowed to put my arm around her shoulder, but she seemed to be afraid of a close embrace.

I don't know just how long I could have kept it up with that kind of distancing, but it wasn't that frustration that finally ended our relationship. It was the interference in the relationship by her girlfriend, a slightly older girl, a sophomore who apparently considered herself an expert on dating and relationships in general. I don't know whether her meddling was of malicious intent, or whether she was just ignorant of real man-woman feelings. But I refused to deal with it, so I had to terminate the relationship – not with bitterness and rancor, but with disappointment and a note of sadness. My girlfriend left Roanoke College at the end of the semester and transferred to a college that her older sister had attended, and that had an outstanding literary program. I maintained my enthusiasm for the fine arts as a side interest, while I focused my mind on math and the natural sciences.

The whole affair had only lasted a few brief months, but during that time we had a meaningful relationship. We were two kindred spirits groping our way into adulthood, and we did have a truly romantic attachment to one another that went beyond a purely Platonic relationship. It was not at all the same as mutual admiration simply based on shared intellectual interests, as can exist between two men or two women.

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