He touched my elbow, motioning me outside. “Other prisoners died from brutal medical experiments or typhus or the inhumane conditions. There were so many bodies, they had to cremate them. White ash billowed constantly from the smokestacks of the crematorium, and the smell of burning flesh filled the air—and the neighbors pleaded ignorance.”
I shook my head, dizzy from the gruesome details.
On our way back to the car, Jack broke the silence. “Robert Burns said it best: ‘Man’s inhumanity to man / Makes countless thousands mourn.’”
We drove off, my mind reeling. Of course, I had read about the Holocaust, but I hadn’t been personally touched by it. I had no family history, no relatives who died in the genocide. I had never met anyone with relatives who had fallen victim to it.
As the verdant countryside skimmed past, I felt a renewed gratitude for the willingness of soldiers from all over, including Jack, Bonner, and Dad before them, to do their share to put a stop to—and be a bulwark against—tyranny, even now.
Finally, Jack spoke. “Remember, not all Germans were like that. A number of Hitler’s generals, like Falkenhausen and Halder, opposed him. Those two were incarcerated at Dachau. Not all of our ‘enemies’ were evil. Now we have to engage them. Foster our common interests.”
“Big challenge.”
“Yes, but look how far we’ve come in twenty years. West Germany, Italy, and Japan are now friends and trading partners. That’s why I’m thinking Foreign Service. Big problems call for big efforts. Best of all worlds? You and me in the Foreign Service together.”
He’d written that in letters, but to hear him say it now affirmed a growing bond. Leading where? Life as an ambassador’s wife? Working with Jack as a USAID team? “Sounds intriguing,” I said.
Near Stuttgart, Jack pulled off the road, unloaded a cooler, and spread out an army blanket. “Back in a sec,” he said. He returned with his hands behind his back. “Which hand, Fräulein?” With a flourish, he presented a bouquet of tiny wildflowers. “Let the petals represent my tenderest thoughts. The greenery, the depth and strength of my feelings. And the fragrance, a hint of our unbounded joy. May we work together to make a difference in this world.”
I tucked the flowers behind my ear. “And may we work to put an end to war.”
He turned to fiddle with lunch. Had I pushed him too far? I knew we were in the clutches of war, albeit a cold war, and defending his country was both his profession and his passion. But was war the only way to solve disputes?
Late that afternoon, close to Strasbourg, France, Jack turned into a wooded area and stopped for the night by a small, grass-banked lake.
“Why don’t you fix us some tea?” he said. He took out a single-burner Coleman and showed me how to crank it up. I made black tea, his favorite. I didn’t drink tea, but camping was no time to get persnickety. I downed a whole cup.
Jack ambled over to the car, took out the tent, and set it up. It was teeny—space enough for the two of us only if we were on top of each other. Outwardly, he was all business, but I sensed a sinful smile lurking beneath the facade. “A one-man tent?” I asked.
“Negative. One-man, one-woman. You said you like ‘cozy.’ Your letter, remember?”
I had only myself to blame. After I had written about my camping trip with Terry, Jack proposed camping with me when he got home from Germany. He’d gone on a quest to find “two single sleeping bags that zip into one double.”
As our letters heated up, he wrote, “Maybe a double isn’t such a good idea; we’d better have a chaperone. How about your brother Jimmy?” He said he might not be able to “control” himself.
Flirtatious zeal triumphed over good sense. I wrote back, “Zip-together bags sound cozy. And let’s not invite my kid brother.”
But I wasn’t ready to “go all the way,” and tonight would put restraint to the test.
“The tent’s so small. I think my pen outran my discretion.”
“Bonner and I slept in this very tent during ranger training. It saved us from freezing our bu—I mean, our toes off. Something worrying you?” He looked at me deadpan.
“Kinda. I’m wondering how this is going to work.”
“Oh, really? It worked with your old buddy, I hear. Same way, I suppose.”
“We didn’t have a tent, and we weren’t close enough to touch each other. Besides, he was safe—no passions to keep in check. At that time.” Oops, me and my stupid mouth!
“‘At that time?’ You have no idea how that thought has kept me awake at night.”
He rolled the sleeping bags into the tent, laying them out side by side. Wall to wall, overlapping by at least a foot. “There. Plenty of space.”
