I was well into my sophomore year before I’d mustered the courage to entertain the absurd notion that it might be within the realm of slim possibilities to ask Penny Miller for something like a “date.”
We were in the same English class again. We sat only a row apart this time because Mr. Fohr did not seat alphabetically or by height. For weeks I watched Penelope Miller closely as she bent over her desk, unaware in her deep concentration of my spying, writing in her loose leaf binder in a meticulous hand with all the letters of equal height in a round style that gave me a hard-on every time I looked at her hand wrapped around her pen and her tongue peeking from a corner of her lip.
Penny Miller was even more stunningly beautiful than she had been when I first saw her way back when we were mere freshmen. The summer had reduced the few remaining childish angles in her body, refined the curve of her calves and breasts and rear, but had not affected the arch of her high cheekbones or the slim grace of her arms and hands or the complete picture that was even greater than the perfect parts they were made of.
Over the first few months of the term, we small-talked occasionally in class and I made her laugh a few times, enough so that it gave me a faint hope she might at least tolerate my presence, if not actually go so far as to like me. She had a funny wheezy, barky laugh to go with her voice, which was husky, as if always close to laryngitis, forcing me to suppress the desire to clear my throat. Her voice and laugh were so sexy I could barely sit in my seat in class. I found myself crossing my legs to hide the goings on inside my lap, though it was painful wearing jockey shorts.
I knew little about Penny Miller’s social life outside of that classroom; I was sure she must have a boyfriend, though I’d never seen her with one at school. I imagined that he might attend a different school, be a senior, or maybe even be in college. Although she was only fifteen, that gap seemed in my depressed moments to be infinitesimally smaller than the gulf between us.
Until The Fates appeared and showed a way to bridge the chasm. The Fates were much on my mind that year because we were studying Greek Mythology. Mr. Fohr, our Zeus, pointed his capricious thunderbolt and ordained that groups be formed for a class project. Some time after Thanksgiving but before Christmas vacation, we were grouped in threes to team together to write a report on “The Iliad” and present it in class.
I don’t remember the third person on our team, a sign of my focus on Penny Miller. We talked about the project in class and two times after school in the library. Penny was an enthusiastic savant on the subject, able to expound in dizzyingly alluring detail about Ajax, Achilles, and Agamemnon as if she had met them at summer camp. We each did our research and Penny volunteered to write the final draft for the presentation we were to make the next day.
That morning while my sister and I fought for sink time to prepare for school, our phone rang. It was Penny’ mother. She had gotten our number from the phone book. No one had unlisted numbers in those days.
Penny was sick and was not going to school but she had finished the report last night. I agreed to pick it up from her house on the way to school. The Millers lived on Ocean Parkway, near Kings Highway; my house was about five long blocks away. I had to run to make it to her house and then race again to catch the school bus.
She lived in one of the upscale apartment houses in the neighborhood. It had a doorman and a desk like a hotel and a marble lobby and two Art Deco wood paneled elevators. By the time I got to her apartment door I was sweating despite the cold December air, my shirt tail was out of my pants and one of my shoe laces was untied.
I cleaned up as well as I could before ringing the bell, hoping to see Penny wearing a baby doll or maybe a robe which would open up revealingly, like one worn by a woman I’d delivered clothes to when I worked for the dry cleaners last summer.
Her mother answered the door, wearing what my mother would have called a “going-to-The-City” dress. She did not invite me inside, but asked me to wait and closed the door. I thought she’d gone to get Penny but she hadn’t. She returned with the report which was in a manila envelope, thanked me and closed the door while I was stammering my concern for Penny’s health.
During English class I decided to stop at Penny’s house after school and talk to her. I rehearsed all day what I would say and imagined many scenarios about how it would go: she would have the sniffles and be looking very pale and she would offer me tea, and she would be feeling miserable and I would make her laugh, and we would share a look, and she would fall in love with me. Or she would not really be sick, but I would catch her making out with a boy, a neighbor, that college student who she had been having a hot affair with, and she would coldly thank me like the women who I delivered clothes to, and maybe tip me a quarter.
