Kiss Me As If Theres No Tomorrow

Fast backward to October of 1965 to a non-descript hotel called the Stadium View, so called because it overlooked the newly constructed Shea Stadium, home of the hapless New York Mets. Mets fans in 1965 could hardly imagine that in a few years, their beloved underdogs would be World Series champions. But that's another story. This story, the background story in this long ago tale, is the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair, then in its closing days. Because of its close proximity to the Flushing Meadows-based fairgrounds, many fair goers checked in at the Stadium View, including my family during teacher's convention, a mini vacation for students nationwide.

Then a shy, somewhat socially awkward senior in high school, I wasn't what you'd call suave with the ladies. Assertive, as least when it came to meeting females, wasn't in my vocabulary. Some guys, the more socially precocious among my peers, always seemed to know what to say and how to say it. That wasn't me. When opportunity knocked, I seldom answered, not because I didn't want to, but because I was at a loss for words. Then I'd end up excoriating myself.

I gleaned one such opportunity the first night we were there, when I first laid eyes on Denise Montgomery in the Stadium View's coffee shop. My family, mom, dad and kid sister, were sharing a booth, snacking on some post-dinner goodies, when I noticed her sitting on a stool at the counter with her parents. The Toys' "Lover's Concerto," a big Top 40 hit at the time, played on the jukebox. Of course, her name was still unknown to me, this cute girl with long, strawberry-blond hair dressed in knee-high socks and a plaid skirt.

Mom noticed me checking her out. "She's cute, isn't she?" she said, with a hint of tease in her voice.

Quickly, I turned my head from the counter. "She's okay," I replied, playing insouciant.

My parents exchanged knowing smiles over their apple pie a' la mode. Then dad said, "Go talk to her, Brendan. You might be pleasantly surprised." Dad sometimes gave me advice on how to expand my social horizons.

"Sure, dad, right," I replied, while I kept on stealing glimpses of this cute, wholesome looking lass who I suspected caught me looking from the corner of her eye. Women knew when guys were ogling them—I knew at least that much from my limited experience. A flirt, I wasn't, just a young man starved for female companionship, emotionally as well as erotically, and looking forward to filling that hunger.

I saw her whisper something to her parents. Then, to my utter surprise, she spun around on her stool, crossed her pretty legs and smiled at me. I smiled back, wondering what my next "move" should be. My sister Evy, fourteen at the time and already dating (sort of), said, "Say something Brendan, she obviously likes you."

I sat there frozen, thinking of things to say, thinking they all sounded dumb and clichéd. Example: Do you live around here? She kept watching me while mouthing the words to the song:

"How gentle is the rain, which falls softly on the meadow..."

A pretty song, she seemed to enjoy it as much as me. Not knowing what else to do, I joined in, keeping my lips in sync with hers:

"Birds...high up in the trees, serenade the clouds, with their melodies..."

I felt more relaxed by the time the song ended. Even so, I still couldn't think of anything appropriate to say. Then she broke the ice with, "That's Bach's music, you know."

"No, I didn't know that," I said. Not into classical music at the time, I barely recognized the name Johann Sebastian Bach, much less his music.

"Yeah, it's right on the record label," she said. "I've got the forty-five."

"There you go, Brendan," mom said, "a girl your age into Bach instead of the Beatles."

"Oh, they're great, too," Denise said. "In fact, I saw them in August of last year during their American tour."

"Are you from around here?" I said, thinking it was then cool to ask.

"Seattle, Washington," she volunteered. "We're here for the fair. Our city had a great world's fair in '62 but it didn't compare with the size of this. How about you?"

"We're here for the fair as well," my mom said.

Her dad, wearing an orange v-neck sweater and dark slacks, said, "It's our daughter's first trip to New York." He paused and grinned. "Well, technically her second. My wife was pregnant with her when we were last here."

When my dad said we were from Baltimore, Denise's dad said he admired Johnny Unitas, our Colts' future hall of fame quarterback. "Most exciting football game I ever saw," he said, referring to the 1958 NFL championship game when the Colts beat the Giants in sudden death overtime.

