Hooked

Last night, I bought you your first bra. Correction: I bought you three of them, all different styles and fabrics—because my first bra was just that, one bra, and I always wished I could have had more of a choice.

In my day, Queens girls went to an old-fashioned lingerie store to get the momentous first bra. In the window of the store would be translucent plastic legs modeling pantyhose, headless shoulders with bustlines in nighties (both daring and demure), quilty bathrobes and stretchy girdles. The door would be heavy, all glass, like you were pushing to get into some brightly-lit tomb. The store was invariably staffed by older ladies who wore bifocals on a chain around their necks, called you "dawling" and asked "Isn't this one beauty-ful?" in a raspy smoker's voice.

Before you actually tried a bra on, you had to submit to a mortifying tape-measure around the chest—two times, once right across, and the second underneath your swelling shape. Then the saleslady would retreat behind the glass counter, pulling a big box down from a shelf that was labeled "32AA" in BIG black letters (this felt really embarrassing, as though everyone now knew you'd be wearing the smallest possible size). She'd then fish around inside the box and bring out a bra. The box was too high to see into, so you had no idea if there was some other style in there you might have liked...no, there it was: your assigned bra.

The white trifle felt lightweight and silly in your hands as you headed for the dressing room. Like this is gonna make a difference, you'd think, recalling the ouchy feeling you were now getting whenever you ran down the sidewalk playing tag, or when you took the stairs at a gallop. Regardless, you pulled a little curtain across the dressing room doorway and struggled out of your T-shirt. The bra was alien to the touch, and the straps dug right into your shoulder as you reached behind you--how the hell do they do this?!—trying to hook the closure. It felt like minutes were ticking away as your mom stood patiently at the glass counter, waiting.

Finally...hooked. In the mirror, you turned and contemplated this new shape on your body. The cups of this bra were thickly lined with synthetic batting; alas, the stuffing was too dented-looking to actually improve on your slender shape. In between your breasts (breasts! still an absurd new word), there was a tiny white satin bow with a tinier white fake flower in its center. You'd shrug around then, trying to stop that digging sensation on your shoulders. And then you'd jump in place (just a teeny bit, so that the ladies in the store wouldn't think you'd lost your mind)..and whaddya know? they didn't bounce and ouch! Whew, you'd think,that decides it.

You'd poke your head into the corner of the curtain then, and multiple women (including Mom) would turn to look at you. "This one's good," you'd say. "Can I, um, wear it home?"

"Sure," said the saleslady. Mom nodded. Back in the dressing room, you reached for your T-shirt and tugged it back over your head. And then, the first womanly thing you'd really ever done in your life: you tucked your shirt into your jeans, pulled taut; stood up straight with shoulders back, and checked out your bustline side-to.

Still you.

Neveromance

What would I really say if I could? That your face, on the edge of sadness always--even through a supremely goofy smile--never left my mind? That I can still feel the damp press of your hand on my back, slow-dancing to the Beatles? I can still feel the belly-whop in my stomach, the times when I thought that maybe now, now was the time, tonight was the night that you would turn to me and look in my eyes, and instead of a fond smile, it would be a knowing gaze. We would connect, and all the imaginings would be more than that, and better than that too. Maybe I never realized that your need was probably deeper than mine. Mine was all over my sleeve, yeah, and scary enough to send legions running--but yours was an unanswered call, a lock without a key. All my trying was never going to open that door and relieve that tinged sadness.

 

I wanted to make you happy because I knew it would make me happy. And it was a bob-and-weave proposition--couldn't get too close; you'd go the other way. But when I lessened up on the tension, when I just gave in and danced those wild dances at your high school with you--the Doors, the Beatles, the Stones (how can they say these songs aren't danceable?!)--we were electric together. Afterwards, we'd all walk in a teenage clump towards our NYC bar-hangout, and you'd pull an icicle off an awning and give it to me, and I'd just naturally suck on it, the greatest gift I ever got. Or in the bar, our crowd commanding the jukebox and the laughs and hoots swirling around us, you'd lean in and say to me, "Come here often?" in a low tone.

 

(Never, ever often enough.)

 

How sensible is it that sixteen years later, I still wonder what it would have been like to kiss you. We touched plenty...one night your hand rested on my neck for a long time, massaging while I cried--still wrestling my home demons, and the insecurity ones too. You were there when I lost my boyfriend, too, hugging me and encouraging me. "Turn It On Again" always makes me think of you and that night--because his action made me persona non grata with everyone else, yet you didn't drop me that easily.

 

But we never kissed. That might have turned the tides--either that, or you still would not have wanted to get involved with me, and I would have been destroyed.

 

That may well be why you never followed up. But I remain unconvinced that we were hopeless. I am nothing if not faithful to a dream.

 

You were that: a dream. Blond wavy hair, wry smile, amazing sarcastic wit, rich dramatic talent--but unassuming. Lankier than anyone else I can think of. And teenage-hot when we danced close, chests just-touching, to "Because" and "Sun King".

 

A kiss would have been unbelievably intimate between us. I have to believe, dear one, that doors would have flown open. That's why I replay this memory record sometimes--not because I've never known such intimacy; no, truly, I have been blessed to know and love deeply in the intervening years. But because we just will never know.

 

So the only other thing I can say that I didn't say is thank you. Thank you for the fruit and the walk through Central Park when my speech contest bombed, and the yearbook signings that made my heart sing, and your opening monologue in "Godspell"--riveting and moving; our quiet moments during teenage wild parties; sharing the Chartreuse buzz with me; the touch of your hand on my neck; and finally, all the Italian ices in lower Manhattan, summer of 1983, when we both worked at the base of the great city. Cool and sweet, tasty and tactile, they gave me a great excuse to hang around with you while you sold them from your white-cold cart. Because even when I had someone else in my life (and that summer, I juggled two in desperate, ecstatic misery), you represented a swooping hope, a purer thing.

 

Here's how I wrote it in December of 1981, after watching dusk glow in the sky over Central Park with you, seeing a diamond-chip star:

 

you flicker ever, a Paschal candle in my heart...

yet still ever now