Courtly Love in 1982
February 20, 2023Long before #MeToo, I knew how a gentleman was supposed to conduct himself with a lady. As an adjunct professor of photography in a community college, I was absolutely scrupulous in not taking advantage of my position to “get anywhere” with my female students. Although there were of course many who were quite attractive, there were very few about whom I had any “ideas”. Hostos Community College was in The Bronx, and most of the students were Hispanic - from the Dominican Republic or Puerto Rico or any of the countries of Latin America. Many others were African-American, and there was a very occasional white ethnic. Almost all were from working-class backgrounds, more or less. On the whole, really warm, sweet people - I always adored them for their character, whatever they were. But generally they didn’t have the best educational and cultural background, that is, in terms of schooling and family.
So generally I didn’t see much romantic potential for me at Hostos; I was looking for a woman with a background comparable to mine. While I can’t say I’ve never been opportunistic, I’ve always hesitated to get involved with any woman I couldn’t take seriously as a possible real partner - a woman in whom I could be sincerely interested. It was always felt awkward to be “involved” with someone I really didn’t feel involved with, at least potentially. It was impossible for me to deny to myself that I was bored. I’ve always had a lot of powerful interests in my life that take up a lot of my time, so “chercher les femmes” has never become a hobby with me the way it often does with many young men. It may sound quaint, but I have always been far more comfortable with the old notions of gentlemanly behavior. I’m sure I have missed a few opportunities this way, but little or nothing of value.
Anyway, one young woman seemed to me rather special. From a Puerto Rican family, her English was a bit rough, but she was serious and clearly very intelligent, and a good student, with a certain talent for photography. She was very shy and soft-spoken - perhaps self-conscious that her English was no better than it was. She seemed very much a “good girl”, without a trace of the loud manners and extroverted behavior of many others with her background. It was easy to imagine Maria in church every Sunday for Mass, with rosary and candles, praying to the Virgin (although I don’t mean to make fun).
Her hair was long, straight, and jet-black, and her complexion was extremely fair - lighter than mine, and I’m a white boy, a Heinz 6 or 7 of northern-European extraction. Her face was roundish, with prominent cheekbones and slightly asiatic eyes - if she had a Chinese grandparent it wouldn’t have been a surprise. It all suggested the look of a Chinese porcelain doll. We spoke often during class (an unstructured period during which most students worked in the darkroom). I could tell she liked me, and I found her fascinating. So at the end of the spring semester (I had already turned in grades for all my classes), I asked if she would come to my house one Saturday for lunch, and she accepted.
On the appointed day I had various tasty things prepared. I have always enjoyed cooking for a woman, and I believe that the way to a woman’s heart is through her stomach, as well as her mind. (The heart is what I always want, and with the heart you get everything else, take it from me. And a woman who is made in some other way just isn’t my type.) She arrived, and explained that her brother had driven her to my neighborhood - Washington Heights near Riverside Drive - and that he was waiting nearby in his car. This was unexpected, and I was sorry she would make her brother wait for her throughout our lunch - I hoped he had something good to read. But the subway trip between The Bronx and the Heights, which I took all the time, involves a three-legged zig-zag route, and perhaps she didn’t feel secure traveling alone by subway.
I showed her around my apartment, which I shared with two other people, absent at the time. There wasn’t that much to show - besides the kitchen and the living room, there was my bedroom which doubled as a darkroom. Or I should say instead, my darkroom which doubled as a bedroom, because I had built a loft bed to make space, with a dresser and shelves underneath. There were two other shelf units that I had built, resting on sturdy cabinets and reaching almost to the ceiling, where I stored materials and prints. Extending into the central part of the room, supported on one end by one of the shelf units, was a large work table, about rib-cage high, where I arranged my developing trays. Under this work-table was an array of neon fixtures with eight four-foot-long ultraviolet tubes, and a light-weight rack underneath for the contact printing frames that I used for my alternate-process printing (chiefly in palladium and cyanotype, which require UV light). To the left of all this was the heavy table, anchored to a windowsill, that supported my enlarger. With the limited space available, I had to somehow make room for my activities.
I was showing her this and explaining what things were all about. She showed interest. Then she explained to me that she had had an operation a year or two before - there had been a problem with one of her ovaries, perhaps a cyst. She expressed this in English in rough terms, but I understood. Then, to help get the point across, as it seemed to me - we were standing an arm’s length apart - she took my hand and pressed it to a point scarcely above her pubic bone, slightly to one side. She held my hand there for some seconds, then let it go. This is the big mystery - what did she mean? She took me by surprise with this move, and I took it at face value - that is, that she was merely trying to show where she had the problem. But perhaps it was just a subterfuge, and she was trying to entice me into petting without being too forward - that is, with plausible deniability on her part. I wasn’t really planning a seduction in the first place - even before hearing about her brother waiting in his car, playing a distant chaperone.
She didn’t seem like the sort of young woman who would so quickly get into a situation that could only go in one direction, who knows how far, or make a move like that at such an early stage. We haven’t so much as exchanged a friendly kiss, and she’s sending me to third base already? Nahhh - I really didn’t think so. So I didn’t think to try to take advantage, or to interpret her move as an opening gambit - and to up the ante. But even so, at that moment I wasn’t sure. Maybe I was dead wrong, quite naive - possibly this was exactly how a woman like her might try to seduce me - up to a point, anyway. Boys have their little tricks; why not girls too? (Had there been any operation at all?) On the other hand, perhaps she was putting me to the test, to see if I really was the decent sort that I seemed to be, and that I passed the test - by not “pressing on”, as it were. And now, many years later, I no longer remember if we had some lunch or not. I don’t think she stayed too long, and we didn’t see one another again. Perhaps that day she decided that I was a complete imbecile. Anyhow, when I think back to this episode I laugh.
If you don’t know Bob Dylan’s song on this subject, I don’t know where you’ve been. (Perhaps The Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood” is closer to my story.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_V6y1ZCg_8 (Norwegian Wood)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyaF6tvuSp4 (If You’ve Got to Go)
Part of it goes,
I am just a poor boy baby - tryin’ to connect -
but I certainly don’t want you thinkin’ - that I haven’t got any respect
So, if you got to go - it’s all right -
but if you got to go, go now - or else you got to stay all night
The most famous cliché of seduction must be inviting a lady to view one’s collection of stamps. I have never been a stamp collector. But thanks to my work in printmaking - silkscreen, linoleum block, intaglio - I do have some etchings!
Allen Schill
Torino, Italy, February 2023
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