“Whew! You’re a regular kissing bandit!”
For a long while after that evening, that’s the way I liked to think of myself: The Kissing Bandit. It gave me new confidence; I thought it might even cause my own rating to improve if Dianne got the word out. It led me to make a date with Dianne—but since she lived out by Patsy’s, it depended on Gerry’s willingness to double-date with us and his ability to get his dad’s car. The four of us went to a movie downtown one Saturday night in January. It was blustery—blowing snow—and Dianne worried the whole evening that we might have a problem getting the two of them home, out there in the country. After the movie, in the car, Gerry expected Dianne and me to neck in the back seat, but Dianne sat up, staring out the windshield, chewing her fingernails. It did look scary out there. Patsy kept saying, “Gerry, careful,” and “Gerry, slow down, will you?”
Gerry dropped Dianne and me at her house. I thought it meant The Kissing Bandit would have some time to indulge himself, but both girls insisted that Gerry and I get back on the road quickly because the storm was getting worse. In fact, if Gerry hadn’t argued that “the poor guy” needed some time alone with Dianne, we would’ve dropped the girls off at their respective houses and headed back, kiss or no kiss. Dianne and I sort of lingered on the landing just inside her back door. She went up the steps and shut the door to the kitchen—I think some member of her family was in there having a snack or something. When we kissed, Dianne didn’t take her glasses off. She didn’t even take off her coat. Though I tried to go about my Kissing Bandit business despite the obtrusive glasses, she showed little of the eagerness or enthusiasm so evident at Patsy’s party. When I thought about it later, I worried that I’d done something wrong. I decided that, for Dianne at least—maybe for all girls—kissing at a necking party surrounded by your peers and kissing good night after a date were two distinctly different activities.
Two things conspired to prevent me from seeing Dianne again. One, Gerry wasn’t keen on double-dating anymore because he said it was only a matter of time until he’d be climbing into Patsy’s pants. Two, Dianne had another admirer. He was a broad-shouldered guy everybody called Bron and he was spending a second year in Grade Eleven. When I asked Claude why he thought a girl would date a guy who’d flunked, he said, “I hear he has a large wang.” Well, one thing we did know: Bron had his own car.
As winter thawed into spring, it was time to give serious thought to finding a date for high school graduation. As far as grad dates were concerned, rating was a huge factor. Appearance was everything, and so the likes of Alice and Dianne were eliminated.
I had my sights set on Jennifer Jordan, runner-up in the Yarwood beauty pageant. She had honey-blonde hair and a gorgeous face and figure. I hardly knew her, but I’d seen how popular she was at school dances. During a Bingo dance, guys nearly stampeded to get to her first. (There was a symbol of high school: the Bingo dance. Two big wheels started it off—just the two of them on the floor—and the rest of the crowd stood on the sidelines, watching and waiting. The emcee or the music man called out “Bingo!” and that was the signal for the two to separate and go over to the crowd and pick a partner. Usually, the most popular kids were picked first. Now there were two couples on the floor and, at the next Bingo!, the four went and found four more partners. This process continued, often through more than one song, until everyone was dancing. The Bingo dance never worked perfectly, because there were always those steady couples who refused to separate. And there were those who were picky and looked for someone in particular and waited too long, until they found all their possible choices taken, as in a game of musical chairs. And there were those who withdrew early and headed for the sidelines or the washroom or home. After virtually everyone was dancing, the emcee or the music man would continue calling “Bingo!” just to mix things up. To me, the Bingo dance was a popularity contest, like so many things in high school. I was never asked to start one. I was one of the guys on the sidelines waiting to be picked. Once, I had the rare good fortune to be close to Jennifer just as “Bingo!” was shouted, and she turned to me from the guy she was leaving and slipped into my arms with all the mature confidence of a girl who knew how irresistible she was.)
Jennifer didn’t appear to have a steady boyfriend—there was no pin on her sweater. On a scale of 1 to 10, she’d rank at least 9+, but since she was in Grade Ten, I was sure she’d be thrilled to go to an important function like graduation with a Grade Twelve graduate. All I had to do, I thought, was work up the courage to phone her.