Either scenario seemed far-fetched but I’d already developed a penchant for pre-experiencing moments like that. The goal was to prepare me for any eventuality; it would cushion the disappointment when it came; and in the less likely occasion of a positive experience, I would be able, I hoped, to function rather than freezing up completely — like I usually did with men on base and the game on the line.
Penny answered the door, wearing a bathrobe that revealed nothing to me. She looked merely beautiful, with her nose red and her eyes watery and puffy; she held a box of tissues. I managed to relate that the report went very well and that we all probably got A’s. She was pleased about it and apologized for not being able to read her part. I told her that I read it for her and the teacher said it was the best of the three. That was a lie, but not much of one. He had praised our work, most of which she had done.
We stood in her foyer a little awkwardly after that because I’d forgotten to rehearse a transition from this part into the asking her out part, and since she was sick and I didn’t know how long she was going to be sick, it didn’t seem like the timing was right. So I said I hoped she felt better and she thanked me with a weak smile and I left.
All the way home I felt really stupid for not saying more to her, and I thought of lots of things I should have said. “You look very pretty like this, vulnerable and pale, like Camille. It makes me want to take care of you.” Or “I hope I get sick so that we can share our germs and a box of Kleenex.” That might have choked a giggle out of her, if not the admission of love I was hoping for.
When she didn’t show for school the next day, I decided to call her that night and find out how she felt. I would tell her all about class, the work she missed and discuss the reading due the next day. I would offer to come over and read to her if her eyes were too puffy to read. I would say that as soon as she got well, I wanted to take her to see a movie to cheer her up.
I found her number in the phone book and after dinner I waited for a private moment when my parents and sister were watching television and I could use the phone without notice. With my heart pounding, I mis-dialed twice, my fingers slipping from the holes before the disk fully rotated.
I paused, dispatching bad thoughts. “Mis-dialing is an omen; I should forget the whole thing and see her in class.” “No, shmuck, it’s only a phone call.”
The third time I dialed carefully. Her mother answered it on the fourth ring, just before my nerve gave out. I’d forgotten that she would probably answer. I almost hung up, but managed to stutter my name and that I was calling to see how Penny was. Her mother was politely formal, saying that I was “sweet” to call and that Penny was feeling better and would be at school tomorrow.
I thought she would hang up on me so I blurted, “Well, its very urgent that I talk to her, Mrs. Miller, because the teacher gave us some special assignment for tomorrow and she should be prepared for it if she’s coming.”
To my surprise, her mother again said I was “sweet” and that of course Penny needed to know that, and for me to wait a moment. I heard her call to Penny and say, “It’s that boy, the one who picked up the report. He has a message from your teacher.”
Penny came to the phone. Her voice was even huskier than usual, though not as scratchy as it had been the day before. To my surprise I was able to coherently relate the ostensible reason for the call and she was very grateful and said I was “very sweet” to call.
I had such a boner that I kept thinking that I should have whacked off before calling her so that I could be thinking more clearly and not be talking so fast. The next line was going to be my big transition where I said that when she got better, I would take her to the movies to cheer her up, but I hesitated because I hadn’t planned for her to be better already and going to school the next day.
During another sickening silence while my mind raced for a way to say it, she said, “Well, I better get to reading. Enid called earlier with my math homework too and I have a ton of it. So, thanks again, Artie, and I’ll see you tomorrow in class, okay?”
I said, “Sure, bye.”
Well, that was really depressing, I thought, as I jerked off later in the dark and replayed the call in my memory.
The sound of Penny Miller’s voice on the phone was unbearably sexy as it reverberated in the hollows of my mind while I stroked away and recalled every word she spoke. Her voice on the phone was like velvet mixed with sandpaper, thick as hot fudge when it’s not runny and hot but after it comes out of the fridge rich and gritty. It was perfect for her: mysterious and dangerous, but at the same time teasing and girlish. Her phone voice matched my image of Penelope Miller, which I’d etched in my mind with the permanence of a Greek statue, but one with arms.
