Love, Sex and Respect

By Jeffrey Rubin

In the beginning of the daring final book of “The Cool Steve” trilogy, 1966 has just begun. The Beatles and Stones are at the height of their fame; the Vietnam War is moving from a slow sizzle to a raging boil; and students are considering whether to either peacefully or violently resist being drafted into the quagmire. Meanwhile, tenth grader Jeff Star, seeking to discover the road to respect at Lincoln High, has been taking notes on how his heroic buddy, Cool Steve, manages to get the students to respect him.

When Jeff begins to try out some of Steve’s skills, they seem to be working—that is, until he enters the dating scene. There, Jeff’s self-image of being bold and courageous is shattered as he discovers he cowardly fears asking a girl out.

As for Steve, he puts off any romance until the autumn of his junior year at Lincoln. And then, at first, love comes easily. Good looking and charming, Steve has little trouble getting a date with the lovely Rosy Rosamondo. But then the usual master of cool soon finds himself making demands on his relationship that lead to a heart-wrenching break-up.

While struggling with a deep, dark depression, Steve begins to hear mutterings about a nearby violent gang whose members have been repeatedly forcing their way into teen parties and humiliating the girls. And then, on a beautiful, sunny day at the beach during the early summer of 1967, Steve has a bloody encounter with the gang. His fury explodes, and before long the guys from all of the surrounding neighborhoods choose Steve to lead them into a war council confrontation.

By the spring of 1968, Jeff and Steve are into their senior year at Lincoln and graduation looms. Increasingly, pressure mounts for the boys to either support the Vietnam War or join the antiwar movement.

Both are now stars of their high school baseball team. Participation in an antiwar demonstration can disqualify them from playing in an important game that would jeopardize their team’s chances of finishing in first place.

Jeff has been leaning toward supporting the war because he’s been raised on World War II movies and his cousin is fighting in Vietnam. Steve is completely undecided. Their closest friends, Mysterious Jane, Brainy George and Cliff are on the side of the peace movement. Can their friendships withstand this period of bitter disagreement?

Throughout this illuminating coming of age novel, a tightly woven narrative intertwines humorous exploits and nail-biting suspense while exploring themes of sex, friendship and war. In the end, readers, young and old, discover a profound understanding of the nature of respect.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jeffrey Rubin
• Release date: Jan 4, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301396399

Jeffrey Rubin

Jeffrey Rubin grew up in Brooklyn, received his PhD degree from the University of Minnesota and has taught conflict resolution there as well as at a psychiatric clinic, a correctional facility and a number of public schools. He has published articles on anger and conflict resolution in major psychology journals and has authored three novels.

Book preview

Part 1:

Early Love Blues

CHAPTER 1

Man! I’ve been trying to fall asleep for hours! Out my bedroom window a glaring light is driving me crazy. Here, I’ll just turn my face away from it. That’s a little better…

Shit! How did I turn back over? There’s that fuckin’ light again. Fuck, I’ll just roll over again and bury my fucking head under the covers. Shit, the glare is still getting to me. I can just feel its rays off in the corner of my eyes, even with my eyes shut tight. Shut it out, damn it! If I could just shut that light out I’d get a decent night’s sleep. Shut it out! Shut it out, damn it!

RING! RING!

Damn! Not the fuckin’ alarm clock already. Since that kid, Richard Moskowitz died from that psychiatric drug, I keep having these awful sleepless nights. Ugh, and now I’ve gotta go back to school. Thank God there’s just a week and a half left before Christmas vacation.

* * * *

Man, I’m exhausted. I can barely keep my eyes open as I drag myself into the seat next to Sandy in the Lincoln High lunchroom. Cliff and Brainy George, sitting opposite us, are chomping on their lunches. Sandy, with her cute nose, peachy complexion and long, wavy, sandy-blond hair is reading a teen magazine article about the folk singer, Judy Collins.

Sandy, didn’t you and Sy go to the Judy Collins concert a couple of weeks ago? I ask.

