At age 20, I was still a virgin. During my high school days when my girlfriends were bragging about their sexual exploits I would just listen. What could I say? Saying that I'm saving myself for marriage would've sounded stupid to them. Besides that, I didn't even go out very much.
Anyway, an afternoon in June just two weeks after my birthday saw me in my favorite pizza shop on Main Street with a guy named Ron whom I was seeing for the first time. At first neither of us seemed to know what to say but we soon figured it out.
I learned right up front that Ron and my girlfriend Lynne are first cousins. Though 25, he and Lynne hung out sometimes. Her brother Jack had been Ron's best friend.
A blond girl probably not older than me brought our Margherita pizza cut into 8 slices on an elevated tray.
I asked my date, "have you ever been on the cruise past the Kennedy compound."
"No I haven't," he replied.
"I've done that. I also spent a couple of days on Marthas Vinyard last summer and a couple of days on Nantucket."
"I've never been to either of those places. I used to live on Long Island. Nowadays I live near here and work at Raytheon."
"That's a long ride."
"I work from home. There are not enough cubicals for all the engineers."
"How much of Long Island did you see?"
"The mansions on Gold Coast. I grew up in Sayville on the south shore."
"Have you ever been to The Hamptons?"
"I spent a couple of days in a cottage on East Hampton."
He talked about growing up in Sayville, being a jock and attending Cape Cod League baseball games. What do I care about baseball? We were each eating our fourth slice when I said, "tell me about girls you've dated."
"What's there to tell?"
"Any long-lived relationships, short-lived relationships?"
"I dated this girl named Jane in high school. She wasn't doing as much as she claimed."
"Really," I said.
