Memoirs - The Women in My Life
(preliminary)

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Introduction

I feel I was a lucky man when it came to women. I knew and met a lot of very nice women and had a lot of girlfriends. Here is an account of "the best things in my life." These were never casual or short relationships. I take women seriously and for all my shortcomings I tried to do my best with all of them. I had very few casual affairs.

Faith

I got to know Faith through my mutual high school friend Henry. She was a lovely young woman who I suppose went to Madison High School, but I don't recall any connection with her regarding high school.

She had one older brother and one younger. The older brother later tried to be an artist in the style of Jackson Pollack, making these big paintings by throwing paint at the canvas. He had a bunch of them stacked somewhere in a closet. The paint was so thick the canvas (or maybe they were just plywood boards) bent under the weight.

Faith and I dated and I also hung out at her house a lot. We also took trips to places like Bear Mountain Park and she came with me to the Chayt Family picnics - so I must have been driving (a car) in those days (I got my drivers license at 18 and my dad let me use his car). She may even have been up at our place in the Catskill mountains several times. At one point she asked me what my intentions were. I really didn't know. Actually I had subconscious problems I had no idea about. So that was the end of that.

Faith		With me at the family picnic

There was probably the thought of, and most certainly the possibility of marriage but that never happened, for reasons you will learn later and of which I was fully unaware of then.

My relationship with Faith is also mentioned in High School Days .

Phyllis

I believe my next relationship was with Phyllis. That story is currently in High School Days.

After High School

Norma

I met Norma on a Youth Hostel trip in Pennsylvania. I started dating her and soon was leading American Youth Hostel (now called the Hostelling Association of America) bicycle trips and tours with her as my co-leader. I got very friendly with her family which consisted of a younger sister and younger yet brother and a dog. I often hung around their place on the West side of Greenwich Village. They were not rich, but owned a small building which housed her dad's TV repair shop on the street level, and a duplex apartment upstairs.
 

I kept trying to get Zeus to jump in - coaxing him and trying to convince him is was nice to go swimming. He would approach the edge look over and back away. So at one point when he was looking in I took my foot and pushed him in. I did not believe a dog actually would not know how to swim. He didn't. If I hadn't leaned in and pulled him out there is no doubt he would have drowned. He also had the unpleasant habit of confusing people's legs with fire hydrants.

Eventually, when I moved out of my apartment in the East Village and back home to Brooklyn, Zeus came with me. This did not work too well and I had to give him up. I believe Norma's family took him back.

Norma and I were together for quite a while. It was nice. Norma was quite athletic and a good bike rider. Eventually we became involved sexually and I was again faced with my sexual hang-up. It was still something I was ignorant of. Norma however was not. And like Frank Sinatra sings "love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage" I felt I had to propose to her. She accepted. At this time, after all, I had a good job and we were having fun together. Eventually she met my family who approved and soon we were acting like an old married couple. So we announced it and had an engagement party from which we collected a closet full of gifts.

This was sad, because as the wedding date approached (actually it was way off - no date was set), but still, I became more and more neurotic and nervous. I took long drives to nowhere just to "air out my mind." Norma (who I feel was a very dear woman), became very concerned and she went to the psychologist at her school (she was attending a junior trade college) to seek advice for me. Her school psychologist recommended a man who practiced psychoanalysis in an office uptown off Madison Avenue.

I decided seeing this man would be a good idea and went. I liked him immediately and struck up a working relationship with him that lasted for years. However, it took him just two sessions to point out that I probably did not want to marry Norma, in fact that it would be very unwise to do so. This turned out to be good advice - actually, except for the cycling, we had nothing in common and I probably would have been very unhappy had I married her. So I broke off the engagement. We had to return all the engagement gifts.

Norma was such a fine person that she understood and accepted this. We remained friends and we both began dating others until one day she asked me if I was sure that I didn't want to marry her. She had another prospect and had to make a decision. The dear woman still would have preferred me, but I told her she should go ahead and marry the man she was seeing because I did not expect it to work between us. So I stopped seeing Norma.

Terry

The next woman in my life I met at a laid back resort where I started going for weekends. She was short and had jet black hair. She was a sweet and mysterious woman. I offered her a ride home from the place (on my motor scooter). What better way to get to engender intimately than to have a woman holding on to you for an hour or so on the back of a motor scooter. When we arrived at her place, which was also on the West side of Greenwich Village, she invited me up.

With Terry there was no flirting (we had already had done that at the resort). At the time I was in psychotherapy and had someone to talk to about my feelings and problems with sex. Terry did not have a problem, and (along with the help of my therapist) I learned a lot from this woman. She was very happy - loved me a lot - and very shortly I moved in with her. We had several months of bliss but then I discovered another aspect of my psychological difficulties.