I stood there mute.
He frowned. “What’s wrong?”
“Well, jeez, we’re still getting to know each other. I’m a little anxious.”
“You’re anxious? I haven’t slept ever since your first letters mentioned your friend Terry. Are you really serious about this guy?” He plopped onto the blanket, looking at me intently.
I scrambled to recover. “Jack, the most important thing is this. You exceed the person I dreamed about for years. This development with Terry has crashed into dreams you and I spun together over the past year. It’s not something I sought, or even anticipated, but it’s there, and I can’t ignore it. At the same time, it has not diminished how I feel about you. Not a whit.”
“Just know that every time I hear that name, a threat springs to life. I thought he was the past, that you shut it down before you came to Germany, before it—”
“Hold on. This trip is about us, about you and me, and what we need to do to get really acquainted in the weeks ahead.” I copped a wicked grin, and I, well, I summoned my dormant feminine wiles. Nothing lewd, merely a glance and a hint of promise.
Finally, a sly smile. “Actually, I can think of a thing or two,” he said.
A caution light started blinking. Guys all seemed to have the same goal—sex. And they seemed so fragile if you set limits up front, as if their manhood were always at stake. How could I make him understand that unfettered sex was out of bounds without throwing a wet blanket on our romance? “Depends on what you have in mind,” I said.
“Tell you what. You call the shots on this one. I promise I won’t do anything to make you uncomfortable. This is too important to commit suicide by haste.”
I wanted to hug him. No, wrong message. “Agreed,” I said.
At dinnertime, Jack dipped water from the lake, heated it, and set an opened can of stew in the boiling water. Soon dinner was bubbling, and the fragrance wafted through the evening air. I sopped up the gravy with chunks of bread left from our lunchtime sandwiches.
Bedtime. A new dilemma. What to wear? My nightie wasn’t meant for a tent. “I know this sounds silly, but how do we do this? Sleep in our clothes? I’ll look like a hobo tomorrow.”
“I normally sleep in my T-shirt and undershorts and lay my clothes out beside me. Keeps them wrinkle-free. For the two of us, we can put them just beyond our heads. Wouldn’t want anything to crowd us.” He was enjoying this way too much.
“Easy for you. I don’t have a T-shirt or boxers.”
“I’ll lend you mine.”
Wear his undershorts? No way! But his T-shirt would be long enough to cover my vitals. “Do you have an extra T-shirt? I’ll wash it as soon as we get back.”
“Yes . . . if you promise not to wash it. I’ll sleep in it every night for the rest of my life.”
“Yuck!”
Flashing what Terry would have called a “shit-eating grin,” he pulled out a neatly folded T-shirt. “What if you go into the tent first?” I said. “I’ll change out here.”
Undressing under the stars set my pulse racing. I pulled his T-shirt over my bra and panties and peered into the pale yellow triangle lit by his flashlight. I almost choked on the stench of musty canvas. “Knock, knock, any room at the inn?”
“Do you have a reservation, miss?”<
br />
“I had several, but that nice fellow outside set them at ease.”
“Excellent. I’ve got one spot left. Here, test it out.”
The sleeping bags opened toward each other. I slithered into my spot and kept my bag zipped most of the way up, but not all. I took a deep breath and let my free hand creep toward him. He met me more than halfway. “Tired?” he asked.
“A bit. I’m not used to sleeping outdoors. But you? How are you feeling so far?”
“Overwhelmingly in love,” he said. “May I kiss you good night?”
How rare. I always imagined if a guy ever asked me that, it meant he was too dense to read my feelings. But Jack was keeping his promise. I tilted him onto his back and moved in. He smelled faintly of aftershave. “You’d better.”
He pulled me onto him. Our lips touched, caressed, explored. He stroked my back through the T-shirt and began toying with it, inching it up. I tensed. I touched his hand, stopped his progress. “Jack, no. Not yet.”
He stiffened and rolled away.
“Remember when I pooh-poohed your idea of bringing Jimmy if we go camping? Maybe we do need a chaperone. Passion could sweep us through the rapids and over Niagara Falls.”
“Sounds thrilling.”
“Too scary. At least for now. We barely know each other. We’re headed to a place I’ve never been. I’m not ready to go there. We’ll—I’ll—regret it if we get ahead of ourselves.”
