So now I was in like Flint with the girl who had asked me to the wedding reception, the one where I ate too much and had a digestive problem (see http://www.rubinfriedman.com/blog/archives/176).

We had talked on the phone a few times.   I found it easier to talk to her.  It turned out that talking to girls was almost like talking to people.

Something in her sexy voice inspired me.  I made jokes.  She laughed.  We talked about the movies we saw together.  I had even kissed her good night.   All this, without having to resort to subterfuge and simply being myself.  I started to feel semi-normal.

Then it was time for me to be her date at another wedding reception.  I was looking forward to it.  The great day arrived just after my basketball team’s victory in the high school championships.  It was a game that I played my best in and scored 16 points.  I was a hero.  I got carried away and played basketball on Saturday at the YMCA with all my team mates.  I played for hours.  At the end, I started to feel very tired.

The next morning, I awoke with a bad taste in my mouth and a bit of a stuffed nose.  Well I wasn’t going to let a cold get in my way of the date!  I just lazed around the house until that evening, then after a shower, dressed to kill in my black pants, pepper sports jacket and golden vest.  I was handsome.  My mom said so.

I started to feel some aches in my legs and shoulders but what of that.  It was probably just leftover cramping from the thorough physical exercise of the day before.

I took the subway and bus to her house, where her parents welcomed me.  They would drive us to and from the reception, even though they themselves were not going. 

“So nice to see you,” said her mother.  ”I hear you’re such a good student.  Tell me, you gonna go to university?”

“Why yes,” I answered and was surprised to hear my voice a little hoarse.  I cleared it and asked if anyone had a cough candy.

“Candy I got,” said her father and produced a few from his pocket.  I took one, unwrapped it and popped it into my mouth.

“What you gonna study?” he asked. “Meditsin? Law? Engineer?”

“Thanks for the candy, a shaynem dank.  I haven’t made up my mind yet but it’s probably going to be something with science.”

“Oy such a nice Yiddish,” her mother chipped in, “N’ I hear too you’re an athlete.”

“I play on my high school basket ball team,” I said and turned a bit red.

“Mom, Dad, leave the poor guy alone.  This is a date, not a job interview.”  My date arrived on the scene just in time to rescue me.

“Dad, come on, let’s go.  We have to leave now if we want to get there on time.”

We went out to the car with her father and on the way, I found out a bit of their history.  Like my parents, hers were Holocaust survivors who had escaped to the Soviet Union during the war and she, like me, was born in a D.P. camp.  I spoke Yiddish with her father and with every word, she seemed to become happier.

Her father dropped us off and promised to return by midnight.

We had a great time at the reception.  I did not eat as much at the sweet table although I snuck a few drinks from the bar, despite being under the legal drinking age. 

Again, we got along famously.  We danced every dance and during the slow dances, she danced very close to me.  I might have been more excited by this but I was now starting to feel the effects of what I thought was the strenuous  exercise of the day before.

My head started to feel strange, with a small ache in the nape of my neck.  By the end of the evening, I was feeling a bit clammy,

“You look a little pale,” she said around 11.  “Why don’t you sit down while I go phone my father to come early?”

“I do feel a bit strange,” I said and suddenly felt slightly weak in the knees.  I sat down and put my head down on my arms while she was away.

By the time she got back, I was starting to feel dizzy, to go along with clammy and achy.  “Maybe I shouldn’t have had those drinks,” I thought.

When I got up, I tripped and she had to grab me.  I leaned on her as we got our coats and waited at the door for her father.

On the ride back to her house, I started to feel a pain in my stomach.  I suppressed it and continued my previous conversation with her father.

When we got to her house, she invited me in for a moment because she said, she wanted to give me a proper good night kiss. 

I was a bit uneasy because her father was right there but I put on a brave face, ignored the pain in my stomach and summoned all my strength to go up the stairs to her house.

She took off her coat and then, with her father standing beside us, she said, “I noticed that you were a bit abstracted towards the end of the evening tonight and I wanted to let you know, I really like you.”

With that, she threw her arms around my neck and pressed her pelvis right into my crotch and started to French kiss me while she ground her hips.

“Wow!” I thought, “this is weird!”  Here I was standing two feet away from a Holocaust survivor while his daughter was basically giving me a frontal lap dance.

I felt at first something I identified as guilt and anxiety but as the embrace went on, I started to realize it was actually nausea.  The stomach pain came back with a vengeance with a sudden searing stab and I simultaneously felt an urge to vomit.

I pushed my date away and vomited all over the hall entrance.  I got down on my knees and did it again.  Out of the corner of my eye I could see my date and her father looking at me with undisguised horror.

“What happened! What did I do! What is the matter!”  I heard as if from a distance.  

My date ran off and came back with wet and dry towels, wiping my face and the floor in that order.  She seemed to have an endless supply as I dragged myself out of her way over to the steps leading upstairs and sprawled there with my eyes closed.

“My god! Is he dead!” I heard her father exclaim. 

“Dad, dad, calm down.  Just go and get a face cloth with cold water.”

They placed the cloth on my forehead and after a few minutes that felt like an eternity, I started to feel slightly better.

“I’m all right,” I croaked.  “I must have eaten something that didn’t agree with me.”

My date looked distressed.  “I thought it was me.”  She smiled.  “That doesn’t do a lot for girl’s confidence.”

I tried to reach out my hand but I felt so mortified I could barely speak.

They got me out of the house and into the car.   I rode all the way to my home with my head lying backward over the back of the front seat, my date sitting behind me and holding a compress.

I got out of the car right in front of my home and my date helped me to the door and unlocked it.

“Call me and let me know how you are,” she said.

“I’m so sorry,” I mumbled, “so sorry,” and staggered through the door.

I spent the rest of the night, alternating between vomiting and diahrrea.

When I awoke the next day, it was already the afternoon and I could not walk, I was so dehydrated.  It took me a week to recover strength enough to get out of bed and to return to a semblance of normality.  Through the whole time I had never telephoned my date.

Then I started to feel guilty about not telephoning, while at the same time, feeling a bit threatened by her aggressive expression of affection.

I was both guilty and afraid.  Not a good combination to foster a relationship.

In the end, I did not telephone her, rationalizing that she must be disgusted with me.  A year later when I was dating someone else, I saw her again and she was as friendly as ever, as if all that time had not passed, as if I had not vomited all over her front hall in the middle of her good night kiss. 

I don’t know why I did not call her.  Perhaps I felt I could never unvomit, what I had already vomited.  Perhaps I felt guilty and that justice had be done because “He who lives and profits from the stomach cramp, will suffer and die from the stomach cramp.”

But looking back over forty years, I think it was really that I was just not ready for a relationship with a girl, which was that passionate and that intense.