The next day in English class I was dreamily staring at the board when she came in almost late. I felt a note slip under my left hand. I caught a glimpse of Penny’s hand pulling away before the teacher noticed. Penny’s cheeks were tinged in red. She rubbed her nose with her Kleenex, and a little smile escaped as she blew gently.
The note was in her perfect round letters:
“Artie,
Thanks again for everything. I think you’re very sweet.
Do you want to go after school for a lime rickey?
Pen.”
I didn’t breathe as I read the note over and over, analyzing each word like a World War II cryptographer. "Thanks" was pretty neutral, but "everything" was pregnant with possibilities.
"I think you’re very sweet" was the best of all. I had to suppress my boner, just reading that phrase for the tenth and eleventh time.
The "lime rickey" was a soft drink specialty of the candy store on Kings Highway near her house. It was a place and invitation that encoded a breath of a hint — taken with the "very sweet" part — that she might actually like me, though it was also possible that she simply may have been trying to be polite.
She could have been one of those girls that sent thank you notes to everyone for everything.
"Thank you for the very sweet birthday present.” “Thank you for not spitting on me in the school bus today.”
But I had a soccer game that afternoon, which was a Friday, and it was a dilemma. There was still a slim chance I might get to play for a few minutes — unless it snowed and the game was canceled, I thought hopefully. A quick glance out of the classroom window told me that a blizzard was not going to happen, no matter how much I willed it.
Near the end of the period, I bit my lip and turned her note over to the other side, held my breath, and scrawled:
“PEN,
Can’t do it — big soccer game. But how about a movie tonight?? I think you are sweet too. Art.”
I folded it up and put it on her desk just as the bell rang. Penny Miller looked at the note and frowned, then smiled at me and allowed a few fog-shrouded words to escape. “Okay, sure. Why not.”
I finally breathed. Breathing was wonderful.
The saxophone voice continued. “Pick me up after supper about seven-thirty? Gotta run. See ya.”
That night I picked her up at her house at exactly seven-thirty, figuring that punctuality would count. I had to run most of the way due to delays necessitated by my painstaking preparations: carefully choosing clothes, especially pants that wouldn’t strangle me while I sat in a movie theater with a hard-on; re-combing my hair thirty two times with enough Brylcream to lubricate an engine; covering as many zits as I could without requiring bandages or surgery; and finally, destroying thousands of breath germs with my father’s mouthwash that tasted like battery acid.
Penny’s parents treated me in a way that surprised me at first: that is, with complete indifference. Her father read his newspaper, watched the TV, did not even deign to give me a once over. Her mom stood nervously smoking while listening intently to someone more important on the telephone. After initial relief that I would not be scrutinized and found unacceptable, I began to feel queasiness of another sort. They must be so used to guys coming to date their daughter that it had become routine. They treated me so casually that I felt I should have taken a number.
Worse, I began to think that the comfort level they evinced at my presence was insulting, because it suggested that they saw me as posing very little danger for their daughter. Well, there are advantages to being the non-threatening type. Maybe I would show them, I dared to imagine.
Penny had washed her hair and it was very blond and fluffy, forming a sort of golden halo around her face. She wore a turtle neck ribbed blue sweater, plaid skirt, and black leg tights under her pea coat. I mentioned that it was very cold outside that night. Her mother wanted Penny to wear a hat; Penny refused, insisting that her hair was dry, and that she would not catch a “chill,” but yielded to a muffler and gloves. Her mother wanted her father to drive us to the movie house and luckily he shot that down with a grunt.
While I walked with Penny to the elevator, I kept up a stream of banter that I hoped was clever and funny but sounded to me like inane chatter. Penny giggled in her squeaky laugh in the elevator as I made a face at an elderly couple, and their nasty tiny dog yapped at me.
