Tom's Love Quest

Looking backward from 2009-10-17.

I’d all but forgotten about [Molly].  No, not because she had little meaning to me.  In fact, she meant a great deal.  But I never expected to hear from her again because she was so far away in Virginia, which at the time, I knew not how far away that was.  But it seemed far away; far enough that our paths would not likely ever cross again.  However, in late May, 1974, she called me at around 4:30 PM while I was wiring bell and buzzer projects in electronics class.  At first, I didn’t recognize her, and she had to remind me that it was [Molly] several times before I remembered.  She asked how I’d been and said that she was going to be in Pittsburgh the following week.  She wondered if I’d like her to come and visit me. 

Well, I must say that over the phone, she sounded not nearly as enchanting as I’d found her the first time we met in April.  But I agreed to her visit anyway.  It’s not that I had any misgivings about seeing her; I just didn’t desire it much.  Over a month had passed, and with the warm weather of late spring upon us, memories of my time with   [First Love]   from the previous spring, had begun muscling out the more recent ones of [Molly]. However, I felt that I should be nice after she’d been so nice to me, and so, I said yes.

She came the following week; on a Wednesday or Thursday I think.  I remember Mr. Boalo yelling to me out on the boys side playground that I had a visitor.  “Hesley,” he said, “there’s a girl here to see you out at the front desk.  Go out and meet her.”  Boalo was rarely quiet about anything, and sometimes could be quite embarrassing.  You know how 7th graders are rather self-conscious about others knowing their business.  But on this occasion, I liked his loudness and felt proud that everyone on the playground now knew that I had a cute girl visiting me.  I suppose that up until this point, I didn’t really believe that she’d ever come, though she’d promised that she would in April.  So instinctively, I allowed myself no thoughts of us two being together for even a few minutes.  I had gotten used to pushing aside thoughts of her over the past month, and had actually fallen in love again with   [First Love].  But, [Molly] proved me wrong.  She did come, and this was the first time that a girl that I really liked, actually went out of her way to visit, when she knew that I liked her.   

I went to the reception area as Mr. Boalohad ordered, and there she was.  She wore blue jeans witha soft, white, long-sleeved shirt with flower patterns all over it.  She smelled of fresh bubble gum, and if I was to go by the broadness of her grin, then I’d have to conclude that she was just as happy to see me as I was her.  In fact, I was   very   happy to see her, and felt surprised at this a little.  When we’d talked on the phone the previous week, the idea of her coming meant little.  But now that she was actually before me, those April 9th feelings came a flooding back into my heart.  She was as beautiful as I remembered; probably more so even.

She came with a friend, whom I don’t remember well.  In fact, though I gave it nary a thought back then, the person I am today would have felt bad for that friend, if it had been the 2009 version of me that met them in 1974.  I virtually ignored the friend; never even gave her a thought.  No details about the friend I can recall except for the fact that a friend had accompanied [Molly].  Everything else about this person is a blank; not even the sound of her voice or the image of her face do I remember.  She is but a dark silhouettein my memory these days, and perhaps she always was.  But maybe this is because [Molly] was who I really wanted to see and spend time with; her friend was just an irritating distraction, for I only cared for [Molly].  So any attention that I was obliged to devote to her friend, I wished not to give. 

The friend didn’t seem to mind though; she just walked quietly behind us as [Molly] and I chatted up a storm while I led the two of them back to the playground, and to the push merry-go-round where I’d spent so much time with   [First Love]   the previous year.  Heaven knows that I’d tried throughout 7thgrade to get   [First Love]   to allow me to push that merry-go-round with her on it again.  But she and [Mentat] were “going together” by this time, and so, she hung out primarily with him during social hours; she refused to make much time for me, as she was so often, busy with him.  This broke my heart, and was a big reason, at least for this visit, why I was so drawn to [Molly].  [Molly's] interest in me was proof that there would be other pretty girls that would like me.  So I didn’t need   [First Love]   for that sort of validation anymore; at least, not while I had [Molly] around. 

