HAPPY BIRTHDAY

January 21, 2019

Today is the birthday of my first boyfriend, Bill.  I haven't seen him in decades, but I usually send him some sort of birthday greetings.

I don't actually remember when I met Bill.  I was 13 and his aunt lived next door to us and kept saying I should meet her nephew.  I must have met him before our first date, but the first time I remember him was waiting for him outside a downtown theater, where we both saw The Girl He Left Behind, a Tab Hunter movie.  Parking in downtown San Francisco is not easy, so we took buses to meet.

I don't know if we would have become boyfriend/girlfriend if it hadn't been for the accident.

Shortly after our first date, he was in an accident.  His car was hit in an intersection near Stern Grove in San Francisco and he was injured and hospitalized for a week or so.  I went to see him every day and after he got out of the hospital, we started dating regularly.

He was the only guy I dated for three years.  At one point he gave me his class ring and we were going steady for awhile and at some other point he took it back, but we continued dating, though I think he was dating someone else at the same time.

Out dates were pretty standard.  Whatever we were doing (usually a movie), we ended up down at the Marina, looking out on San Francisco bay, parked and necking.  In three years our "necking" never even got a PG rating.  We were good Catholic kids and whatever happened happened from the neck up.

I was so amazingly naive.  At one point we were talking on the phone and I told him I loved him and he joked "proove it."  I can't believe it was years later before I realized what he meant.

We went to the proms together, his and mine, but by the time of my senior prom, Bill was not around.

He decided to become a Jesuit brother and was in the seminary by my senior year.  This picture was taken when his mother and I went to see him,  She asked me if I thought he'd stay and I said I thought he would stay awhile but that he would eventually leave.  That was 1960 and he's still there.

He was assigned to Jesuit High School in Sacramento for many years and I invited him to come to dinner one night, when the kids were all still living at home.  I have to admit it was really weird seeing him then.

Even weirder when I found him brought up on charges for sexual abuse back in the 1960s.  I don't know any of the circumstances, but apparently only one charge was made and requests were made for others to come forward, and none did, that I can find.  But he's now in the equivalent of "Jesuit jail."

But I still send him birthday greetings, and we exchange Christmas cards.

As for my senior prom, I wasn't dating anyone and so went with a guy who lived in the flat upstairs (his mother was the "Esther" I wrote about a few entries ago).  I didn't really even like him and the prom was definitely a nothing.  We kissed good night -- a peck -- and I don't remember ever seeing him again.

I dated a guy who was my romantic partner in our school play.  We dated for a few months until I went off to school in Berkeley.  I'm fairly certain he was gay.  I have tried to find him through Facebook and through his high school, but he has a very common name it's like trying to find someone named Mary Smith.  I would love to know what ever happened to him.

But anyway, happy birthday, Bill.  I do think of you every year on this day.