I was still drawn back home, I had not really successfully separated from my mother, who did not help the situation. When she {my mother} found out that Terry was not Jewish and in fact from an Italian (no doubt Catholic) family - she let it be known that she did not approve. Terry never met my parents and I started struggling with this conflict. She knew this but there was little she could do. It is with much pain that I remember that one day, in a fit of some sort of guilt or other irrational feeling, I up and left her.

This was probably the most destructive act in my life of relationships with women. I should have married her. But apparently I was still not ready for this commitment - and ultimately never was. At this point I will admit, I was truly foolish. I had lost another chance at marriage, this time to a wonderful woman with whom I could have grown a great deal. How different this story would be if I had married Terry.

A while after breaking up with Terry I had my first major nervous breakdown and landed in Hillside Hospital in Queens, New York (see "Mental Hospitals").

I was there for almost a year and there I met the other "woman of my life," Betty K..

Betty

Betty was a patient at Hillside Hospital  (see "Hospital Days") at the same time as me. There was quite an age difference, as I was in my mid twenties and she was about 14 years older than me, in her early forties. But she was very attractive.

I met Betty one day on the steps of the main hospital building. She was sitting there enjoying the nice weather and I sat down near her. We started a conversation and became friends. I don't remember a lot about our relationship in the hospital, but I do remember how we left - together!

I don't remember if we actually left the place together or not but shortly thereafter my dad let me borrow his car. It was the big Chevy Impala. I then took a trip with Betty - a short vacation - to a place near Port Jervis, New York - on the Delaware River. We rented a small bungalow on the river. I remember the events of our arrival. I guess I was pretty romantic (something she and her mother commented on later). When we got out of the car, and walked to the door, I picked her up and carried her across the threshold. That must have been the most dramatic beginning of a love affair I ever had. At this point I was becoming quite a Don Juan. We traveled a lot together and my relationship with her was the longest running in my life.

At a lunch stop along the Big Sur		At Golden Gate Park

Betty and I were on again - off again for years. In New York we did not live together because she had two sons and one was pretty young. She didn't think it would be proper. But I often slept over and sometimes stayed with her a week at a time. At the time she lived in an old tenement building up in the Bronx near Van Cortland Park. It was very nice up there.

Crazy Neighbors

In the old apartment I remember her next door neighbors - the woman's name was Fay - I'm not sure of Fay's husband's name. They were real characters. He fixed TV sets and and had a shop where he fixed and made guns and ammunition. Fay just sat around a lot. If we dropped in to visit we would sit in the kitchen. Fay's kitchen table was such a mess of stuff that you could barely find a spot to put a cup down. They were both packrats and there was junk all over the apartment. There were TV sets all over the living room spilling into the hallway, not to watch but in various stages of repair.

Later Betty moved into a newer building in the same Coop development and I don't think we saw these people again. We were companions for what was probably 15 years, even after I moved to Boston and she stayed in New York. We went to California together a few times. We visited my sister Annette and traveled independently also.

My sister's friend Clara Sargenti (looking in telescope),
my sister, Annette, and Betty
probably at Monterey

One time she did live with me in Los Angeles (for a month) when I had a contract job there in "The Valley." She was not working at the time (she was a teacher) so instead of staying at a motel I took an apartment that rented on a monthly basis and flew  Betty out to stay with me.

We traveled all over and when I moved to Boston we continued our relationship. I stayed with her at least once a month for a weekend, and she sometimes came to Boston to stay with me as well.

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Now at 66 I am writing this memoir and have to recount that what is now probably five years ago, I thought it was time to find Betty and perhaps suggest a reunion even though she would be in her early seventies. I knew where she lived, she had stayed in touch with my good friend Howard in New York - thus I got her phone number. She was, as I actually knew anyway, living in Los Angeles where she had moved years earlier, to be near her son Larry. I may have stayed in touch with her on and off. Anyway, by now I decided I had been a fool about Betty and that I was not again likely to ever find a better companion for the rest of my life, so I called her and spoke to her.

I remember our conversation fairly well, she was as sweet with me as ever and surely did want to have a reunion. But I noticed something about her that was disturbing. Betty was not only a beautiful woman but also very intelligent. Yet she did not seem to comprehend that her being in Los Angles and me near San Francisco meant a long trip for one of us. She seemed to think I should just drive over and see her - meaning just drop over. I could not comprehend that she did not realize that I was almost 500 miles away, and that California is a big state! It seemed strange, but I chalked it up to her being in her 70's now, so maybe her geography was a little mixed up.  Unfortunately it was much worse than that.

So I called her again, (as it turned out) one final time. She probably seemed even more discombobulated. So either then or soon thereafter I consulted with our mutual friend, who informed me that he heard, through her son, that she had died, rapidly and mysteriously of a degenerative brain disease. That explained her strange behavior at discussing our getting together.