I picked a time when my parents were watching something on their new black-and-white television set and I dialled Jennifer’s number. My heart pounded as I listened to the ring. The phone at the other end was lifted. Sweat sprang from my brow.
“Hello?” came the female voice.
I asked the question I’d rehearsed. “May I speak with Jennifer, please?”
“Speaking,” the female voice said.
“Hi, Jennifer, this is Bob Jenkins—you know, from Grade Twelve?” The similarity of our names sounded funny. My mouth turned dry.
“Oh, hi.”
There was a pause—no more than two thumps of my heart but it seemed forever—as I decided whether to continue with pleasantries or to cut to the chase. It seemed wrong to cut to the chase, as if I were so unskilled at talking with girls like her that I didn’t know what to say next, but the fact was, I didn’t know what to say next, and so I said:
“Would you like to go to graduation with me?”
The question sounded so hollow, so devoid of feeling, so mechanical, so lifeless—in no way did it convey how badly I wanted her to be my date on this most important occasion of my life so far. All because she was a beautiful girl.
She said, “Oh, gee, no, I’m sorry, I can’t,” and, as my heart sank, and I tried to figure out what to say to salvage something from this ordeal, she added, “It’s nice of you to ask me, though.”
It was Gerry who came up with Janie Sinclair. She was a Grade Eleven girl I didn’t know at all but I’d seen her on the basketball court, playing guard for the Yarwood girls’ team that Gerry helped coach. Her arms seemed long and she was slightly round-shouldered, but she was pretty in an athletic way and she had a nice move when she dribbled. Gerry said she was a lot of fun and, since graduation was drawing mighty close, I thought I’d better phone her.
“Hello?” It was a raspy female voice.
“Hello,” I said. “May I speak with Janie Sin—with Janie, please?”
“Oh, just a minute.” The person sounded annoyed. “Janie!” I heard her yell. “Another goddam boy.”
“Mom, put a sock in it, would you?” I heard someone else say. There was muffled noise—the receiver changing hands—and then: “Hello?”
“Janie?”
“That’s me. Who’s this?”
“Bob Jenkins.”
“Well, hello there. Gerry said you might call. We had a bet on it. I guess I lose.”
“You didn’t think I would.”
“You know how kids talk. The word is you don’t—Mom, would you mind? I won’t be more than a couple of minutes. Sorry, where were we?”
“You were saying the word is I don’t call people much.”
“Right. So, I guess that means I’m privileged. What’s on your mind?”
“I—I wondered if you’d like to go to grad with me.”
“God, yes. I’d be honoured.”
“You would?”
“Yes, yes. Look, my mother’s going ape. I’d better get off the line. Call me tomorrow, okay?”
And it was Claude who put the whole Kissing Bandit thing into its proper perspective.
He, Gerry and I were having milkshakes in Colwell’s Dairy Inn when I announced that I was taking Janie Sinclair to grad.
“So,” said Gerry, “the old Kissing Bandit strikes again.”
“I guess so,” I chuckled.
“What’s with this Kissing Bandit bullshit?” said Claude.
“That’s what the girls call Jenkins,” Gerry said.
“I’m not surprised,” Claude said. “Jenkins, you’re the Kissing Bandit, all right. All you ever do on a date is kiss.”
Gerry rented a new Ford for grad. Before we picked up the girls, he and Bud and I took it out St. Anne’s Road to see how fast it would go. Gerry couldn’t get it past forty-nine miles per hour.
“Shit!” he said, punching the steering wheel. “They said this thing had a governor on it but I didn’t believe them.”
“What’s the problem?” I said. “Who wants to go more than fifty?”
“Listen to this shithead,” Gerry grumbled. “Do we have to spend all night with him?”
