The Amorous Busboy of Decatur Avenue

by Robert Klein

  We had several repeat performances, to our mutual delight, and there was no discomfort in chancing upon her around the little community; in fact, we were adults and friends. I told almost no one about it, it was entirely my affair and hers. This was part of my other life away from the fraternity, where such information instantly would have become public, like the announcements at Grand Central Station. The sexual relationship was brief, but the friendship continued, and I thought of this experience as a breakthrough into adulthood.

  * * *

  Then love struck. Not with Sandra Sherman. I was smitten with a freshman named Judith Silverman. This should have been a wonderful development, except for one thing: She was the girlfriend of my fraternity brother. I had noticed her from the beginning, but Andy Ruby, a sophomore, had moved in early, and they had been going together for a couple of months. I tingled every time I saw her, though it was a kind of torment. Judy and I liked each other, I made her laugh, though I took care not to reveal how I felt about her. I liked Andy, too; he was one of the guys, he even looked up to me. Andy was intense, to be sure: good-looking, physical, a basketball player, not an intellectual type. He seemed to be totally in love with Judy. He even asked me for advice about Judy, like a big brother, and confided in me that they were leaning toward having intercourse soon.

  This was a conversation I could have done without, so like a good friend, I told him it was a bad idea. I found myself cautioning him like somebody’s grandmother: “Of course it’s up to you and Judy. But will you like yourselves in the morning? She’s a good girl, and you love her.” Some of this may have been valid, but for the most part, I was spouting disingenuous bullshit for which I felt a little guilty. Anyway, I could tell by the look in his eye when he talked about it that sex between them was a foregone conclusion.

  Going all the way was no small matter between students in love in 1961. It was often a particularly wrenching decision for the girl, given the prevailing mores, one’s reputation, and the fear of pregnancy. Pregnancy presented few options, as abortions were illegal, and the lives of unwed mothers were generally considered ruined. Once in a while, we heard of a girl taking a semester off or leaving school, with fuzzy reasons given, and sometimes there were whispers that she was pregnant. There were many instances in which a guy became suddenly and opportunistically religious. It was usually manifested in praying for his overdue girlfriend to get her period. When it occurred, it provided a happy rationale for tapping a keg at the thirty-foot bar; there were more than a few of these menstruation celebrations.

  This was a pivotal time I was living in, when more and more of the good girls were defying what they had been taught and took a chance because they were in love. That seemed to be the assumption, anyway—that love was the reason, the quid pro quo, and that they were mainly doing it for the guy.

  Among the boys, the girls’ hormones and natural desires remained subjects unspoken and never seemed to enter the equation. If she liked sex too much, she well could move into another category in the mind of a guy. But love, and the sincerity of a boy, made it almost all right, palliating the seriousness of the situation, easing the conscience. When love was over, however, there could still be a taint in the minds of some, including the girl, because she had given herself before marriage in a relationship that didn’t last. Maybe half the young women would still be virgins when they graduated, though that’s not a scientific assessment. There would be quite a few young men in that category as well, though a lot of talk to the contrary.

  The Kappa Nu boys liked to congregate in the living room in the evening, talking, smoking, and snacking. After parties and taking the girls home, the half-drunk, exhausted brothers would come in one by one. Among the guys who had girlfriends, there were those who were really in love but whose relationship had become routine, like a couple married for twenty years. For others, love was still fresh, and they would linger in their girls’ arms for as long as they could till the curfew, when the house mother would come out and tell them they must go. Good-night kisses were exchanged on the sidewalk or in the many cars with fogged-up windows lined up outside wherever the girls lived. Guys who were serious got pinned to the girl, which often was the preliminary step to an engagement. It involved an elaborate ceremony in front of the girl’s residence, in which the brothers serenaded her with the special pinning song. She would come out, and her boyfriend would pin to her chest a gold pin with the fraternity logo on it. All the girls would be looking out the window, a few with tears of joy for their lucky friend. The song was sung slowly—ironically, like a dirge, with the rhythm of the slow beat of a drum before an execution, and it went something like this: “The pin. The pin. The Kappa Nu pin. She wears it for her love.” The serenade duty was supposed to be compulsory, to show solemn respect for a brother’s commitment. But if the couple wasn’t especially popular or the weather was bad, the turnout was small and the singing was terrible. Standing in the twenty-degree night for a guy people didn’t care about made for a lot of grumbling and vulgar, denigrating jokes about what kind of children would come from this union.

  One Saturday night after a party, Andy Ruby came into the living room slightly tipsy, with a gigantic grin on his face: He and my beloved Judy had gone all the way. Amid the buzz in the living room, he did not exactly treat the event confidentially. A couple of his pals gave him the old thumbs-up and a slap on the back, though there were no salacious snickers, as would have occurred if the girl was one of those kind who put out for a lot of guys. Yet this was small comfort to me, the unrequited lover. The conjugal venue, Andy revealed, was the back of his ’57 Impala. I was learning much more than I cared to and went upstairs to a sleepless night.