I pulled his hand to my face and put it under my cheek, like a pillow. Eventually, he dozed off. I couldn’t.
I was falling in love with him.
Terry
Tuesday, 30 June 1964, Silverton. I thought Silverton would ease the aching loneliness of life without Annie. It didn’t. It merely forced me to face the truth: I couldn’t live without her. But she was merrily globe-trotting through Europe with her dashing lieutenant. The all-American Boy Scout. Audie Murphy in the making. Worse, Annie loved him. She had told me that she loved me too, but the odds were against me.
Still, I wasn’t about to give up, especially to some guy who was as much myth as macho man. I had to beat this guy. And by airmail, not hand-tohand combat.
I settled into my friend John Ross’s second-story corner apartment on Greene Street, got out my typewriter, and stared out at Kendall Peak for inspiration. Damn! Images of former girlfriends Sarah and Rachael cavorted on the mountainside like sprites. I had blurted out everything to Annie about my nights with both women, every sordid detail, the kinds of details that guys with common sense kept under lock and key and buried in underground vaults. What a numbskull I’d been! This was going to be like conquering Mount Everest. Alone. In shorts and a T-shirt.
After I left Silverton the summer before and rolled into Boulder, I was so lonely I jumped at an invitation to a back-to-school party thrown by Sarah Abrams, one of my J-School classmates. Classes would begin Monday, September 16, and Sarah invited everyone in J-School to her place Saturday night, all fifty of us. Normally, I avoided college bashes. Raucous music. Obnoxious drunks. Suffocating clouds of cigarette smoke. The stench of spilled beer. No chance for decent conversation at these bacchanals—not amid the mingling of sweaty bodies drenched in aftershave or perfume and pheromones dripping off the walls.
But a Sarah Abrams party was front-page news. She wasn’t a party animal. She was smart, articulate, and well informed, someone you didn’t challenge if you didn’t have your facts straight. She was five-two and as svelte as a model, always dressed smartly in jumpers, pressed blouses, pleated skirts, pumps. Never sweatshirts or jeans. She packed her hair into a tight bun, like a stereotypical frontier schoolmarm. That made her ears stick out and her face pinched and severe, even when she smiled. And she alone in J-School wore bright red lipstick, Marilyn Monroe–style, broad and thick. Most of us were twenty-one or twenty-two. Sarah was twenty-nine. She exuded maturity. To top it off, she was a New Yorker from the city. She knew things I couldn’t even imagine.
A Sarah Abrams party? Of course I went. Beer flowed, but Sarah served wine too, and on a table draped with a white tablecloth, she heaped plates of croissants and breads, lunch meat, finger foods, chicken and meat morsels, shrimp, and pastries. A turntable spun soft music, not wild dance stuff, but music worth listening to—Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Dixieland jazz greats Pete Fountain and Al Hirt, and Peter, Paul, and Mary. Even some Mozart horn concerti.
We seniors huddled like sheep in a thunderstorm. After being scattered all over the country for the summer, we had tales to tell. Sarah circulated, greeting us one by one, and pulled us away to introduce us to the new underclassmen. Our eyes met now and then, and Sarah would smile or nod. She did that with everyone, but she seemed exceptionally warm toward me that night. When we talked, she laid her hand on my arm, stroking it lightly. That, too, appeared to be her big-city sophistication. She charmed everyone, guys and gals alike.
No one got drunk. Or obnoxious. At eleven-thirty, she began guiding people to the door. By midnight, there were only three of us—Sarah, me, and a jock bent on becoming a sports reporter. She had taken down her hair. It was a shimmering brown, silky and full, hanging to her buttocks. Her face was soft, not pinched at all, and she had flawless skin, her eyes sparkling with intrigue.
The jock talked on. I wanted him to go. Sarah too. Her eyes flashed it. She jumped up. “Okay, my friend, I hate to run you off, but I promised Terry I’d critique a piece he wrote on Silverton for the Daily. Tonight! And I’m already pooped.”
She eased him out and bolted the door. “Whew, a nice guy, but oblivious.”