Sometimes Gerry could be a jerk. I figured it might be because he was two years behind us—and Patsy—in school. He’d failed a couple of grades. He tended to make up for his academic deficiencies by smoking two packs of cigarettes a day, driving cars fast, and bragging about the things he did to Patsy. On the upholstery of Gerry’s dad’s car—the fabric on the inside of the left rear door, just below the window—there was a smudge where Gerry swore he’d wiped his fingers after they’d been inside Patsy. The smudge had become legendary. So many guys wanted to see the spot that Gerry could’ve sold tickets. I was glad we were using a clean rental car for grad.
As we drove back into town at forty-nine m.p.h., Bud and I got Gerry into a better mood by singing one of our Tit Parade songs. We had a repertoire of popular hits that we’d given dirty lyrics. We sang, loud:
I love whacking,
I love suck,
And then again I think I’d like to fuck….
It didn’t matter that the lines were ungrammatical and nonsensical, the fun was in fitting the vile words to the tune. Just one verse was all it took to make Gerry fall into one of his laughing fits. He’d laugh so uncontrollably, he’d weep and have a hard time seeing the road. He’d stop to catch his breath, say, “And then again I …” and off he’d go again, laughing like a crazy man.
We headed for Janie’s house. I was thinking less about the song and Gerry and more about the night ahead. This formal date with a girl everyone said was fun-loving raised my level of expectation; I imagined something along the lines of that Montgomery Clift–Elizabeth Taylor clinch in A Place in the Sun. When Claude and I saw it a few months earlier, I nearly tumbled out of the Capitol Theatre balcony. Clift and Taylor meet at a ritzy upper-class party, he in a tux, she in a strapless gown. They hit it off. They can’t wait to be alone and, when their passion gets the better of them, they rush out onto a terrace for what must be the most sensual screen kiss of all time. The camera moves in for a close-up: their faces, full of ardour, fill the screen. I pictured myself in my new dark blue suit and Janie in a gown, dancing the night away, becoming just as caught up in the romance of it all as Taylor and Clift.
We pulled up to Janie’s house, a modest two-storey on Kingston Crescent. I jumped out of the Ford and hurried up the driveway. The side door opened.
“I said I don’t know when I’ll be home—maybe never!” With that, Janie slammed the door. “Bitch,” she mumbled. “Hey, Jenkins, how’re we doing?”
She was wearing a white gown with a white sequined jacket. Her hair was wind-blown-looking, not much different from the way she wore it on the basketball court, bangs covering her forehead. Her face brightened as she came up to me and put her gloved hand under my arm.
Janie talked mostly with Gerry since she knew him better than Bud or me, but she had a knack of letting me know she wasn’t ignoring me, hugging my arm and glancing at me while she talked. We drove over to Vera’s. Bud went in to fetch her and they took longer than we expected. I had a fleeting remembrance of waiting for them exactly three years before, the night we were graduating from Grade Nine.
It was a different scene this time. Where three years ago they’d come rushing out together, bursting to tell us Bud had just asked her to go steady, Vera came out ahead of Bud looking as if she were on the verge of tears. Her gown was made of a shiny material, mostly brown-coloured, with short sleeves and a profusion of fake flowers on the bodice.
“He hates my dress, I know he does,” Vera said as I held the door for her and she got into the back seat beside Janie. “I mean, I can’t change it now. What am I supposed to do, stay home? God, is it that bad, Gerry? Tell me, Jenkins, if you think it’s bad. I’m sorry, you’re Janie, aren’t you? What would you do, Janie, if your boyfriend didn’t like the dress you were wearing to grad?”
We were all trying to answer her when Bud came up. Vera’s mother stood at the door of the house looking concerned. She may have been crying.
“Hey, listen,” said Bud, “I did not say I didn’t like the dress. Vera, listen to me, would you? I did not say—”
“Bud, you don’t have to say anything,” said Vera. “It’s written all over your face. As soon as you came in and took one look at me, I could tell. I know you, Bud Kolotylo, and the look on your face always gives you away and you do not like my dress and what am I supposed to do about it?”