  For a while after that, I saw Judy differently. Intellectually, I knew that she hadn’t done anything wrong, that she was just as likable and sweet as ever. Yet I was haunted by the vision of her and Andy in sweaty intimate passion. She was stunningly beautiful but comported herself like someone who wasn’t, and I found it agreeable that she was not self-assured like other pretty girls seemed to be. Though she had a wonderful laugh, there was a seriousness about her, sometimes a sadness in her lovely brown eyes. All of the things that I loved about her were the same as before, and she was still not my girl, but something was different now: She was flawed. I was still a captive of the social values and moral attitudes of my time. I somehow knew there was hypocrisy here, but I couldn’t help it. Andrew Ruby had fucked her, the girl I loved.

  * * *

  Maybe this question of mores, this code, was starting to crack. As the weeks went by, I found that I was still in love from a distance. I had begun to think differently on the matter; maybe it had to do with growing up and seeing things in a more mature light. She and Andy were a couple, and as such, it seemed more and more natural that they would do what comes naturally. Yet I had begun to notice something about Andy—he no longer had stars in his eyes, that transcendental look of the lover; and maybe I was imagining it, but the couple seemed less affectionate in public. Also, Andy was in trouble academically and didn’t seem to care, the opposite of Judy. He had become irritable and gotten into a couple of near-fights at the house. At a party, I observed them in a mild argument. She huffed off to the ladies’ room, and he seemed not to give a damn. Could this be a sign that love was fading? I unequivocally hoped so.

  Sure enough, they broke up shortly thereafter. What would I do now? Protocol dictated that I couldn’t just make a move immediately, before the body was cold, so to speak. It could be the last thing she wanted right then was to date some other guy. Andy was my friend and fraternity brother, and the situation was exceedingly awkward. Apparently, other fellows both inside and outside the house did not share this concern, as Judy was immediately besieged by two or three of them right off the bat. What was more, she went out with a couple of guys without hesitation, while I was sitting like a schmuck on the sidelines, crazy about her. I had to get her attention without revealing my intentions, but it seemed impossible to
find her without fifty people around.

  An opportunity presented itself at the Campus Center one afternoon between classes, when I saw her go into the building with another girl. I went in shortly after and met her “by chance.” I was welcomed to sit down by a bubbly Judy who was delighted to see me. It was a relief to be able to look at her without having to steal furtive glances from a distance, and she looked wonderful. The three of us chatted amiably, and I got some good laughs imitating Dr. Vasquez, the head of the romance-languages department, who was known to raise the grades of those students who “volunteered” to mow his lawn. It was such a pleasure to see her laugh so heartily, and to know, at least for those moments, that it was I who had made her happy.

  I don’t know if the other girl sensed something or had somewhere to go, but after a few minutes, she got up and left, God bless her. I got two cups of coffee at the counter and rejoined Judith at the table. It was four o’clock in the afternoon. By the time we stopped talking, it was eight o’clock, the fastest four hours of my life. I had no sense of time or place; there was only Judy. As profound as this meeting was for me, its importance was not so much in the words we exchanged about parents, future plans, and all that. Not that we hadn’t been listening to each other, but for me, her presence—being near her, absorbing her—was more important. I loved her scent of soap and a trace of Maja perfume. We didn’t yet know each other well and therefore did not exchange intimacies or venture into delicate subjects like her recent relationship.

  I walked her back to the Brick, wanting desperately to hold her hand, but I didn’t dare. So I said good night and extended my hand, and we shook. “I really enjoyed our talk,” she said, “and I want to see you again.”

  “Me, too.”

  Our hands were still clasped in the shake position when she planted a gentle kiss on my lips. “I want you to know something,” she said. “I like you a lot. I’ve liked you for a while, and it was nice to spend time with you. I want to get to know you better.”

  My mouth turned dry, and I had difficulty getting words out. There was so much I wanted to say, and it was two minutes to curfew, so I went to a joke: “I don’t exactly hate you, either.” I could feel my knees shaking. “Judy, if you only knew. Well, what the hell. I’ve liked you from the first time I saw you. I more than like you—this word ‘like’ is really a substitute, because I’m sort of scared—to tell you how I really feel.”

  “How do you really feel?” she said without hesitation.

  “I’m crazy about you,” I said, too scared to use the proper word, “love,” and deciding against “adore.”

  “Oh,” she said, and threw her arms around me. We had the most wonderful kiss, the unattainable kiss I had been longing for, that happy-ending kiss from the movies; only this was the beginning. “I’ve got to go now,” she said, running her index finger gently along my lip. “I got a little lipstick on you.”

  “One more, please,” I said, like a man dying of thirst who has been given only one sip of water. She smiled and we kissed again, shorter but better, and she ran into the dorm, and I watched until the last fragment of her coat disappeared from view.

  I stood there in the ten-degree cold that I did not feel; heard voices but could not hear words and paid no attention to them. I was numb, under a spell. I had never felt like this before. “Happy” hardly described my mood: It was more like supreme elation, exhilaration.