Yeah, Jeff, I liked her a lot, I guess. She begins to fidget with the end of her hair; her eyes look troubled.

"What do you mean, you guess you liked her?" I ask.

"Well, she put on this beautiful show and she has such a lovely voice, but she’s really against this Vietnam War. You know, in my house, you don’t question stuff like that. My father fought in World War II and he says those idiots against the war are pinko Commies. You think Judy Collins is a Commie, Jeff?

I have no idea.

Being against the war doesn’t make you a communist, says George emphatically.

George and I are going over to Brooklyn College tonight, says Cliff. There’s an information meeting about the war. Some leading experts in the area will be there. Want to go?

I’ll pass, I reply. You guys get the low-down.

Sandy, you should go with us, says Cliff. It’d be a good chance to find out more about whether Judy Collins or your parents are right. There’s no charge. Come with us.

Okay.

Good! says George. Hey, in my homeroom a lot of the kids have been talking about how last Friday evening, they went to the rink over in Prospect Park and it turned out to be a good way to meet girls from all over Brooklyn.

I’ve never gone ice skating, I say.

Me neither, says Cliff.

I guess you can rent skates at the rink, and if you already know how to roller skate you can learn to ice skate in one evening, says George.

This can have some real possibilities, says Cliff. If you see some attractive girl who knows how to skate, you can spot her doing something slick and ask her to teach it to you.

Why, there are all sorts of possibilities, says George, like snuggling close as an excuse because you’re cold; or little mini-dates can be set up by inviting a girl for some 5-cent hot chocolate. You can talk for awhile, get her number, and then go your separate ways.

George and Cliff keep going on about the possibilities until there’s no way on earth we’re not going next Friday. The only question is if we can get Steve to come along with us because girls tend to gather around him like a waterfall to its spring, and since Steve wouldn’t be able to ask all of them out, we could catch the overflow.

Steve’s sitting over at another part of the lunchroom with his Italian friends.

Maybe we should wait until after school to ask Steve, says Cliff. Barging into Steve’s ‘Little Italy’ might not be such a good idea."

Fuck that! says George, and he sidles his way through the crowded lunchroom.

Cliff hangs back at the table, calling after George, Let me know how you make out.

I follow George while mumbling to myself, What the hell?

George gets there seconds before me and he squeezes himself in between Steve and Ron DeFelipo, who’s already right at the end of the table’s bench. As George squeezes in, Ron on the end is practically falling off. Ron’s none too happy, to say the least, and he mumbles something I can’t make out.

I take a seat a table away from Steve’s group of friends where everyone’s not so packed into a small place.

Once seated, George, with a big grin, says real loud, How’s the local Mafia doing?

Hey, wise ass! says Vinny Gallo, who’s sitting directly across the table from George. There’s no such thing as the Mafia, so shut your fucking mouth!

You’re full of shit, George responds.

Vinny leaps over the table while grabbing George by the upper shirt near his throat and both tumble back toward the table behind where George was sitting while students who were eating there leap out of the way yelling, Fight! Fight!

George, as he’s going down, cracks his head hard on a table’s edge, and then crashes down on the floor under the table with Vinny crashing down on top of him. Vinny’s fist reaches back and begins to head toward George’s face. At that moment, Steve catches Vinny’s arm and powerfully pulls him to his feet, while Mr. Isaac and several other teachers who are on duty in the lunchroom are running over, yelling, Break it up! George feels the back of his head. Fortunately there’s no blood, but his hand comes across a nasty swelling bump.

Everything’s under control, Mr. Isaac, says Steve.

It’s funny. If any other guy had said that, I think Mr. Isaac would have ignored him and immediately dragged everyone even remotely involved in the fight to the principal’s office. But Mr. Isaac, who knows Steve from his gym class, looks into Steve’s eyes, rubs his chin, and asks George if he’s okay.

