College Life by Dom Capossela

Who did you date while in high school?

Dating in the North End was a little edgy.
We hung in affiliated gangs:
One girls’ group and one boys’ group.
Dating was not a free and easy piece.
Not only did we have to overcome any rookie shyness, but
if you liked a girl from your group, dating had  to be in context with the rest of the gang.
Is she ‘going’ with him?
How tight are they?
Will asking her out cause a rift in the gang?
If she’s in another gang, very serious issues.
If she’s connected with a boy from another gang, there could be a war.
So you always made quiet inquiries from your target’s best friend.
Then proceeded forward.
Or stopped short.

My own high school experience: a bit out of the ordinary.
For two and a half years I was either in the seminary or seminary bound,
so repressing dating impulses.
My freshman year in high school?
We went to dances which I loved but, other than a couple of formal dances, I did very little dating.
Only my senior year proved available, but fully stepping away from the seminary, rejoining a crew I hadn’t been with for almost two years, proved difficult for me.

Rather, let’s talk about my first true love, Georgianna Boyle, an Irish actress I met when I was a freshman at Boston University.

At age seventeen I entered the Boston University College of Business Administration.
What did I know about non-Italian women?
Who could I ask?

My two best friends that year were both from BU’s SFAA: the School of Fine and Applied Arts.
Rob Polomski who is a brilliant artist and a Roman Catholic priest living in England.
We still talk regularly.
And Doug Parker, long passed.

At the beginning of my dating, it was Doug who I hung out with to meet girls.
One night, we went to a play together.
I think it was an Ibsen.
I believe it was Brand. (It might have been Hedda Gabler.)
At intermission, I remember hanging out with Doug’s friends.
I was an outsider.
The talk was on the play.
The conversation among the creative types might have excluded me, a lowly business student.
Except that I peremptorily summarized what had gone on in the first half and what we should expect to unfold in the second half.
Reducing them to silence was an edifying moment.
Doug laughter reminded them he knew who to hang with.

The play, pretty sure it was Ibsen; reasonably sure it was Brand.
In any case, the star of the show, the star of the school, in fact, was Faye Dunaway, a gorgeous, high-boned woman.
Six years later, in 1967, Faye became an international star for her role in the American neo-noir biographical crime film directed by Arthur Penn and starring Warren Beatty and our own Faye as the title characters, Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker.
She was beautiful and she was talented.

But it was a supporting actress, Georgianna Boyle, an Irish girl, who stole my heart.
Second act, she entered stage right, and spoke her first lines.
An angelic voice.
I wish I could quote her.
Hear her recite them again.
I fell madly in love with her.

I know her, Doug said. Shall we go backstage and I’ll introduce you?
We did go backstage.
We first congratulated Faye.
She acknowledged us in an offhand manner, never guessing that fifteen years later she would call me at home to ask me to dinner.
(Yes, I accepted.)

We turned to Georgianna.
Doug hugged her.
So jealous, I.
He introduced us.
We talked.
What do you do after a performance?
Right now I am starving.
Let’s go to the Regina for a pizza.
Is Doug coming?
Doug looked at me.
No. I have a project I’m going to be up all night to get done.
Georgianna looked down at her feet, raised her head and smiled in a way that a No! would have killed me.
Will you drive me home afterwards?

We drove to the North End.
We waited in line and finally got a table.
One by one, each of the waitresses, North End friends of mine, came over to say Hello.
And to look over the obviously Irish girl I was squiring around.
That night defined our relationship.
Remember Paul Simon? I know what I know?

She looked me over
And I guess she thought I was all right.
All right in a sort of a limited way
For an off-night.

But I didn’t care.
Georgianna was smart.
Pretty.
A sophomore, so much more educated than I.
Over the next year we probably went out twice a month.
Always to a play or to a recital.
She was my educator.