  “Hey, Bob, what’s with the new girlfriend? You and Judy?” It was Roger Lang of Kappa Nu, one of Andy Ruby’s best friends. Just what I needed. He was soon joined by a few others as we all walked back to the house. “Is this the new couple on campus? That kiss sure looked like it,” said Howie Horowitz, whose date was a good friend of Judy’s.

  “Howie, you should have been kissing your girl instead of watching me,” I said.

  “This is out of the clear blue sky, how long has it been going on? Are you two an item?” said Howie.

  This exchange was annoying because it was transporting me from the clouds back to earth, and I wanted to enjoy the heights a bit longer.

  Earth called soon enough. I had not been back at the house ten minutes when Andrew Ruby approached me with a forced smile. He was known to be a fighter, and it flashed through my mind for a brief moment that he wanted to hit me. He seemed to be a little tense. “I heard about you and Judy. Is it true?”

  “Is what true?”

  “You know, you two.”

  “It’s true that we talked.”

  “I heard it was more than that.”

  “What?”

  “I heard you kissed.”

  “Did we? Oh yes, we had a little kiss good night.”

  “I heard it wasn’t so little.”

  “Maybe so. Little, big, I don’t know.”

  “There’s no hard feelings, but it’s a little uncomfortable,” he told me.

  “You’re not still in love with her, are you?” I envisioned one of those “I still love you, take me back, darling” scenarios. Maybe he really did still love her. I loved her. How could anyone not love her?

  “Nah, I’m not in love with her. I thought I was in love with her,” he said. “We had a good time, though.”

  What did he mean by that? Quickly, that unpleasant image again, of he and Judy doing it. It was clear to me that his displeasure had more to do with proprietary rights than his heart, as if I had taken something that was his. The hell with him. I could not sleep, waiting for the next day to come; to see her, to be assured that she had not changed her mind, to kiss her again.

  I arranged another chance encounter outside the Foreign Languages Building. I didn’t want to wave or attract attention, so I waited on a plowed snowbank until she saw me. Her eyes lit up and told me everything I wanted to know. She carried several textbooks in her right arm and gave me a half-hug with her left.

  I carried her books like a proper Joe College while we walked. “Where are you headed?” I asked.

  “To the library. I have a math exam Wednesday, and I’m sick of the dorm. I can’t get enough studying done there with all the noise and the gossip. Speaking of gossip,” she said, “we caused quite a stir last night.”

  “Yeah, I know. I took a little razzing, but it was worth it,” I said, not wanting to mention Andy just yet. It was too early to discuss him, but I reckoned if we were to be true lovers, the subject would be broached sometime. “You’re not sorry, are you?” I said.

  She smiled the most beautiful smile. “No, I’m not sorry at all.”

  We got to the library, and I decided to study, too, though I had no exams pending; I had only Judy pending. We sat opposite each other at a long table with a fair number of others, all studying. There was a large sign that said QUIET in the middle of the room, and there was only the sound of pages turning and an occasional cough. I opened my textbook on state and local government and began reading, but from the start, I was thinking about when and how I might look at the lovely Judy. I looked up, and she was reading and underlining. I looked up again, and our eyes met. We were a little embarrassed and went right back to our books.

  This went on for about an hour. I found that I had gone over the same paragraph fifteen times and didn’t have the foggiest idea what I’d read. I stopped the pretense, put down the book, and gazed unabashedly across the table, having had enough of stolen glances; I wanted to look to my heart’s content. In short order, she noticed me looking at her and put down her book, and we were staring at each other straight in the eye. It was a look that I had seen in others, a gooey hearts-and-flowers look that previously made me want to puke. But I had never been a lover, and this new perspective eliminated all such negative feelings.

  I couldn’t stand not touching her for one more minute, so I gestured with my head for her to follow me, and I stood up and pushed back my chair. I was trying to be surreptitious, but the chair made a loud noise against the floor, like a dinosaur fart, and the whole room looked up. I ambled into the maze of library shelves, pretendin
g to be looking for something, with Judy close behind me. I found a dusty corner and beckoned for her to join me. We looked at the same book, holding it together so that our hands were touching and I could feel and smell her sweet breath. We looked around like a couple of bandits and then crushed each other in a mad kiss.

  It was not enough. We returned to the table, collected our books, and got the hell out of there as fast as we could. Where to? Privacy was so difficult to find without a car, and it was December in the snow belt, making the outdoors an option for only the hardiest of lovers. It had gotten dark, and as usual, it was snowing, and the famous Alfred carillon bells were playing a beautiful rendition of “The First Nöel.” We walked along a path up the hill toward the bell tower, to a spot behind the Steinheim, an old and picturesque building that looked like a tiny castle. It was traditionally a lovers’ place, and there were two or three kissing couples obscured by the scant light and the blowing snow. We put our books down on the stone steps, Judy leaned against the wall, I removed my gloves and took her face in my hands and kissed it all over. I could not see her well, but feeling her face was enough: her breathing, her holding me and squeezing me. She was far from a passive kisser—we were both hungry, and there was much that had been held back for so long. I could feel her body against mine through the dense winter clothing; Loden coats, but with our hoods on, the whole thing was cozy beyond belief. I had my arms around my girl, protecting her from the cold and snow.