In high school I was a nerd.
Probably no surprise. Other common terms for me were geek, spaz and jerk. I
couldn’t get a date, and had to take my cousin to my senior prom. What an
embarrassment.
When I got to the conservatory,
I was a virgin. Before leaving home, my father sat me down and told me to lose
the pocket protector, change the frames on my glasses, and try to actually talk
to girls rather than grunting in their direction. He also went through my
wardrobe and told me to get some colors other than black and blue. I don’t know
why; it makes it easy to get dressed in the morning. He said if, the next time
he saw me, I was still a virgin, he’d take me to a legal whorehouse in Nevada
and fix that. God, how embarrassing.
Anyway, I got to the
conservatory and found out that musicians are different. Like from another
planet different. We don’t care what you look like, how much money you have,
how you dress, what your skin color is, or anything else. We care if you can
make music. I was a voice major, but also played a variety of instruments. For
example, I played piano in the jazz band. A girl who played alto sax approached
me and said she’d trade lessons in alto sax for piano lessons.
I was drooling and couldn’t
look at her, let alone say anything. Finally, she put her finger under my chin
and raised my face so I had to look at her. “I’m just a girl, no different from
you except I’ve got indoor plumbing. I haven’t eaten anybody since” she looked
at her watch, and I couldn’t help laughing. We got to talking. She was a senior
who was having trouble with piano, although she played clarinet, oboe and a
couple of other woodwinds. She was about as plain-looking as I was, meaning she
was the most beautiful girl who had ever spoken to me first. I was in love. At
least I was in something.
We had a building with a lot
of practice rooms, so we would meet there two or three times a week for an alto
sax lesson and a piano lesson. After a few weeks she kissed me on my mouth, and
I didn’t know what to do. So, we scheduled kissing lessons, too. Wasn’t long
before she started leaving the saxophone at home and I stopped touching the piano
in the practice room. We both stayed on campus during the Thanksgiving break,
and she invited me to her dorm room for a final exam.
She said I passed with flying
colors. I don’t know if that’s true, but it doesn’t matter. She was kind, she
was beautiful – at least to me, and that’s all that mattered – and she was very
helpful. Accent on the very. After that first time we only had sex maybe once a
month, otherwise we went back to music lessons. She introduced me to some other
girls, and eventually I caught on that she wanted to disvirginate me, or
whatever the word is, and then set me free.
Her name was Patty something –
funny that I don’t remember her last name – and I still think of her as the
second-most wonderful woman in the world. She invited me to her wedding right after
graduation, and I went. The second semester of my freshman year six of us
comprised the frat pledge class, and remained tight thereafter. At her wedding
I saw most of my pledge class, and half the fraternity. Not one of us said a
word.