Somebody a few booths down dropped a coin into the jukebox for "Don't Just Stand There," Patty Dukes' hit that was climbing the pop charts. The song was about a girl admonishing her boyfriend for being cold and uncommunicative. I could hardly relate to the boyfriend part, but the line that goes "please don't just stand there, looking down at the floor" made me feel a bit self-conscious, because that's basically what I was doing while her parents and mine continued to chat. I admonished myself for what I sensed might be another missed opportunity, slipping away like the last few bars of the song.

"Well, nice meeting you all, enjoy the fair," Denise's mom said as they stood by our table before paying the cashier. It was the first time I noticed Denise's blue eyes. On her way out the door, she looked back and smiled, warm and inviting. After kicking myself for not pursuing her, I rationalized: the girl lived in Seattle, not exactly around the corner; Evy's comment notwithstanding, a little flirting and a brief chat does not an interest make. Besides, my chances of seeing her again were slim at best. And even if I did, the encounter, like the one in the coffee shop, would be brief and nothing beyond cordial.

Not so, it turned out. You'd think that with all those thousands of people attending the Fair, shuffling from pavilion to pavilion, the odds would be against running into someone you knew or at least recognized. Which is why, while waiting in line to see Walt Disney's Carousel of Progress, I could scarcely believe it when I heard a young female voice behind me: "Hello again, whatever your name is." My family turned to see Denise and her parents. "At least tell me your name," Denise said. Obviously, she hadn't heard my parents address me by name in the coffee shop. When I hesitated, she said, "Okay, I'll go first. My name's Denise. You already know I'm from Seattle and that I enjoy the music of JS Bach."

"And the Beatles. You saw them in '64, August."

"Good memory. So, your name?"

"Brendan."

"Brendan. Nice. There's a Brendan in my school."

I nodded, not sure what I should say next. She looked even prettier in the light of day. Freckles never did much for me, but I thought the few that graced her cheeks and nose were cute, along with the way she had fixed her hair in two long braids that dropped below she shoulders. Her blue eyes, strawberry-blond hair and slightly reddish complexion wouldn't have been my first choice of features to submit into a computer for what my ideal female image might look like. However, in her case the sum was greater than the individual parts. She stood a few inches shy of my five-foot eight, and her tight white jeans did justice to her figure, slim with feminine accents in the right places. Her body was far from the hourglass-voluptuous type that so often produced instant arousal. No matter, it was the gestalt that counted, the whole package that included a speaking voice that was both sensual and diction-perfect, the way Jacqueline Kennedy might have sounded had she become an English teacher. She also appeared to possess an infectious enthusiasm for life—a vague thing to pin down for the very brief time I'd known her, but that was my impression. I wasn't complaining.

As the line moved along toward the entrance, our parents chatted, while Evy looked amused at my usual reticence. "Can't say there's a Denise in my school," I said, bereft of anything that might impress her as witty.

"No? It's a common enough name," Denise said.

I was starting to feel the strain of this "conversation," dangling in the air between us, thin and precarious. Not that it should have mattered, except it did, because I sensed something strange was at work here, running into this Denise from Seattle who, statistically speaking, I should have never seen again.

"A pretty name," I finally said, then added, "and a fitting one because...you're very pretty." This was totally out of character for me, and I blushed as soon as I said it. Evy laughed. I suspected that Denise might find it corny.

"Thank you," she said, "that's very sweet." She paused to reach up and brush away a lock of brown hair from my forehead. "You're kind of pretty yourself. Okay, cute. How's that?"

Blushing again, I shrugged. "That will do just fine." My confidence squeaked upward a few notches.

Soon, we entered the pavilion (General Electric, but Disney had invented and produced the exhibit), and our families separated. It figures, I thought, just as things start to progress, we part ways. The circular room soon got dark and the show began: "There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow..." Impressed as I was by those incredibly realistic looking robots on the stage, acting out decades of "progress" in the American home, my mind was on Denise. When the show concluded less than a half hour later, I looked for her when we got outside.

"Okay, it's off to Futurama," dad said, referring to the General Motors' pavilion and the corporate giant's vision of the future.

"He's looking for Denise," Evy giggled, when dad asked what I was doing, standing at the entrance, watching the people file out.

Dad sighed. "She might be gone by now, son. We were one of the last ones out." When the last of our group to see the exhibit left, I concluded he was right.

Seeing me brood, mom said, "You might catch her back at the hotel. Check with the desk clerk to find her room number."

