My First Girlfriend

This story is true, but the names have been changed to protect the innocent

When I was a young teenager in John Adams High School, I never thought about having a girlfriend. I was too busy with studying, practicing guitar and going to school. Don’t get me wrong I liked girls, but having a steady girlfriend never entered my mind until one day I bumped into this really cute girl on the way to class. I distinctly remember that it was the beginning of the new fall term and the new freshmen had arrived. You could always tell who the freshmen were. They looked like babies and they were always getting lost. Of course, I was a ‘mature16 year old junior’.

Her name was Rose. We started to see each other in the hall everyday at the same time. I finally had the nerve to ask her out. On our first date we went to a church dance, She wore a dark blue satin dress, with high heels. Her black hair was long and down. When I first picked her up at her house, my jaw dropped. She was beautiful. Now you may ask how can you date and go to school and practice and play music? That was the year I stopped practicing. Throughout the first two years of high school, my father kept telling me how dumb I was because my marks were not high enough. The truth is I didn’t care about my schoolwork. I was only in high school to have a good time, play football, play in the band and sing in the chorus. But I got fed up with his accusations. To prove to him that I could be as smart, I stopped practicing for one year and studied. That year I got a ninety-four average and proved I wasn’t stupid. So the year I stopped practicing was the year I met Rose and had time for a girlfriend. Before that I really didn’t have time to date even though I had started dating when I was eleven.

Yes! Eleven.

I loved to dance at weddings and I had always had a dancing partner at family affairs. My first partner was Helen. We weren’t romantically involved, we were much too young, but we had a great time dancing together. We were so good that whenever we danced the other dancers would form a circle around us and cheer us on. My cousin Al’s girlfriend and latter wife Lana had a sister Teresa who was a great dancer too. If she were at an affair (different side of the family) we would dance together. I loved going to weddings in those days because some of them were what we called ‘sandwich weddings’. There was no dinner, just different kinds of sandwiches. I loved eating all the different types of sandwiches and drinking the different sodas’. The music was always ‘live’ and they all seemed to play great Lindy’s. Even if it was a family wedding of distant cousins, I always found someone to dance with.

When I was eleven years old, we went to a wedding. Helen and Teresa weren’t there and I was miserable because I didn’t have a dancing partner. My mother would look around and she would point to a girl and say “ how about her?’ If there was something I didn’t like about her like, she was too tall, too fat etc. I wouldn’t ask her to dance. Shows you how stupid young people could be. There was this one girl at this wedding that I took a fancy to. Her name was Chicky. I asked her to dance. Well we had a great time. I thought I would never see her again, but low and behold there she was in my class, the first day I attended St.Anthony’s Catholic School.

The church’s fall dance was coming up and I asked her out on a date. She asked her parents and they said yes. Of course her aunt came along as a chaperon to keep an eye on us. Believe me my intentions were honorable. All I wanted to do was dance. Now if I were twelve, it would have been a different story. My hormones would have been popping and I probably would have been embarrassed the whole time. What a difference a year could make.

Getting back to my girlfriend, Rose. Having a girlfriend was great. I would walk her home from school carrying her books. We talked about everything. Of course my parents had a fit. “A girlfriend! You’re too young to have a girlfriend “. The one thing my parents couldn’t argue about with me was that she wasn’t Italian. If I had to have a girlfriend, at least she was Italian!

By the time I turned seventeen, I had grown a lot and looked much older than my years. I also had become very serious about life and it’s meaning and all the crap the Catholic Church and my parents had fed me. I would sit on our front stoop all the time and look up at the stars and wonder what it was all about as I still do, but without the stoop.

When I entered my Senior Year, I was voted Senior class President. I was working every weekend and had been a professional musician, (union card since I was fifteen) and was starting to play in nightclubs too. I performed at every school function including the Senior Class Talent Show, the Accappella Chorus and I constantly practiced.

At the last show of my senior year, my band was performing and I was also backing up a singer while a ballet dancer danced. If I had to say so myself it was very classy. During rehearsals, everything was fine. During the performance with the singer, my amplifier was on, but not a sound came out. I thought it might be my guitar wire. I kept an extra one in my pocket just in case this would happen. I took the extra wire out, but it was all tangled up. I tried to untangle it, while the audience looked on and laughed. I was so embarrassed I finally gave up. One of the stagehands put a microphone next to the guitar and the performance went on. When checking the amp after the show, I saw that a tube had fallen out of its socket. Talking about my embarrassing moment, Rose said it was not a big deal. That was the wrong thing to say to me. My ego couldn’t handle it. I wanted to be consoled. I was spending less time with Rose because of my practice routine and working and she didn’t like it. I knew it was time to end it. All my life, music had come first. There’s always a price to pay, but that’s another story. The way I broke up with Rose was awful and for many years I wished that some day I could apologize.

Senior Prom was coming up and of course I brought Rose. As it were in those days, the Prom was held in a hotel in the city. A group of my friends and I chipped in and rented a Limo to pick our dates and us up and drive to the Hotel. After the dance we went to the Hawaii Kai for drinks and a show. We were too young to drink alcoholic beverages, but they served us exotic looking drinks that looked real. The plan was to go back to Rose’s house, change clothes and then go to the beach.

The beach was cold and it was raining. We stayed under the boardwalk under a blanket. It took me a couple of hours for me to find the courage to break up with her, but I did. The bad part (it’s hard to write about this) was I left her there.

I got on a train and went home.

Yes, I know. I was a real bastard. My only defense is, I was young, stupid, thoughtless, mean and a coward.

There is a happy ending to this story.

Last year, feeling guilty and wishing I could apologize and through the magic of Facebook and the Internet, I found her.

I did apologize for my behavior. I told her how bad I felt. She remembered the break-up, but not how I did it. She did remember her white formal dress how much she loved it.

Can you imagine, I’ve been carrying this guilt around for over 50 years and she remembers the dress? She still has a baby face and she says she very happy and I am happy for her.

A few weeks after prom I graduated and a whole new chapter of my life began. And that’s another story.


Dom Minasi