The conversation went more or less like that all the way out to Patsy’s place. Gerry went in to fetch Patsy and, when she got into the car, she said, “Oh, Vera, I love your dress!”
Good old Patsy. I guess Gerry had told her what was going on. She knew what to say.
“Thank you, Patsy,” said Vera, and she began to cry. “Jeez, Bud, why couldn’t you say something like that? Don’t think I don’t know what it is, Bud Kolotylo. I know you wish I was showing more skin, I know. If you could get your mind out of the gutter for once, you might think twice about ruining the evening for everybody …”
“Vera, I never said—”
“Bud, you’d be better off to stop whining because everybody in this car knows that you hate my dress and it’s really pathetic that you’d even …”
Bud rode in the front beside Patsy and Vera was in the back beside Janie and me. Vera sniffled and complained and argued and the rest of us couldn’t say much. Without letting Vera see, Janie nudged me in the ribs as we drove and I nudged her back. Somehow I knew Janie’s nudges were code telling me she thought Vera’s dress was the worst-looking damned concoction she’d ever seen.
On the dance floor—the school gymnasium—Janie moved in close to me, closer than anyone since Louise. She had a natural way of tucking her head between my head and my shoulder; in her medium-high heels, she was just the right height for me. Her hair smelled lovely, like nutmeg. The first three or four steps, we bumped knees and my foot came down on her shoe, but we adjusted, she moving slightly to her left so that, when I took a step forward, my right leg was almost between her legs.
By the last dance—“Perfidia,” always the evening-ending song in those days—Janie had taken off her jacket and her shoulders were bare except for the spaghetti straps of her gown, meaning she must be wearing a strapless bra. As we danced, I could feel, with two fingers of my right hand, the bare flesh of her back above the gown. She brought my left hand from out there at shoulder level into a clasp between us, so that my forearm was almost but not quite touching her bosom. Throughout the evening, she’d been attentive, welcoming me back after my jive with Patsy or my butterfly with Dianne and Vera, welcoming me back with her gorgeous smile. When Gerry or Bud or someone else danced with Janie, she maintained a discreet distance and, even if she was talking with her partner, she looked around until she spotted me and she nodded at me and arched her eyebrows.
The six of us left for the Highwayman nightclub. Vera had reached a silent phase, Bud still sat in the front, and Janie quietly hummed “Perfidia.” Gerry broke the stillness with a loud “AND THEN AGAIN I …” and we guys burst out laughing, and the girls didn’t know what in blazes we were laughing at, and Patsy said, “And then again you what?” and Gerry and Bud and I roared, and the girls knew it must be a reference to something dirty.
Because nightclubs at the time couldn’t serve liquor, we—despite being underage—did what all the othe
r customers did: ordered Cokes and poured rye whisky into them from the brown-bagged bottles we’d brought with us. Gerry and Patsy and Janie and I danced, leaving Bud to plead with Vera and plead with Vera and beg Vera to accept his apology. Janie and I picked up where we’d left off, jammed against each other, moving to the music, following the beat, except that now the lower part of her seemed closer to me than it had been before. I happened to prod her abdomen with an erection that wouldn’t go away and I backed off—or at least that part of me backed off—partly out of embarrassment and partly because I didn’t think she’d like to be prodded. But, at the fourth or fifth contact, mostly caused by another couple bumping into the back of me, Janie didn’t snicker or move herself out of range, she just got warmer, and her nutmeg fragrance intensified, and I let myself push against her and she pushed back. During one slow dance, she somehow lifted herself so that the crotch of what must have been her girdle was sort of hooked over my hard-on. What was crazy and at the same time wonderful was that we didn’t acknowledge those things that were going on below our waists—we were just dancing.
Well after midnight, we went back to the table to find Vera and Bud gone. I thought she might’ve insisted he take her home, but Gerry let us know he’d given the car key to Bud so that they could make up in the car. We thought it was time to get on to our next stop; when we got to the car, Vera was in Bud’s lap.
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