Sure, George says forcing a grin while fumbling to get his thick glasses back on his face.

Mr. Isaac again rubs his chin. After a few seconds, he says sternly, "I’ll give you ten minutes to straighten this out, Steve. Ten minutes! Straighten it out or you’re all going down to the office, and we’ll see if your parents can straighten it out for you."

Now Mr. Isaac and four other teachers move about thirty feet away but remain watching, almost breathing down Steve’s neck.

Come on, begins Steve, sit down and let’s settle this, at least temporarily. Come on. Then Steve sits down.

No one else is moving. Steve looks up at George and Vinny and they’re glaring at each other.

Steve stands back up, moves very close to them, looks into each of their eyes sadly, and says in a whisper, If we go to the principal’s office, my mom’s going to have to take the rest of the day off from work. There’s something in Steve’s voice and eyes when he speaks to George and Vinny, something that tells them he’s speaking to close friends.

George and Vinny know how much Steve’s mom needs her job. Steve’s tenor resonates something in their hearts and bones. Call it friendship—caring—I don’t know—but the wild anger in their eyes softens.

George sits down first, again forcing Ron to move over so that half his butt is hanging off the bench. What an idiot, Ron mumbles.

Steve sits down in his place so he’s just to George’s left. Vinny goes back to his original seat on the other side of the table so as to face George and Steve.

This George is a friend of yours? Vinny says to Steve incredulously. This? This? This?

Quickly, Steve responds. Vinny, I met George at Cunningham Junior High. He’s super good with school stuff. And I always did, well, poorly, mostly because… well, I don’t like to admit this to people… I’m kinda embarrassed about it… but I have this problem with reading. I’m not too good with it. It was humiliating… you know… for a long time. Anyway, at Cunningham, I got to sit pretty close to him during lunch and they mixed the kids up in this Health class so even guys like George could get stuck in a class with guys like me.

George picks up the story from here. I first met Steve in the lunchroom and had lots of conversations with him. Then when we got placed in the same class and we had to read an assignment and answer questions in small groups, after Steve read the page and we started having a discussion, it was like Steve didn’t even read the page. By now, I knew Steve was no Einstein, but he was hardly stupid. A good part of our grade depended on how well our group did. So, I’m not going to fail the lousy course because Steve couldn’t read…

That’s not the part of the story I want to focus on, Steve interrupts. Vinny, George and I began to get to know each other, because, well, ever since the Health class thing, George and this other guy, Cliff, well, we’ve been getting together a couple of times a week. They look over what I’m to be learning from my books and they start discussing it with me. They know the stuff I’m learning about in school so well that they can just look at the topic and off they go… hotly arguing about this or that and before long I catch on to what the issues are. I get caught up in the heat of intellectual battle and I jump in arguing… and by the time the test comes around I know pretty much what to expect and now I’m doing a lot better. And George and Cliff are not in any of my classes anymore, so now they help me as a friend. And they’ve helped me with my speech, too.

Is that right? asks Vinny. You helping Steve like this?

Well, Steve’s a scientific case study, answers George. I’m trying to figure out how a guy like Steve can be a half-wit when you talk to him and a total witless moron when he reads.

Ouch, Steve says; his forehead crinkling.

You know I’m just kidding, George responds quickly, looking at Steve obviously genuinely concerned.

So George puts people down with words to try to be funny but with his actions he’s a real friend, Vinny theorizes out loud. Then he turns to Steve. Listen, I’m pretty good with school stuff, also. If you ever need help studying, let me know.

Thanks, Steve responds.

Vinny then turns to George and says, So you come over here putting down Italians with this Mafia stuff to try to be funny, huh?