Apparently it got terrible towards the end. I may have spoken to Larry once about it, or remember the description as relayed through Howard. Needless to say, I am terribly sad about this!

► see more photos at my memorial website for Betty

Dr. Jane

(a pseudo name - the woman is very alive and well today and easy to find by her real name).

I met Jane at a concert at Symphony Hall in Boston. I used to be a regular there and got box seats by arriving 1/2 an hour before tickets went on sale. Cancellations were offered at reduced prices to us last minute show-ups (seats not guaranteed - but sometimes excellent). We were therefore both sitting in a prime box seat directly above the orchestra on the left side of the hall. We got to talking and I guess during intermission or at some other opportunity I asked Jane if she was married or otherwise attached and she was not so I proposed we meet again. We exchanged phone numbers. She was about 30 years old.

It turned out that Jane was in fact a doctor in residency at a somewhat remote state hospital on the outskirts of Boston. She lived in housing provided by the institution for resident physicians, and in fact it was a nice little private cottage in the country. She invited me over for lunch, I guess and  after a while I discovered she was pretty interested in having sex with me. However because of the situation where she lived, other staff might call on her at her cottage, we decided our tryst should at least commence at my little apartment in Harvard Square which it did.

Eventually she came over almost every night, but went home afterward. I remember her car. She had a Blue Fiat Spyder. It was quite a sports car. Eventually we traveled around New England. I liked to drive that car, although it was hell on my back.

One of the most remarkable coincidences about Jane was that she was from Berkeley (where my sister Annette lived). But the coincidence was absolutely remarkable when she told me where she had lived with her parents. It was exactly 1 block from my sister's house.

Later on, on one of my many visits to Berkeley to see my sister, I found her. She had a nice apartment in a valley right before the Oakland Hills just to the North of the entrance to the Callahan Tunnel. I visited her there several times. Then, (back in Boston), I heard about the big Oakland Hills fire. By then we had broken up for good, but next time I was in the area I went to see the fire devastation myself. It had just recently happened so it was quite a sight. And, I remember, all that was left of her apartment complex was the cinderblock rectangles that outlined the foundation of the garages underneath. I know she go out safely as did most people down there.

Now, there is a whole new (and much uglier) apartment complex where her place was.

....

Mary (name changed)

Mary was a woman I worked with at the lab at Harvard. She was a post-doctorate fellow and was working with us like several others. I was the electronics engineer for the lab and once a week gave a private class to anyone interested in the more technical aspects of the research work we did.

One day I must have been late and pretty tired and just barely got to the lab on time for my class. What I remember was that Mary was sort of, or already quite interested in me (for other enterprises than science) and sort of let me know. After that she became very friendly, I would say almost amorous but since she was a married woman I paid no attention to any amorous ideas I might otherwise have myself had.

But Mary was a clever (and promiscuous) woman and was determined to get me - so on my birthday - which I did not celebrate otherwise - but did take off from work, she called me and asked me if she could come over - she had a present for me. I said sure, why not, it was early afternoon. So she arrived and had a glass crystal or some other nice item representing global wisdom or something like that, and a card. The card was the clincher. It said something (she probably wrote herself) but was imprinted with the saying that ends in "... if not now, when?"

This, her amorous "vibes" and I suppose the way she looked at me, plus the fact that I did not have a girlfriend and was probably very horny" resulted in the truth hitting me. She was to me an attractive woman, petite and cute.

Thus began our affair of "dangerous liaisons (which were really not so dangerous).  In fact we were so obvious that everybody in the lab knew what was going on. Only her husband, who was a young Md. (and often on late hour duty) and probably also kind of a "dork" was, perhaps, clueless.

This went on for quite a while and eventually may have contributed to my third breakdown, and hospitalization at McClean's Hospital in Belmont.

Maryann (name changed) - The Women I Married,

I lived with Maryann for quite a while along with her son but we split up - a few times, and then I went ahead and married her! That was (for me) a mistake. We stayed married for a year or two - I think. There were some nice things about it (being married did suit me) - but not to this woman.

I met Maryann sometime around 1982 when I briefly lived in Framingham Massachusetts. I believe I worked at NEC (Nippon Electric Company). My office (and lab) was located in Natick, just down the road.

She was a neighbor and not unattractive. After a while she and I got friendly and eventually started an affair. She had two children, John and a Michelle. We eventually rented a duplex apartment in Framingham with two bedrooms and a finished basement - large enough for all of us. However Michelle, although she did not dislike me - moved back to her father's family in a town not too far away where an aunt was willing to take in.

However John and I were "buddies" - and I related to him well. John had lots of psychological problems and had even been sent to a state high school for mentally disturbed children. Otherwise he was a good kid and we had things in common, plus I made a good step-father for him. I was able to keep him under control (mostly) although I was in continuous touch with his state assigned counselor.

