Mr. Hickey Says Hello

French kissing! And lots of it! My first time really making out. And with a cheerleader, no less. My head was about to explode.

I got totally carried away with it all. We were at a friend’s house. No parents. Just a handful of high school kids goofing around. And all of a sudden, there I was. On the couch. In a dimly lit living room. Making out. With a cheerleader. And actually French kissing. Fabulous.

I got so carried away, I did what any other idiot would have. I slipped off my class ring and held it up.

“If I give this to you, would you wear it?” What a subtle way to ask her to go steady with me.

“Yes!” she said. And then we Frenched some more.

So I figured that was that. I had a steady now, and that meant we could make out pretty much whenever we wanted to. Right.

It remained fabulous. Until the following Monday. She lived several towns away, and had to wait until late in the afternoon to catch a ride home from school. So she and some others in the crowd would head up to the donut shop to while away a couple of hours.

The shop, as it happened, was next to the bus stop where I got off on my way home from my own high school. So, of course, I met her at Donuts that Monday. That’s when it became more widely known that we were an item.

The ring I gave her was on her finger. First disappointment—should have been on a chain ‘round her neck where any classically self-respecting “steady” would wear it. Eddie spied it and asked, “Hey, where’d you get a green stone for your ring…” fading off as he noticed it was from my high school and not theirs. He looked from her to me and back again, and surprised, just said, “Oh…” I was smug.

So Monday afternoon was consumed by hot chocolate and the stirrings of boredom. Tuesday was worse. The donut shop again and my missing playing ball with my buddies. Again.

Wednesday, I got off a stop early and circled home the back way. This was not what I expected going steady to be. This was a drag on my time.

Still, there was the kissing part. And the dates at the drive-in. And my fumbling, inexperienced attempts to get to second base. She was actually receptive to that, I realized much later. But I figured through a sweater, blouse and bra—not a nice satiny one like they have now, but a standard-issue, bulletproof Sixties model—I’d really need to mash those babies. Wrong. (But then, you knew that.) She suffered it as long as she could, then gently pulled my hand away. I read that as “Don’t go there.” She read it as, “Wow that right one’s going to be sore for a week.”

Anyway, it was still fun making out whenever we got the chance, and progressively more boring having to sit in the donut shop for most after-school weekdays.

Of course, we were going to go to my prom. That was another bonus; no angst over whether I’d have a date or not. A wrinkle was that before we were going steady, she had accepted an invitation to another formal dance that was taking place a couple of weeks before my prom.

It was a kid she knew from her home town. He went to school about 50 miles away, and the plan was that she’d stay out there the night of the dance, rather than have to come all the way home. She told me that she’d accepted before I came on the scene, and that if I wanted her to, she’d cancel out on him. Since it was a big, formal deal—not a prom, but like one—I thought it’d be crass to ask her to cancel. I wouldn’t have liked it if I were suddenly without a date like that. But, I told her, I expected her to behave, and naturally, she agreed.

So the big dance weekend came, and it meant a Saturday free for me! Oh, the joy of unencumbered bonding with my male friends. It was a tough trade-off: occasionally making out vs. goofing around with buddies. Only a few weeks into it, though, the goofing around was looking more and more like the better choice. Hmmm, how to get out of this steady thing? I’d have to think about that.

As it turned out, I didn’t have to think too long.

Sunday, she returned and we met at the—say it with me, now—donut shop. It was pretty chilly, and she had on a nice white turtleneck under her jacket. We went for a walk and sat on a park bench, chatting desultorily. Something seemed a little strained, but I didn’t notice that because I was still trying to figure out how I was going to gracefully exit this steady business.

At that point, she turned her head away from me to look at something. Wait a minute! What was that peeking up from behind her turtleneck? Was it? Could it be?? Why, yes, indeedy. It was a nicely formed, perfectly colored hickey! Bingo!!

“What’s this?” I asked, pulling the turtleneck down a bit.

In reply, she merely giggled nervously and pulled the sweater neck up to cover the evidence. Well, depending on your point of view, the rest of the conversation went quite well or was abysmal. The ring went back on my finger, and my afternoons went back to goofing around wherever I pleased.

Oh, and we still went to the prom. Like a good boy, I stayed on first base.

James Mahoney