Talking to Girls
How an only child found first love.
Each semester, my report card made the same complaint: “Eugene’s refusal to speak up in class discussions will hold him back.” I didn’t worry about it, though. As an only child, silence suited me just fine. And being a bookish one, getting good grades came easily to me. But when I reached my teens, I realized my teachers were right about a more important aspect of life: love.
In Throgs Neck, the working class section of the Bronx where I grew up, you had to speak up if you wanted love. Here’s how it went: you said to the girl, “Wanna go out with me?” If she said yes, bingo, she became your girlfriend. It was marriage proposal light, and practice for the real thing. With acceptance came three privileges: kissing her, holding her hand, and putting your arm around her on the way home from school. The latter declared to the world that you got love.
I tried my hand at asking girls out, but my words never seemed to stick. She would say yes, then no the next day. What was I missing? Looking back, I’m sure the girls were just as confused as I was. But having grown up without siblings, I found social life a mystery. I assumed everyone but me knew what they were doing.
Silence, not talk, turned out to be my path to first love. Theatre set the stage, but not on the stage. An English teacher…