Eventually I let John move into the finished basement so he could have more privacy and I set up and office in his bedroom. (I had just got my first job as a contracting technical writer - and my first PC, so I needed a place to work). Since I was a fisherman (and at the time owned a canoe), we would go fishing a lot - sometimes even with his mom. This was nice since it was a family affair we could share.

Maryann was not very intellectual, (Maryann's line of work was as a cosmetician and she worked for a cosmetic company as a store-to-store display rep.) but she was a cyclist and we went on many Youth Hostelling trips, some of which I led - and by assignment - she co-led). So we shared this in common. One of my favorite destinations was Cape Ann, just North of the Boston area. We usually drove there, parked the car and cycled around the cape for the day. So we did have something in common.

We also went camping together for which purpose I bought a big tent and other convenient equipment. For some reason it was on one of these camping trips that our fighting started getting serious. Maryann had a talent for yelling and I countered by yelling back. I had never had such encounters before and never yelled at my girlfriends - much less anybody. Maryann taught me how and it got pretty loud. This continued at home, where it eventually got us evicted.

However before that I got to know her family. Her father, Gordon, lived in Vermont where Maryann was born. Although Gordon (Gordie) had been a "tough guy" and was originally a black jacket motorcycle driver, by the time I met him he had reformed and was remarried. Maryann also has a slew of brothers and one sister (Penny) who was sweet but had a habit of borrowing money and never paying it back.

Gordie really liked me. In spite of his black jacket past he had gone to college and had at least a bachelors degree, so he was very pleased to know his daughter had found a college educated companion. I liked Gordie too and we were friends.

Around that time - for some reason - I decided to marry Maryann (after living with her for all those years). Since we had been kicked out of our duplex, and separated, I lived in a fairly nice high-rise apartment complex still in Framingham. When we were re-united and got married she moved in with me.

At one point I thought it would be nice to get her a gift, and since she always recounted having started piano lessons as a kid, but never had a chance to get very far, I bought her a pretty nice upright piano. She sort of used it but not a whole lot.

One thing I remember fondly was coming home to a home cooked dinner and (surprisingly), going to church with her. She was nominally Episcopalian and went to a particularly lovely church in a place called Southboro. The "ambiance" of the church was very special. The minister there was "Gene" and he was a very "regular" guy. I even liked his sermons since he was a very intelligent and worldly man. The after church socials were always enjoyable. The Christmas Eve midnight mass was always beautiful and I especially liked those.

The rest of the congregation was the usual straight laced small town redneck variety and I don't think they appreciated Gene. After he retired he had open house on the stuff in his basement and we found out that he was a downhill skier and also loved to build large model dollhouses!

There wasn't a whole lot that we needed there and eventually he moved away and a new minister took over, unfortunately not his assistant minister (an equally open minded and intellectual woman). Instead the conservative crowd that the church served chose a real dumb guy. We went to one of his services and decided not to got again.

Back to family matters, we were living in the apartment in Framingham when John announced to us that he was going to be a father. This could have been a disaster but - fortunately was just the opposite. This was because the young woman's mother was a divorced, and open minded person, and she also liked John. So she invited John to move into her home and even made a special baby room. The baby arrived and John and his companion would visit us cuddling this little baby. It seemed to do John a lot of good to have this relationship. He seemed to "mellow out" and become much more reliable. I hope it lasted.

In the meantime Maryann and I started having our marital problems. Things were getting bad when the news arrived that Gordie was critically ill and expected to die soon. He was in a major medical center in New Hampshire. Since we both cared a lot for Gordie, I got a leave of absence from my job and we went there and moved into a hotel for a while. Without going into details his heart was not going to hold out much longer, although until the day before he died he still got up (with my aid) to take a shower.

That was the only time I met all of Maryann's siblings who came together there at his deathbed. Gordon didn't have much to bequeath, but gave something to everybody (including me). He had recently purchased a fleece lined leather bombardiers jacked from the exclusive outfitters L. L. Bean. Except perhaps for his watch (he gave to one of his sons) this was probably the most valuable possessions he had. I still have it, although it is of no use in California, it was very nice in Boston when it got near zero degrees sometime.

While I was planning to divorce Maryann, I decided to drop the notion for then, and we acted like the married couple we were. Gordie lived almost a month in the hospital, and mostly we slept there too, leaving only if someone else was there. There was a reclining chair one of us slept in near Gordie, and the other of us slept in the waiting room. This was allowed for a dying person and for immediate family. Happily Gordie never heard anything about us being or planning to be divorced.

After Gordon did pass away, we went back to Framingham where I did pursue divorce proceedings and ended our long on and off relationship once and for all.

I hope John did better than us.

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