A good idea except that I still didn't know her last name. After a brief look around, I shook my head and moved on. Minutes later, just past the Ford pavilion, I caught sight of Denise coming toward me. "There you are!" she said, slightly out of breath. "I've been looking all over for you."

Her parents looked annoyed, if not a bit frazzled. Her redhead mom, wearing a yellow pants suit, said to my parents, "Our daughter's had us on a leash since we left the GE pavilion. 'Let's find Brendan, let's find Brendan,' she carried on."

After dad told them how I waited for her at the entrance, our parents suggested we go off by ourselves, and then meet them back at the Unisphere (the fair's symbol of "peace through understanding") at a prescribed time. After giving us some cash, they sent us on our way.

This felt more than strange, tooling around the fairgrounds in a strange city with a girl I'd known for less than an hour. Denise echoed my thoughts. "My parents must really think you're okay," she said. "Otherwise, they would never let me go off with a boy they didn't know, much less one from out of state."

"Maybe, like me, they're starting to think we somehow belong together. I mean, what are the chances that we'd run into each other here twice?"

"Three, counting our hotel's coffee shop," she offered.

"There you go." Finally, I felt relaxed enough to take her hand and fall easily into a fluid chat as we strolled. Something had brought us together, fate, luck, circumstances. Whatever it was, I was determined to enjoy her company while I had it. That wouldn't be long. In less than forty-eight hours, our families would be leaving, just a day prior to the fair's official closing.

Carousel of Progress impressed us both. We found it fascinating the way Disney created this four-stage, revolving set featuring an American family from around 1900 to present day. "You know, I'm not sure I could live the way our grandparents lived fifty years ago," she said, "no TV or radio, none of the modern conveniences we now take for granted."

"That's because you'd know what you're missing," I said. "Our grandparents didn't know any different."

She nodded. "That's true. My granny tells me a time when you'd see more horses on the roads than cars."

"And can you imagine going to an outhouse in the middle of a cold winter night? My grandfather grew up in a rural area where few of the houses had the then luxury of attached bathrooms."

"So Brendan," she said after our discussion of Disney's exhibit ran its course, "you said something about our parents thinking we might belong together." We were standing in front of the Belgian Village gate. People were going in and out of Belgian Village, some munching on Belgian waffle, a huge hit with fair goers from the start.

"Right."

"Well, maybe there's something to that. I mean, there's something about you that prompted me to flirt with you sitting on that stool in the coffee shop, grooving to that song and watching you respond."

Of course, I felt flattered and wanted to hear more. "So what was it, you think?"

"Well, your looks, for one. Your hazel eyes grabbed my attention right away. And your hair, brown and wild and woolly, the way most people's hair looks on a windy day. I can see you don't use that greasy kid's stuff." She chuckled. "Plus, I don't think you'd have shoulders like that if you didn't work-out. You do, don't you?" I nodded. "Thought so. Then there's the shyness. I kind of dig guys on the shy side, a refreshing change from some of those loud, obnoxious jerks that go to my school."

I reached out and held her hands. "You make want to kiss you right here and now, right in front of all these people stuffing their faces with their Belgian waffles."

"So why don't you."

"I'm shy, remember," I said, half in jest.

She shot me a faux look of annoyance. "Okay, well I'm not," she said, and stepped closer. We hugged and smooched for what must have been over a minute. In the brief time my eyes were open, I noticed some people watching us. Normally inhibited about engaging in public displays of affection, it didn't bother me, perhaps because I was away from home.

"People are looking at us," she said, after we broke off.

"Guess we gave them a good show." I smiled at the onlookers who smiled back. A few of them even clapped.

She laughed. "What happened to Mr. Shy?"

"Oh, he's on vacation," I quipped. "I hope you still like me."

"Keep kissing me like that, Brendan, and I'll like you even more."

