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A later encounter with female aggressiveness
I was being put to bed last night here at The Boston Home by a nursing assistant named Rosa. She is one of three Puerto Rican assistants in the evenings, and all are wonderful caregivers. Rosa was flirting with my roommate (who is more than twice her age) and I was suddenly reminded of something that happened 44 years ago. I asked Rosa whether she wanted to hear a little tale of Puerto Rican passion. She assented (of course) and I began:
"When I was a freshman in college, our Glee Club did a concert tour of Puerto Rico during Spring break. We sang all over the island - I recall Carmen's hometown of Ponce, with its little red firehouse (Carmen was one of the other two girls.)
"We flew down there on an all-night flight. I recall that my friend took the window seat, while I sat in the middle. No one in the Glee Club sat on my other side. Finally, though, a beautiful young Puerto Rican girl came and sat down next to me. She appeared to be about 16 or 17 and seemed to be traveling alone.
"Now I was relatively inexperienced with girls at the time. In high school, I had developed a sort of code of conduct, which stated that I could not kiss a girl unless I was convinced that I was in love with her. And, as I could never be absolutely certain of that state of affairs, it saved me from the onerous duty of having to kiss someone. Now in college I saw myself as a sort of gallant – one protective of a girl's honor (which included not foisting unwanted attentions on her.)
"So I greeted the girl politely, and then gave (I think) a fair performance of pretending to ignore her.
"There was no further acknowledgement of one another's presence until after dinner. Perhaps to impress upon the girl that I was more mature than my boyish looks suggested, I lit a cigarette. (The cigarette was wrongly suggestive on at least two levels: besides the fact that I wasn't mature, it implied that I was a smoker. I wasn't. I hadn't smoked at all in high school. But in college the allure and the availability (paid shills handed out free cigarettes in the lunch line) were too great to completely resist. So I became an 'occasional' smoker - that is, I smoked only at crucial times to impress relatives – and girls.)
"Anyway, I was giving a fair imitation of smoking (but only fair: since I didn't inhale, I was a 'puffer') when I realized that my comely companion had taken out a cigarette herself. And then, before I could consider what to do, she reached over nonchalantly, and with utter confidence took my cigarette from my hand and lit her own with it. Then she handed mine back to me. It was the most brazenly direct act I had ever witnessed."
I paused there and asked Rosa whether she had smoked in high school. "Oh goodness no!" she replied. "My mother told me she never wanted to see me smoking. Even now, when I'm 30 and married, I never smoke in front of my mother!" I knew she had a brother and I asked about him. She scoffed: "He could smoke and drink any time he pleased!"
I then continued my story: "It was getting late in the evening and thus time to think about sleeping. The stewards began to bring everyone pillows. The cabin lights were dimmed. People were reclining their seats.
"I must say that, naïve as I was, I was not completely unaware of the implications of a young man and young woman lying reclined on pillows next to one another in a dimly lit room. To be blunt, the situation was sensuously suggestive.
"For that reason, I was at pains to show the girl that I could behave myself, that I would not allow even a hint of indiscretion. Accordingly, I placed my hands chastely on my lap and then closed my eyes to sleep. Meanwhile, the lights were virtually extinguished in the cabin.
"Suddenly I realized that the girl was kissing me wildly and passionately.
"Did I kiss her back? Yes, sort of: her passion was so strong, it was hard for me to get a kiss in edgewise!
"And did I caress her? Well, I'm afraid I allowed discretion to trump valour. For, suspicious of the girl's motives (it was hard for me to accept the evident and obvious fact that she might actually be attracted to me), I kept my hand firmly placed on the wallet in my back pocket. Thus, as a result of such silly husbandry did I lose at least half the pleasure in the encounter.
"The next morning we were somewhat embarrassed in one another's presence (when I got up the nerve to steal a look, her face was slightly flushed with a blush.) We only had one exchange: when I asked for her name (which for the next week I used in a song popular at the time: "'Elena! I've just met a girl named Elena!')
"I had to endure some ribbing by my fellow choristers and by the stewards; I even heard our conductor, Professor Cutler, remarked wryly to someone, 'I understand that a young lady has filed a paternity suit against one of our members!' I did not take well to any of this, as I wasn't mature enough to see the humor as well as the incredibly good luck in such an encounter."
I stopped again and asked Rosa how strict her parents were about her dating. Did they require that she use chaperones? She laughed. "No. But my mother always made sure she met the boy. And then she would read us the Riot Act about how we could and couldn't behave."
And then it hit me for the first time in 44 years: that the girl Elena had done what she did precisely because she could. She needed to experiment with a man, but it needed to happen in an absolutely safe environment. And what is safer than the closed space of an inhabited airplane?
When I gave this explanation to Rosa, she replied ruefully, "Well, I certainly could have used that airplane! As it turned out, I started sneaking behind my mother's back (I told her that I had after-school activities.) As a result, I got pregnant when I was fifteen."
Of course I asked what her mother's response was to that calamity. Rosa: "She called in my boyfriend and gave him The Ultimatum: If he ever left me and the baby, she'd hunt him down and break both his legs!" I asked whether The Ultimatum was any more effective than the Riot Act had been. "Well, we're still together after fifteen years!"
At this precise moment, Rosa had finished getting me into bed. She draped the call light cord across me and said, "If you have any other questions, feel free to call me." Then she turned out my light and gave my leg a gentle tap as she left the room.
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