Funny, George says very quietly to himself. Funny… Funny… George’s face begins to turn a deathly gray as he begins to rock and continues to repeat, Funny… Funny…

Then he looks up and says, with his voice quivering, Last week I was sitting on the stairwell steps tying my shoes and I heard you and your friends, one flight below, laughing how the Mafia was getting all the blacks in Bedford Stuyvesant hooked on heroin and how they were raking in millions on the…the niggers. That’s the word you used Vinny, niggers! Steve was there with you guys and he didn’t say anything—and after how Steve talked to me about calling black people niggers—he didn’t say anything. That’s the way it is when you hang out with a bunch of fascists. You’re afraid to open your mouth. You’re forced to swallow everything human about yourself and laugh along. George is rocking hard now and he begins to look at everyone watching his gray, gray face. With his voice quivering, his eyes coming from behind a dark haze that’s blazing red, he suddenly stands up and shouts, "But no one’s going to tell me to shut up! No one! No one! And you, Vinny, can go fuck yourself!"

Vinny jumps to his feet.

Ron DeFelipo grabs a hold of George’s upper arm.

George leaps up, yanks his arm free, and darts away.

Steve and I go after him and we follow him into the cafeteria bathroom. As we enter, we see George sitting on the floor by the far wall under a smoked window, crying.

Steve sits down beside him on his right. I get a roll of toilet paper and sit down on his left. Tearing off a yard of the thin white paper, I fold it in half and drop it in George’s lap.

After a couple of minutes, Steve says, George, you don’t know Vinny and his friends. To say the things you said to them without first developing a relationship with them, well they’re going to just harden their position. If you really want to get through to them, maybe you should talk to me and if I agree with you, I could try to get through to them.

George blows his nose, and in a quivering voice, he says, I know you’re right Steve. I can’t believe how I can’t keep my big mouth shut. I end up making a fool out of myself, and then I end up crying like an infant. What can I do? I’m just not a Cool Steve—everything doesn’t always go wonderful for me!

CHAPTER 2

The first after-school Theater Club meeting. Up front of the auditorium is the shiny wax floor stage. Off in the left corner is the silk American flag with its staff crowned by a fierce eagle. The varnish-smelling wood audience seats are mostly empty except for the twenty or so members of the club and its teacher advisor, Mrs. Fero, a lean, pleasant woman around 40, rather tall, with lively brown eyes. She’s going over some methods of acting—something about conflicts, motivation, and goals. It’s interesting enough, but after getting practically no sleep last night and being on my ass during the last few class periods, I’m having trouble sitting.

I notice this guy, Todd—flaming red-hair, a pencil behind his ear—is exploring the back stage mechanisms. He’s dressed in jeans and a worn-out work shirt, the sleeves rolled up. While holding a large white sketch pad in one hand, his other hand is fiddling with some pulleys.

Mrs. Fero turns around from her talk. Hey, don’t touch anything, she says nervously. I’ll explain how everything works shortly. Why don’t you come over here with the rest of the crew and we’ll go back stage soon.

Guh ‘head wit’ whatcha sayin’, says Todd. I’m listenin’. I just wanna sketch some stuff heah.

Just don’t touch anything, okay? says Mrs. Fero.

Not a thing, Todd replies, and he sits down on the floor and begins to sketch all the backstage pulleys and control mechanisms. While Mrs. Fero continues with her acting methods lecture, I get up and go over to Todd to watch him draw. He ain’t half bad. Not only are his pencil drawings remarkably precise, but he has a flair for shadowing.

CHAPTER 3

That Friday, we get to the rink about fifteen minutes early and have to wait in a rather long line until eight when the doors are to open. There are some cute girls on line just in front of us wearing navy blue pea coats, and over their shoulders they carry their white ice skates with blue pom poms.

You mind if we guys go in front of you girls? Cliff asks, like they would really let us.

They laugh, mock outrage, and one of them asks sternly, Why should we? Who do you guys think ya are, God’s gift to the universe?

Well, it’s a long line, Cliff responds. You girls don’t want us to catch cold, do you?

Within five minutes we all know one another’s names, and I’m talking to Rochelle Yeuragetsky about who I know who goes to her high school—Erasmus Hall—and she’s telling me about who she knows that goes to Lincoln.