Outside, the air was biting and our breaths were smoky as we walked on Ocean Parkway toward Kings Highway. The street lights cast black shadows and the tree branches were bare and stark. The sky was black and thick smoke came from the exhausts of cars waiting for the light as we trotted across the long intersection toward the lights of the theater district.
We saw “The Left-handed Gun” with Paul Newman, a western about Billy The Kid. I remember that I held her hand during the show, paid for Jujubes and Bon Bons and a Mary Jane bar, teased her about her voice, and made whispered jokes about the people in the theater.
After the movie, we took a booth in the candy store and Penny had tea with a cinnamon stick and honey and I had a hot fudge sundae. I gave her the cherry and I dared a teasing sex innuendo about that and luckily she laughed a sincere laugh.
There were other school kids there and I was very proud to be seen with Penny because by then everyone knew she was one of the Beauties at the school, and that us being together on a date was a shock. We talked to a few people; one guy who had flirted with her now tried to horn into our table, but it was late and Penny accepted my urging to leave with no sign of coquetry.
I held her gloved hand all the way back. I kept talking, thinking about whether and how to try to kiss her. Ocean Parkway was a very wide avenue with four lanes of traffic in each direction. On one side, there was a bridal path lined with trees that paralleled the traffic lanes and separated it from another street with parked cars and another wide sidewalk. The paved walkway on the other side had benches under the trees and then another two driving lanes and parking near the curb.
I steered toward a bench on the walkway near the front of her apartment building and we sat down on it. She did not, as I dreaded, say “It’s late,” or “It’s too cold, we better go in.” Either would have been understandable and true.
I looked at Penny Miller, my mind a blank. She looked ahead to the cars going by and sniffled. Her hands were stuffed into her coat pocket. Her breath was smoky.
“How are you feeling?” I asked her with real concern.
“Okay,” she said, glancing at me a bit furtively I thought.
She was fingering the Kleenex she had drawn from her coat pocket. I kept looking at her with what must have been a dumb smile on my face.
“What?” she asked.
“Huh?”
She barked a giggle and made a more serious, though not a severe, face. “You’re kind of staring at me.”
I heard my voice, as if coming from somewhere far from my mouth, say something truthful and unrehearsed to a girl for the first time in my adolescence. “I like to look at you. I do it a lot when you don’t know it in school.”
Penny Miller squirmed in her seat. “I’ve felt you looking at me.”
I was thinking, "lots of guys like to look at you. You better get used to it if you’re going to be as beautiful as you are at this moment." But I didn’t say that. I said, “I hope it doesn’t annoy you, Pen.” That was true, too.
She looked as if she was thinking about how to answer. Maybe she wanted to say, "all the guys look at me; I like it." But she didn’t. Finally, she said, “No, it doesn’t annoy me, not really,” and she shook her hair. “It makes me a little self-conscious but.”
I heard my voice say, “I’m sorry, its just that — I like you a lot.”
Penny Miller then said, “I like you, too, Artie. Just as much, I think.”
That should have stopped me cold, but it didn’t. For some reason which I’ve analyzed in odd moments for the rest of my life, at a crucial turning point in history, chutzpah emerged at just the perfect moment. I felt relaxed and in control of myself, with a calm self-assurance that I’d never felt this far from second base, and certainly not with any girl, and Penny was not just any girl to me.
My voice was strong and clear, saying, “I’m dying to kiss you.”
Penny Miller looked at me. She didn’t smile exactly; it was more of a puzzled look, indecisive maybe, a look which I interpreted as seeking a polite way to let me down.
So I turned to wisecrack humor. “Hey, I don’t care if I get sick. At least then we’ll have something else to share, like germs?” I was proud that I finally fit in a version of that joke I’d rehearsed.
She did laugh a little. “I don’t think I’m contagious anymore.”
“So its okay then?”
“Yeah, its okay.”
I leaned closer and she quickly wiped her nose with the Kleenex, sniffled and turned her face up to me. Her eyes sparkled watery blue in the light of the street lamp.
