Boys, Boys, Boys!

Any girl who's reached the age 

Of seventeen or thereabouts

Has but one desire in view

She knows she has reached the stage

Of needing one to care about

Nothing else will really do

We've got to have,

We plot to have,

For it's a dreary not to have

That certain thing called The Boy Friend.

- Sandy Wilson, The Boy Friend musical

💞

 Seventeen? I was still in love with Ricky Nelson at seventeen! No, the boyfriend thing didn’t happen for me until I was twenty-one, and even then it was a long-distance romance with a lovely Spaniard from Seville named Juan-Bosco Fernandez Vial (my mum called him Bosco the Biscuit). 

 I met him in 1965 on the island of Menorca, and for 10 glorious days we danced in the moonlight, kissed on the beach, held hands walking the cobbled streets, and I sobbed all the way home on the plane. I hasten to add, though, there was no hanky-panky. No siree, none at all. I was still a virgin and somewhat teased for it by my far more adventurous London flatmates. This was the Swinging Sixties, after all, and mini-skirts, Mary Quant hairstyles, the Beatles, and women’s lib were all the rage.

Bosco and I corresponded for a year—he in his broken English and I with my evening-class Spanish—and then we met up in his beautiful hometown the following year for a few idyllic days when two girlfriends and I spent two  months traveling through Spain and Italy. We were still in love, still holding hands, and again I cried when I had to leave. 

Another year of letters and a meeting, but eventually the flame died in me. But not before he shocked me by saying he had been intending to ask me to marry him. I was naive enough to think that, because he had never attempted to “get into my knickers,” our relationship was not serious. All my girlfriends had slept with their husbands before they married, so why had Bosco not even tried? Boy, did I have it wrong. “In Spain, a man who is serious about a girl would never go to bed with her,” he explained, astonished at my ignorance. What a sad cultural misunderstanding! (But, in a postscript to this story, I was relieved to find out that I was spared the birthing of eight children, which Bosco’s wife was subjected to!)

💞

There was something about being six feet tall and unconfident that rendered me unattractive to English men—at least that’s my excuse for living five years in London without ever having more than a few one-night stands. Yes, it depressed me a little, but I was so busy having fun at parties and outings with girlfriends and their boyfriends that I just made the best of it . 

And then I went to Manhattan. It was 1968, and I was now twenty-four. ( Photo: Here I am on a Long Island beach in August of that year.) I suddenly felt free of the boring English traditions and having to prove “who I was” in the class-ridden circles of England. I was a novelty and could shed my very proper English persona. Even my height complex dissipated. American men just didn’t seem to care! It was so refreshing. Before the first week was out I had had a date! I couldn’t believe it.

However, it was not an American lad, but a rather self-important, rich young German guy, Michael Schecker, who wooed me into bed for the first time. We were both new to New York and enjoyed the singles bar and party scene together, until he became abusive and my roommates insisted I dump him. Shitty Schecker they dubbed him, and eventually I too saw the light and drew the line when he bit me hard on the arm. So much for a boyfriend—it lasted two months.

Warner McNeil Wells III from Greenwood Mississippi lasted somewhat longer! He was a real Southern gentleman, and I felt a bit like Scarlett O’Hara being wooed by him. Once, while we were dining, the server asked how we could be in conversation, because, he said: “I can’t understand either of you.” But when he moved to Atlanta for a job, the romance came to an end, and saddened, I moved out to California for the next leg of my US journey.

💞

Sharing an apartment outside Sacramento with two Air Force nurses, I felt confident the USAF would provide me with ready-made boyfriends. The apartment complex was full of young pilots, and there was no shortage of boozy nights. At once, I too easily fell for my next-door neighbor—just my type, 6ft 2in, lanky, athletic, blond and blue-eyed with just enough skepticism to be interesting. Mike was a pilot in the T-29, and his roommate was in love with one of my roommates, so we all hung out at the pool and around the dinner table. I was crushed when I found out he was practically engaged to a beautiful Spanish air hostess (we called them that back then). There was nothing I could do or say to sway him in my favor it seemed, and my efforts failed dismally. I am happy to tell you, though, that he and I are still friends—and he remains a bachelor. I know he never loved anyone but Pilar his whole life, even after she left him to marry someone else. He is a very special man.

💞

And then along came Lou Currier. Just back from Vietnam, where he had distinguished himself as an OV-10 pilot in one of the most dangerous flying missions in the war. He flew missions over Cambodia when the US “wasn’t in Cambodia.” He moved into Mike’s apartment  next door after Mike and his roommate had been reassigned. I was 26, and was totally unprepared for Lou’s courting of me. Chocolates, flowers, gifts, not to mention dinners in San Francisco and weekends in Mendocino undertaken in a gorgeous red E-type Jag! He was courteous, generous, spoke fluent French, and was happy to talk literature and travel with me. We thought the stars were aligned when we discovered we had exactly the same birth date. (I have to say, right from the start of our courtship, he was self-conscious about being shorter than me, and as our marriage began to unravel ten years later, he chose to complain about it.)

We were married fifteen months later and had two wonderful daughters. Although our last few years together were not happy, and I was sorry he never remarried as I did, I was deeply saddened by Lou’s unexpected death at 69. Our two daughters were devastated. I shall always remember his laugh, his sense of humor, and his excellent fathering. I was honored to attend his interment at Arlington National Cemetery.

🙏🙏 R.I.P

I’ll skip over the years between divorce and remarriage, as those temporary relationships I had were overshadowed by my lucky meeting one evening at a bar in Plattsburgh NY, the city to where Lou and I had moved following our stint at the US Embassy in Paris.

💞

   

Scott Smith had wandered into P.B. Finnan’s by himself to hear some music, after having accepted a job as Lecturer in Computer Science at SUNY Plattsburgh. I happened to be the host for Open Mike that night in September 1986, and the rest, as they say, is a long story! Thirty-seven years later, we think we still look like this. 

Happily, I don’t need a boyfriend anymore. It has been fun to reminisce, but I wouldn’t want to go back! How about you?

(P.S. apologies for formatting problems, this Blogger Blogspot platform is really terrible. Looking to switch!)