A few days ago, I received a beautiful, tenderly written letter from someone I met 38 years ago. I was 14 at the time, and he was 27. It was the summer of 1973 and the place was Fire Island, New York. For anyone who lived to experience Ocean Beach in their teens or twenties during this historically crazy time, I can guarantee that if the drugs didn't wipe out your every last brain cell, then your memory of this summer was more than likely a great one.
It was during that summer that I fell in love with the man with the long black hair.
He was my first love, and little did I know how the time we'd spend together would affect the rest of my life. It was only a few days, but it was enough to have me smitten, and though I did eventually get over the heartbreak that came with his departure, I never really stopped looking for his traits in other men. He was tall and skinny and had this luxurious head of shiny, straight, black hair -- the longest hair I'd ever seen on a guy, at the time -- and all I know is that he set the standards that I would unconsciously try to adhere to, for decades to come.
Today, in 2011, the fact that he was so much older than me, and that I was still such a kid would be completely unforgivable, but in 1973 things were very different. Back then, we weren't afraid of the world, but then again, the world was a somewhat safer place. And in that safer place, on that safer beach, beneath the very same full moon that puts lovers in the mood today, my first major crush and I walked hand in hand along the water's edge, talking to each other about dreams that we hoped would one day become real.
He was a musician, right at the top of the Punk Rock movement. He'd go on to be a legend within a few years. I would eventually find myself leaving art school to become a part of the Goth-Glam revolution that was happening in Greenwich Village. And as the years went by, I thought less and less about the man with the long black hair.
That was, until a few days ago, when he wrote me. He reminisced in a very romantic style, speaking fondly of his time with me -- remembering what I wore, how my hair looked and how, had things been different ... But alas, things were as they were.
My first love is now a 65-year-old man, who still remembers the sweet, young girl that fell in love with him when he was a much younger man. And I am now a 52-year-old woman who has lived a very intense, very experience-filled life that seemingly all started on the day I kissed the tall man with the long black hair.
We never really know how our past actions will come forth to define us. We think we do, but as we get older, we can't keep track of the endless choices we committed to making during the course of our lifetime. Still, we are the sum of those choices. We are who we are now, because of who we were then.
In my life, without even realizing it, I searched high and low for the man with the long black hair. I found bits of him in my ex-husband, I found traces of him in my ex-boyfriends and when I couldn't find him, I created him in art and writing. I even wrote a book about him.
Looking over the letter, I felt more than nostalgia -- I felt a strange sort of completion. It was as if this lifelong search for the elusive standard was over. I didn't feel the need to continue on with the correspondence. In fact, his note to me served as the perfect epilogue to a story I didn't even know I was living.
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I feel sorry that you are telling this story as if it's some great romance. You were taken advantage of whether you like to believe it or not. At least it only took 40 years and a failed marriage until you got the closure you needed.
When I was 14, I was madly in love with a 29yr old. I babysat his son during the day while he slept because he was a musician who was up all night. I'm sure I made it plain to him that I was madly in love and he did nothing about it.... exactly as it should be because a 14 year old's idea of love and lust is very different from reality.
I wasn't tied to him for the rest of my life because as the adult, he behaved appropriately. I fell in love when I was 19 (and he was 20) and we've been married 31 years. I do have fond memories of my first love.. the guy who gave me all of his lego windows when we were both 8 and my second love, who gave me a chaste kiss in the long grass as we watched the clouds reform when we were both 11.
I just looked over at my sweetie, looking rumpled in his ratty bathrobe and it made me think that when we are so filled up by love when we're with the right person, it probably doesn't leave much room for childish longings or what might have beens when what is, is so good. Lucky me :)
about being so filled up by love when you are with the right person...
I resemble that remark!
Lucky me!
Already fanned... faved again.
When I was 16, I babysat for a football coach on whom I had a crush. I never expressed my feeling for him (of course not), and I thought he and his petite wife made a lovely couple. I was very surprised when there was a "scandal" involving a fellow coach and two 14 year old cheerleaders. Evidently, some of those nights when I was babysitting his kids and he was supposed to be doing football stuff (while his lovely wife was volunteering teaching reading to adults at a night school), he and his friend were "romancing" two children.
Now, these two would be fired and brought up on charges of statutory rape--which is as it should be. Then, they both divorced their wives and married the girls--and continued to teach and coach at their student/wives high school.
Sorry, Dori. I know these things happened in 1973, but not because "we weren't afraid of the world". They happened because men ruled and women and children had little protection against them.
I'm sorry you were taken advantage of by a grown man who should have known better.
Why do these old memories hang on to us for so long ? Why can't I just grow up and let it go? After all, I'm now 64, and he's 68 ..
Maybe it is something about musicians with long dark hair. :-) And the age difference doesn't shock me, it was a different time (according to my husband). And the memories seem to be fond ones, not ones of a victim of a predator..