I’m instantly attracted to her. She’s medium in height, bubbly, enthusiastic, animated, and rosy-cheeked from the cold. Not the model type, but very attractive with full lips and warm eyes.

Soon we pay the cashier, push our way through the turnstile, and enter a large heated indoor area. Because the girls have their own skates, they go immediately to the benches to put them on while we guys go in another line to rent skates.

In the rental line, Steve looks over to me. I saw Jane at school today. She wanted to talk to me about a phone call she got from that friend of yours—Ray. I guess Ray called to talk to her about her mother. Get this—they spoke till two in the morning!

Well, Jane’s got a hell of a problem with her mother, I say.

You’re telling me, says Steve. Anyway, I guess Jane thinks Ray was real sweet for calling. YIKES! Look at this! We gotta cough up another fifty cents for skates. Boy, if I like this ice skating stuff, I’m going to have to get my own skates. I’ll be damned if I’m going to get Jewed out of fifty cents each week.

My mind races. Don’t say anything, I think. Let it drop. Steve probably doesn’t know I’m Jewish, and he doesn’t have to find out.

In junior high school I had spent a great deal of time in a largely Italian neighborhood and my stepdad is Italian. Steve’s actions often bring out of me the Italian voice inflections and macho actions that I have become so immersed in for the past few years. This, plus the fact that I have thick, dark, straight hair and a bit heavier five o’clock shadow than usual for a guy not quite sixteen, could make me pass for Italian. Steve has similar attributes.

I figure, hey, it’s better if he doesn’t know I’m Jewish. Why should I be lowered for some stupid religion? So guess what I do? My mouth ignores me and takes to its own course.

What do you mean by that, Steve?

What? Steve says, looking genuinely confused.

Getting Jewed out of fifty cents. Jewed! Jewed!

Steve blushes. Did I say Jewed? I did, didn’t I? You know these longshoremen that I work with? Well, they’ve got a slur for every race, nationality, or what-have-you. Like I’m a faggot Guinea to them because I’m Italian and when they first met me I had just gotten a haircut. That’s what they call me when they see me. They say, ‘Hey, how’s the faggot Guinea doing? Ya see yer fancy, dancy hairdresser lately, faggot?’ And what the ultimate pisser is, is that they say it so good naturedly that half the time, when they say it, everyone, including me, laughs. And in some ways it’s hard to really take it personally because though they’re mostly Italians there, there’s also all sorts of other nationalities there, and so everyone’s called something or other all the time; polacks, micks, niggers, and it’s… like… part of the humor or something and… well… it’s just the way everyone talks down there.

Well, it may be a joke down on the docks, but here it stings, I say.

I like that about you, Jeff. The way you’re sensitive about other people like blacks and Jews.

Well, actually, I say hesitantly, I’m… well, I’m Jewish.

Steve looks at me disbelievingly. Get out of here! You’re Italian… a Guinea… like me.

Nope. I’m Jewish.

Get out of here! I met your dad. He’s got an Italian accent!

Sal’s my stepdad.

But you look Italian. I knew your last name—Star—had to be changed from something, but I assumed you’re Italian.

My last name, Star—well, my grandfather was a Broadway actor, and he changed his name from Morris Starobin to Robert Star. Somehow he thought it would be better.

By now, we had all rented our skates and are sitting down putting them on. Steve looks over to me. You look more Italian than me, and you don’t act Jewish.

Act Jewish? I cry, feeling uncomfortable again.

Well, the Jews I knew in Cunningham Junior High, says Steve, except this guy Jerry Miller, he was okay, but the others, they were pretty shallow. All they could think of was getting good grades, and if you asked them why it was such a big deal, they all would explain it was so they could make a lot of money when they grew up. It made me wanna throw-up.

I don’t get it, I say. Cliff is one of your best friends, and he was a Cunningham Jew. Does he make you wanna throw-up?