“No lie. But what piece on Silverton? We didn’t—”
“We might have. Quick, huh?” She broke into a grin so natural she seemed a free-spirited alter ego of the Sarah Abrams of J-School. Then it hit me—no lipstick. She hadn’t reapplied it after she’d eaten. I detested lipstick, especially thick, goopy, bright lipstick. God, she was lovely!
“I don’t want to leave,” I said. “But if you’re exhausted, I—”
She brushed her lips across my cheek. “No, sir, you’re staying. I saved the last dance for you.” She led me to the turntable and put on Carmina Burana. “I’ve been dying to do this all night.” She cranked it up and coaxed me into a wild flight through her apartment, both of us laughing, high-stepping, flinging about like crazies. We were breathless when it ended and locked in each other’s arms as if we were lovers reuniting after months apart. She fit perfectly.
I spent the night with her. We made love again before breakfast and a third time after we plowed through the Sunday Denver Post and polished off a pot of coffee.
How ironic that Sarah delivered me from virginity. In our three years in J-School, she had never shown the barest hint of romantic interest in me, nor I in her.
Why Sarah? Why that night?
Silverton, plain and simple. The summer had forged a new me, a guy certain he could indeed win a woman’s love. In high school, girls had gone for the jocks, not for guys like me. I did play football, first-string middle linebacker, but I wasn’t a star, and at 120 pounds, I wasn’t big enough to try out for water boy at football-crazed CU. My memories of high school wrestling? Match after match on my back desperately trying to keep from getting pinned, the cheerleaders chanting a single cheer, “Get up, Terry, get up!”
I tried baseball one spring, but after three weeks in right field witnessing baseballs, runners, and the entire infield disappear in the daily dust storms, I opted for a printer’s apron and ink-stained fingers at our local newspaper. I was first-chair clarinet in our high school band, but girls didn’t flock to clarinet players, especially not the cute little saxophone virtuoso two rows behind me. She, too, preferred jocks. In college, I had scarcely dated before Steffi and I hit it off my junior year.
But my world changed dramatically when Laura Lee told me she loved me. In person. In her letters. Moreover, she sparked a flame that transformed me from a wistful wallflower into a confident suitor.
In the end I lost her, yes
, but not because she judged me lacking.
On September 14, 1963, I strode into Sarah’s party boldly self-assured. I was ready. Sarah must have sensed it, even if at the time I couldn’t. That fall she fulfilled the fantasy I’d had since my freshman year—Saturday afternoons at Folsom Field, made exquisite by post-game celebrations in a woman’s bed. With Sarah came the bonus of leisurely Sunday brunches in her apartment, as well as many a weeknight sleepover.
Boulder was nirvana: warm days, crisp nights, and a smorgasbord of guest lectures, concerts, and shows. I had classes I loved, a rewarding part-time job running the J-School photo lab, intimacy with a fascinating woman. All that was missing was a winning football team. Ever hopeful, on November 9, Sarah and I trudged yet again into Folsom Field to cheer the hapless Buffaloes against Big Eight rival Missouri. Another loss: 28–7. We always stayed until the bitter end, but that week, Sarah sat there long after the final whistle, after the student section emptied out around us. “Let’s go to Timber Tavern,” she said.
We had never gone drinking, not even to Tulagi or The Sink. Certainly not Timber Tavern, the hangout for locals and graduate students. “You serious?”
“Quite. We can teach each other how to cry in our beer.”
Timber Tavern was dimly lit and, with its intimate booths, romantic. We ordered two glasses, not a pitcher, and before she took her first sip, she said, “This isn’t working, Terry. You want me only for sex. Sex without love isn’t enough.”
I couldn’t respond. I wasn’t angry or even hurt, just flabbergasted. She was right—mostly. I did enjoy her presence, our spirited conversations, our shared meals, even washing and drying dishes together. But, yes, sex was the core of what we had. I thought that had been our understanding from the beginning.
We didn’t argue or mutter sad regrets. We didn’t even finish our beers. I drove her home and said good night as awkwardly as if it were a first date. I didn’t go in that night—or ever again. After the shock wore off, I knew she was right. Sex wasn’t enough, no matter how much pleasure it gave us. Though it would be months before I finally realized it, Sarah and I lacked what I had with Annie—a shared background, a solid friendship, common hopes, and love.
A Rendezvous to Remember: A Memoir of Joy and Heartache at the Dawn of the Sixties Page 11