I kissed her gently, barely brushing her lips, stole a look as she closed her eyes, and I pressed my lips to hers. I held her shoulder with my hand on the back of the bench and held her gloved hand with my other hand. Her cheeks were pink and her nose was chafed. I took the Kleenex from her hand and daubed her eyes and her nose.
She chuckled again, a foghorn of a laugh. I leaned over and kissed her again, felt her tongue touch mine and could barely stand it.
She whispered in a croaking voice, “That was nice, Artie.”
I told her I hated my name, Artie, because it was so dorky and I always got my cheeks pinched when one of my relatives called me Artie.
She said she would call me Arthur from then on because it was “more elegant, like King Arthur.”
I reminded her that the most famous Arthur was Arthur Godfrey, the corny TV host. “Besides,” I said, “King Arthur in the story kind of loses Guenevere to Lancelot, doesn’t he?”
She laughed about it and from then on called me Arthur or Arturo when she wanted to tease me, and Artie when she wanted to retaliate for my teasing.
We kissed again, and it is that kiss that I still can taste. It was a kiss that was subtly different from the experiments I had been used to. I felt something I could not then define, but later knew was some sort of feeling that had moved beyond titillation or curiosity. I didn’t know whether it was because of something I was feeling or something she had done.
It didn’t occur to me that it could be because of something that she was feeling. I had no way of comprehending how that could be possible. Yet today, almost a half century later, the sensation and the meaning of that kiss still lingers with me, as a shadow of a dream.
Somewhere deep within, I must have dimly sensed what Penny Miller was trying to convey by that kiss: that it was a message — an offer, a plea; but the substance was something I could not decipher.
It was clear that after each kiss, we each became more comfortable, more trusting, permitted more entry to levels of — and I never would have then used or thought of the word — intimacy.
She told me that she was tired of being called Penny and Pen. I asked her if she minded that people made fun of her when we read “The Odyssey” in class and the teacher mentioned Odysseus’ wife, Penelope.
She was very serious when she said she liked Penelope as a name because in the story, Penelope had turned away all other men, steadfastly believing Odysseus would return to her.
“But of course, my mom screams my name, ‘Penelope!’ when she gets really mad at me.”
I laughed because Penny had said it in a funny way, with a squeaky mock scream, something like Imogene Coca on Sid Ceasar’s show. I said something like, “I swear I’ll never call you ‘Penelope’ in anger, but only when I want to remind you to wait for me.”
She seemed to like that a lot, and asked me to kiss her again, which I did, thinking that it was even more exciting having her ask me to kiss her, resulting in my boner almost causing me to double up.
When I could breathe, I told her I wanted to give her another name, one that only I would call her. After some unacceptable tries I no longer recall, I settled on “Kid,” telling her that it was because our first movie was about Billy The Kid.
I was really thinking about a movie I’d seen on television with Humphrey Bogart called “Casablanca,” where he called the younger Ingrid Bergman, “Kid.” It didn’t exactly fit us because Penny and I were the same age, but it made me feel more “mature.” I really felt the way toward Penny that Bogie felt about Ingrid, somehow protective and responsible, though I couldn’t have explained it at the time.
Penny seemed to understand the idea, as she was to “get” most of my screwy notions, and she seemed to like it. At least, she didn’t stop me from calling her “Kid.” Or from putting my hand on her leg when we kissed again.
She told me that “Miller” had been changed by her grandfather from “Millstein” and I told her that “Brewster” had been “Brownstein,” so that was another thing we had in common.
I kissed her again in the elevator and once more, secretly, at her door, daringly, excitedly, knowing her parents were just on the other side, smugly sure that I was a safe one.
When I went to bed alone that night to review every detail in the dark, I realized that there were few moments I would have changed. It had been perfect. It was the best sex I’d ever had up to that point.
[Part 3 will come soon. I will give you a teaser, the first line -MPB]:
We never formally dated again.
Copyright © 2006 by Mort Borenstein
2 comments:
I love this story. I especially like the moment when Artie takes away the cleenex from Penny and blots her nose himself. Some gestures speak volumes of one's entire nature. Moving.
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