Steve looks over to Cliff, who is looking intently at Steve. A smile comes to Steve’s eyes. It’s funny, he says. "I never think of Cliff as Jewish; just Cliff. Cliff’s the least shallow person I know.

Listen, Jeff, when you’re used to thinking of a group of people in one way, the people who are exceptions… I don’t know… I guess I put them in some other category.

So I’m Italian, Cliff is deep, Jerry Miller is just different, and all other Jews are shallow? I ask.

Okay already, Steve responds, starting to sound a little defensive. This is how my mind works sometimes. I see a people as a group with similarities. I’m not saying it’s right.

He takes a deep breath, lets it out, finishes tying his shoelaces, turns to me and Cliff and says with those eyes of his, I’m sorry.

* * * *

Upon finishing lacing my ice skates, I look up and notice Cliff, George and Steve have also finished. Okay, let’s go, I say matter-of-factly.

It’s just as I’m saying these words, Okay, let’s go, that the image of just how foolish we are about to look as total novices on slick ice in full view of a great many people comes into focus. All week long, though I had been aware of this image, it had been off somewhere on the edge of reality. But now… now… the moment of total humiliation is glaringly in focus. Maybe this ain’t such a good idea, I say to the others.

But we find strength in each other. If we’re going to look like utter fools, shit, we’ll look like utter fools together. United we will stand and, of course, united we will fall.

So we stand up. No problem here. The indoor shelter at the rink where it’s heated has a black rubberized floor so as to make it easy to walk about on skates without slipping. Instinctively I find myself bending my feet to loosen-up my ankle muscles. We look around and see there’s a counter where you can purchase hot chocolate and snacks. Balancing on our skates, we begin to move toward the skating area. Reaching the door, I open it and peer out. Large lights high above the rink brighten the glistening, blue-white ice as the largely high school crowd skates in a spacious circle, everyone moving in the same counter-clockwise direction. Well, mostly everyone. There is, in the corner closest to the doors that I’m peering from, a small group of learners who are stumbling about taking their first baby steps on their way to skating heaven. The problem with that spot is that everyone on the rink, as they circle, pass that very spot over and over and over again, glimpse your progress, and your embarrassing, klutzy moves. Still, for the moment, there is no other place to try out this new skill.

We either go over there and start practicing, says George, or we turn around and go home.

Come on, Steve encourages, and he leads the way through the door. We’re met by pleasant, crisp evening air, and a light breeze. Puffs of white mist dance in front of the mouths of the good-natured crowd. Sound speakers situated around the ice skating rink kick out the Supremes singing their monster hit, Baby Love.

Reaching the ice’s edge, me, George, and Steve notice Cliff isn’t with us. Turning around, I see Cliff clutching, with strained fingers, the door that the rest of us had just passed through. People are playfully shouting at Cliff to clear the doorway.

Okay, I’ll grab his arms, says Steve loudly, and Jeff and George, grab his legs.

I’m coming, I’m coming, moans Cliff, and after a moment of more confusion, sure enough—haltingly—he comes.

Now, with all of us at the ice’s edge, we’re holding on to the white board fence that surrounds the ice. Every fifteen or so yards is an opening in the fence to allow skaters to pass on or off the rink.

The first time out, says Cliff, I think it makes sense that we just spend the evening watching how others skate. Then, all week long we can go through the step-glide motions in our minds. Perhaps by next Friday we might be ready to actually try out the skating motions on real ice.

George, deciding to one-up Cliff, replies, Actually, we don’t have to learn to skate at all. We can just pretend to be Olympic figure skating scouts looking for young, female talent. Of course, we will have to date promising skaters to determine if they have the inner grace to be true stars.