[Molly] was also fully sighted while   [First Love]   was totally blind.  For reasons that even today I still ponder, a sighted girl was more attractive than a blind one, assuming that all else about the two was equal.  A sighted schoolgirl who perceived us vision-impaired folks as equal enough to have as boyfriends, was quite the trophy in the blind community.  Why?  Because having sighted friends was a terrific way to punch through the cultural barriers that socially separated the blind and sighted populations; barriers that made many of those attending WPSBC feel separate and excluded.  In some ways, life with sighted friends was easier and thus, preferred because they could help read things that the vision-impaired could not easily see.  They could describe the visual parts of movies.  The older ones could drive us around, and that meant access to many places and activities that being unable to drive a vehicle  denied.  Generally, sighted friends brought us closer to the cultural mainstream ourselves, by helping us to feel like we truly belonged.  At any rate, for whatever reason, I was sure proud to have this sighted teenager walking around the school grounds with me, paying attention to only me. 

Shortly after arriving at the merry-go-round, several of my male friends joined us.  They were understandably curious about this pretty girl, and repeatedly attempted to get her to talk to them.  But [Molly] kept her nearly complete focus on me that night; making me feel so special and proving to be a powerful mending force for my broken heart, from when   [First Love]   broke up with me the previous fall.  With [Molly] around, thoughts of   [First Love]   rarely surfaced.  But when they did, even those that would normally have been the most painful, had little significance to me. Too bad [Molly] didn’t visit more often during high school.  She might have saved me tremendous amounts of   [First Love]   related hurts. 

Overcast, gray skies lit our second visit that evening; it looked like rain.  But any storms in the area stayed clear of the school while she was there.  I pushed the merry-go-round through warm breezes, just like I did the previous year with   [First Love], and [Molly] smiled profusely.  This made me push all the harder and gave me sore legs the next day.  Good thing that [Molly] left when she did; else I’d have been unable to walk the day after. 

We talked of little with much substance; I’d just say something witty and she’d giggle.  Much of our communication then was non verbal.  However as her time grew short, she talked of this camp that she’d be attending that summer; called the Heritage Hills Youth Camp.  She gave me a brochurewith the details, and invited me to join her once school was done for the summer.  She also gave me this bright green decoder ring.  No, it did not glow in the dark.  But it smelled strongly of her bubble gum, and I wore it every day for weeks after she left.

She said that she’d be getting her tonsils removed and that this would make her voice sound less deep and more “normal”.  I wished her well, and we hugged, and it felt wonderful to be caught in her embrace; every bit as pleasing as being held by   [First Love].  Though I’d never seen [Molly's] legs, I somehow knew them to be utterly gorgeous and this visit would give me ample fodder for romantic and sexual fantasizing for years to come.  She had a beautiful face, exquisitehands with soft palms, chubby and warm, kissable cheeks and lips, and small feet.  Given all that, she must have had very sexy legs as well, and my mind had no trouble filling in the blanks. 

She said again that she loved me, and once again without any prompting from me.  Plus, she hugged me as tightly as Gram Jewell used to each Sunday, when I was getting ready to leave for Pittsburgh. Having a virtual stranger hug me the same way Gram did strangely reassured me.  I suspected even then, that people as loving as Gram were indeed rare, and so I felt relieved to have found someone like [Molly], who was in lots of important ways, just like Gram Jewell, and intensely beautiful besides. I loved [Molly] and I told her that too, every time she said it to me. 

After about an hour on the merry-go-round, she had to head out and so I walked her and her friend back to the reception area and their car.  As I watched her walking away with her back turned to me, I held her decoder ring tightly in my right hand.  I was overjoyed that she came to see me, yet sad to see her go.  That’s one of the few times in my life that I felt both happy and sad at the same time.  But as the car doors closed and she and her dark silhouetted friend drove away, the sadness won over, and I ran upstairs to my dorm in room 306, and I cried.

Tom Hesley

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• The First ‘I Love You’
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