Georgianna introduced me to the Messiah.
She had tickets to the Oratorio and her first six options didn’t pan out, so she invited me.
I had never been to a live classic music performance before.
I had no idea what to expect.
I watched the theatre fill up: everyone in tuxedos or gowns.
Me in a sweater and jeans.
But in center orchestra seats, accompanying Georgianna, I couldn’t care less.

The music started.
The tenor sang:
Comfort ye.
Comfort ye, my people.
His rich, powerful voice resonated with something in me that had never been reached before.
And I began to cry.
Out loud!
I didn’t know what to do.
Every other attendee was still, almost non-responsive.
I was practically bawling.
My stomach muscles knotted and released at points throughout the performance, causing my body to shudder.
So embarrassed.
Until Georgianna reached over and squeezed my hand,
I’m proud of you, she said.

That night drew us romantically even, but my affection didn’t last.

As a freshman, I joined the Newman Club, the Catholic club on the Boston University campus.
As a sophomore, I ran for and won a leadership position, and found myself involved in planning a weekend pilgrimage from Boston to the Trappist Monastery in Spencer, Massachusetts.
My friend, Rob Polomski, planned it with me.
In the event, 140 BU pilgrims participated, Georgianna being one of them.
As a second semester sophomore, I had become sure of my organizational talents, my friendships, my politics, my sensitivity, my desirability.
I even found the job that changed my economic life.
Without experience, I took a job as a waiter at the Harvard Club, and from then on, the restaurant industry was in my blood.
I stopped chasing Georgianna.
But Georgianna had become fixated on me.
When we went out, it was I doing her the favor.

But I wanted out.
Entirely.
One of the Paul Simon’s fifty ways reared its head during the pilgrimage.

We started the pilgrimage on Friday at 9.00am.
At 3.00pm, Rob and I, at the head of the mile-long line of pilgrims,
reached the apex of the trip’s highest hill.
We stopped and scanned the strung-out walkers.
The sun was setting but blazed down and illuminated a young woman dressed in orange culottes.
Although it was the end of the day, she still walked with energy and a smile.
Gorgeous. Wow!

At the end of the day, we were welcomed in a religious community for dinner, a meeting, and sleeping accommodations.
After dinner we adjourned to the gymnasium for notes on today’s and tomorrow’s events, plus prayer, song, and Good night.

I was a bit late but still stopped outside the gym to peer in.
I spotted Georgianna across the gym floor so I opened the door just wide enough for me to slip in and I jumped to the floor, a long diagonal across Georgianna. No way we would hang out tonight.
I looked up to see who my conversation partner would be this evening.
Would you believe it was the orange culottes from the afternoon tableau?
In the event, Toni-Lee and I talked and chuckled the entire time, and I walked her back to the girls’ dorm.

Back at the boys’ dorm, I spent the night telling Rob I was in love.
He tried to calm me; to dissuade me.
I did not sleep a single minute.
Fifteen minutes before we were scheduled for chapel, I went and sat on the lowest step outside the girls’ dorm.
Toni-Lee was happy to see me and she and I spent at least part of every day together for the next 27 years.

As we boarded the buses that were driving us back to Boston, Georgianna approached me with a bouquet of wild flowers she had picked.
“For you,” she said.
“Thanks. I’ll give them to Toni-Lee.”
In retrospect, I realize that was cruel.
Nothing to be done now.

There is no postscript to Georgianna.
But a PS with the bus home.
I sat, of course, with Toni-Lee.
This soon we were ‘of course’.
I should tell you that there was never a couple with less romantic experience than Toni and I.
Holding hands on the ride back was heavy.

She held the flowers on her lap.
The weekend had exhausted us and the bus’ droning got us drowsy.
Her head dropped closer to my shoulder.
I watched and prayed that it would, and then it did come to rest on me.
I was in heaven.
When we disembarked in Boston, our relationship was established.
And accepted by our friends.
Smoothly.
No hoopla.

Some time later, Toni confessed: the shoulder to my head was premeditated.
I’d never have guessed Toni had that bit of the rascal in her.

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