Oh, come on, says Steve, and he places one foot on the ice, pushes off with the other, glides for a few feet and then with the foot he’s gliding on pushes off again but slightly too hard, so to regain his balance he throws his upper weight forward. He overcompensates with this maneuver, so in a desperate effort to re-compensate, he throws his upper weight backwards. His feet continue forward as his upper body goes backwards, and he comes crashing down on his back with a loud Ugh! It’s one of those plops where you know you really shouldn’t laugh, but we all laugh hysterically anyway. And so, after Steve breaks the ice, so to speak, the rest of us begin venturing onto the slick surface. If we fall, we fall; and fall we do.

My first attempt is actually rather smooth—even graceful—until I reach the boarded fence which I had figured I would grab onto in order to stop and reposition myself. It’s a part of the fence, however, that is sharply curving around, and I don’t hit into it square on. I grab my arm around the top of the fence, thus stopping the upper part of my body abruptly. My feet, however, hit the bottom of the fence at an oblique angle so they continue to slide away from me in the direction of the turn in the fence. With my feet kicking to recover, down I go. Sitting on the cold ice, I look at my feet and shake my head. Looking up, I see Rochelle and some of the other girls we met waiting on the ticket line, standing beside me, trying to hold back their laughter.

The largest of them, Laura, says, We girls have been watching you guys and decided that you could use some help.

She then bends down and offers her hand. I take hold and up I go. Rochelle takes Steve’s arm and two other girls, Sarah and Lisa, take the arms of Cliff and George. I’m a little jealous that Steve gets to practice with Rochelle.

In about fifteen minutes, we all have gotten the general hang of this new skill, and we join the larger circle of other skaters—awkwardly at first—but, gradually we gain more and more assuredness.

The girls don’t stay with us long once we’re in the large circle. They want to race about and practice skating backwards. We’re not ready for that.

As they pass us, they smile and sometimes one or another of them skates over and asks how we’re doing. One of these times, Rochelle comes over to me and tells me I’m getting really good.

Thanks. There’s really nothing to it.

We skate side by side for a few minutes. It has begun to snow, and soft white flakes have settled on her shoulders, face, and arms. A strand of hair is almost in her eye. As I attempt to brush it away, I throw off my rhythm, lose my balance and down I go. The embarrassment burns my cheeks, but only for a moment. Rochelle’s delightful laugh, her putting her hands on her side while shaking her head, her helping me up, transforms the moment.

As I return to my feet, I look into her glowing, sweet eyes and I’m struck by her beauty. She smiles and I fall into another dimension, a dimension in which Rochelle and I are the only two people in focus, everything else a blurry haze. Once again, I try to brush a strand of hair back from her eye. Succeeding this time, she thanks me, smiles, and off she goes.

Seconds later, there’s an announcement over the speakers: Clear the ice. Select a mate. Coming up—couples only… couples only.

I guess a few times a night a romantic song is played and only couples are permitted to skate.

George, Cliff, Steve and I have all gotten separated for awhile, all of us just focusing on practicing our skating and listening to the music. But, at the Couples Only announcement, we regroup.

Who you going to ask? says Cliff to Steve.

I don’t know. There’re a lot of real cute girls out there. My ankles are getting a bit wobbly. I think I’ll just rest for a few minutes. What about you, Jeff?

I’m thinking about asking Rochelle, I say, looking into Steve’s eyes to see his reaction.

She’s cute, Steve responds. That’s a great idea. Go ‘head. We’ll watch you put a move on her. There’s no jealousy discernible in his eyes.

Well, Steve, maybe you kinda like her, I say. I mean, she picked you to teach skating. She likes you.

She doesn’t even know either one of us yet. Go ask her and give her a chance to get to know you.

Damn! Some guy is going over to Rochelle. She nods yes. Together they head out onto the ice just as the sweet voices of the Five Satins ease into their doo wop classic, In the Still of the Night.

That’s okay, says Steve. When there’s open skating again and you see her, tell her that the next time there’s couple-skating you want her to be your partner. Set it up beforehand instead of rushing over and trying to arrange it right after the announcement.

Before I can respond a big bear of a guy spots Steve and gives him this warm greeting, engulfing him in a huge bear