Minutes later, curious what all the fuss was about, we decided to try the Belgian waffles, a yummy concoction of batter, white sugar, strawberries and whipped cream. We consumed them on a bench, watching people stroll by, many wearing light jackets in the cool, sixty-degree, early fall weather. I made do with my high school varsity jacket over a blue Ban-Lon, short-sleeve sports shirt and gray chinos. Denise wore a green sweater over her white pants, those pants that hugged her shapely thighs as if she had them painted on. Finally, we got around to revealing our last names (hers: Montgomery; mine: Doyle) among other things. We were both college-bound next year. I had applied to James Madison, while Denise said she'd most likely choose UW (University of Washington) where her older brother was a sophomore. Culturally, it wasn't difficult finding common ground, my vague knowledge of Bach notwithstanding. We both loved The Beatles (who didn't?), Beach Boys, James Bond movies, the "Dick Van Dyke Show" and "The Fugitive." I brought up "90 Bristol Court," the lame, short-lived, three-part TV sitcom only because I thought that Denise looked a little like Debbie Watson, the cute teen actress who played "Karen" (and "Tammy" for the new season). Like Debbie, Denise had that hot-wholesome, girl-next-door image, a chick that might end up in your bed Saturday night and then sing in the church choir on Sunday.

In fact, she did sing in her church choir back in Seattle. She was once a girl scout too, she told me, which only enhanced her wholesome image. When she also revealed that she wrote for her high school paper and was a member of the student council, I was starting to think she was some kind of nerdy, goody two-shoes. "Sounds like you don't have a grain of bad-girl in your entire body," I said.

She shook her head the way a teacher might to a student who gives a dumb answer. "Brendan, you should know that very few things are what they first appear to be. What you see is not always what you get."

It made sense. "So, the Denise Montgomery I'm talking to right now isn't the real Denise Montgomery?"

"Of course she is, just not the entire Denise Montgomery. Your image of me is simply that, an image. The reality is more complicated. Of course, it works both ways, because I've also formed an image of you." I was almost afraid to ask. Then, letting curiosity get the better of me, I did. "Okay," she continued, "you come off as this shy, awkward guy who's not real comfortable around girls. But I'm sure there's another side of you, perhaps an outgoing, confident, assertive side that you haven't shown me. Not yet, anyway."

"Would you want me to?"

"Maybe, if that's the real you, or at least a side of you. If not, don't worry about it. Don't try to be somebody you're not."

With that in mind and because it was her first time in New York (not counting her time in the womb), I asked if she wanted to hang out that night, maybe take the subway into Manhattan, just the two of us. "I'd love that," she said. "When do we leave?" We broached the idea with our parents when we met them back at the Unisphere, that huge orb of stainless steel, one-hundred and twenty feet in diameter to be precise, surrounded by a moat and fountains spewing water over twenty feet into the air. It took some persuading, but they gave their consent, provided we returned by nine.

After showering back at our hotel, we hopped on the subway in late afternoon and grabbed an early dinner at Tad's, a New York eatery famous (or infamous, depending on how you looked at it) for its cheap T-bone steaks and kitschy, red velvet wallpaper. Then we hit the streets amid the sights and sounds of the city in late rush hour, people shuffling from their jobs, then descending into the maw of the subways, rows of taxis and cars caught in backups, their horns beeping loud and impatient. Aware that I had been here with my parents a few years ago, Denise looked to me for guidance on what we should see for the short time we had. A Broadway show was out and so was a trip to the Statue of Liberty. That left our own brief walking tour of sights such as Rockefeller Center and Greenwich Village. The great folk music revival had mostly run its course, but I just had to see the Café Wha?, still a hip place to perform and the place where Bob Dylan allegedly got his start. Like me, Denise was a huge Dylan fan. It was too early to see the acts billed there that night, so we just stood outside on Macdougal Street, soaking up the local color. The closest we got to hearing live music was in nearby Washington Park. As dusk descended, we lolled on the grass, listening to a shaggy-haired guitarist in faded jeans and flannel shirt play songs that I suspected he wrote himself.

Denise, wearing the same outfit she had on at the Fair, rested her head on my chest as I lay on my back with my legs bent, playing with her hair. Now unbraided, her strawberry-blond locks fell full and fluffy around her shoulders. "I feel like I've known you for more than just a few hours," I said.

"Yes, I feel the same way, Brendan." She lowered her blue eyes, pouting like a little girl.

"Anything wrong?"

"Only that I'll miss you."

Turning over on my side, I began kissing her, mindful that we'd soon be apart, with three-thousand miles of land mass between us. "I'll miss you too," I said. "Why is it when I finally find a girl I groove with, she lives almost a continent away?"