During the Christmas of, I guess, 1960, I fell in love for the first time with a girl who sang.  Her name was Alexandra and we called her Zan.  She gave me my best Christmas present ever.  No, don’t be gross.  We were only twelve.

 

Actual love is a totally unexpected sensation, and one for which few twelve year old boys in those far more innocent days were remotely prepared, least of all me.  It had been a harsh year to that point, anyway, and Christmas wouldn’t be as much fun either, and my world was changing. 

 

While I had not believed in Santa Claus since I was six, I had a little routine I went through each year I was convinced brought me the most lucre under the tree, and it essentially involved telling myself I believed in Santa Claus even if I knew I did not.   It was a little fiction that played well, for the most part, with the elderly relatives.     

 

Don’t snort.  To that point, it seemed to have worked.  Christmas was a time where our family went officially bananas, and I as the youngest reaped the biggest harvest of goodies.  An embarrassing pile of cardboard and wrapping paper surrounded me each holiday, and I traditionally looked forward to the day as much as any greedy little twerp who reveled in the accumulation of absolute crap. 

 

My oldest brother had announced a year previous to the recent Thanksgiving that his rebellion against society would modestly begin by only getting necessary and useful gifts for his family that Christmas.  (This was the first symptom of the disease that carried him, eventually, to his current status as an artist) This was unfortunately the year I became old enough to feel the first pangs of guilt for merely accompanying my parents individually while they purchased presents that would appear for others with my imprint on the card.  I saved and got him a flashlight or something equally pointless but, by my standards, expensive whereas he got me a plastic crayon sharpener either at the drug store or from a box of cereal, he was evasive as to which.  I hadn’t used crayons for years.   I could, however, figure out the cost difference and was steamed for months.  This year, I planned to get him a used pencil that I had chewed on.  Maybe just the eraser. 

                     

But he wouldn’t be there for Christmas in 1960.  My two oldest brothers were in the Army, and it was a tense time.  They had both been called up over something in Berlin, I think, and one of them was now in Wiesbaden.  The third brother, the next oldest to me, was spending only the actual holiday with the parents and I, and would be off with friends for the rest of his college vacation.  I adored my brothers, and the thought of them not being there for Christmas was horrific.  That they might be killed fighting the Russians was merely an additional annoyance.  I didn’t like growing up.  There were too many unpleasant shocks involved that shattered the things that should always just BE, like our Christmas.  Like my Christmas, anyway.

 

But, like I said, this had been a rough year anyway, not the least of which was that one of the girls in my class now had breasts.  Only Annette Funicello’s were the cause of more talk in the 6th grade.   

 

First noticed, they had startled me so much my eyes followed Ellen's chest as she crossed the room before us, descended the aisle next to my desk, cut across the row behind me to her seat in the back corner.  I believe I stared for an uncomfortably prolonged period, because the drone of the homeroom teacher hiccupped briefly, a break in the usual background noise at Friends Academy.  I was flabbergasted.  A new entry into my life experiences. 

 

At the height of the Playboy phenomenon - especially then - breasts held an uncomfortably high attention level among American males, and I felt compelled more than nature nudged to appreciate and salivate after these items.  They were something that I felt sure I would demand in my women, should the situation ever arise in which my feelings in such matters were to count. As it happened, despite my resolution in this regard, my eventual emotional and sexual ties to women were dictated by totally different things.  Mostly, the eyes.  But the smile, the skin, sense of humor, and carriage of confidence more than anything else.  If the woman can sing, there is no mast that can hold me.   Well, okay, legs too.

 

It was a Christmas party at a classmate’s house in Mattapoisett.  It was one of those dark, sweet-smelling houses on the water, with a huge fireplace, and lots of cake and caffeine.  I think we had reserved our class exchange of gifts for this social event, where we drew names from a hat, and there was a price cap.   There was a record player, and we danced.  Well, they danced.   I didn’t dance.  No, not me.

 

Zan was slight, undeveloped, and an absolutely lovely girl, but this is clear only in hindsight. She had puttered up out of kindness and asked me to dance, because I was painfully shy.   I was flabbergasted, embarrassed, and tongue-tied, which is to say, I was dismissive and rude to her.  I thought being truthful and just saying no was the way to handle it.  I should have explained that despite four geologic ages at Miss Wilcox's Dancing School, I could not dance if my life depended on it.  I was often under the impression my life did depend upon it based upon the threats issued me by my brothers and my mother.

 

"Nobody will ever invite you to anything when you're older," was the frequent closure to such discussions.  This was less than upsetting.  I had my gods and I had my plans and while not coherent enough to pass muster as a dream, exactly, I knew my future did not include Massachusetts and especially not this particular corner of it on Buzzards Bay.  The invites would or would not pile up on my doorstep; I would not be there in any case.  So there. 

 

Besides, Zan did not have breasts.  Ellen did.  So where was Ellen?  I could ask her about something and talk.   Cool.  I looked around.

 

Zan walked away, blushing in embarrassment.  It was a Christmas party, and if nothing else, this seemed out of the spirit of the thing to refuse a request to dance.  I felt awful, mostly because I had unexpectedly hurt someone, but partially because I was such an ass and didn’t know what to do about it.  Much worse, Ellen was surrounded by the guys and wouldn’t talk to me.   A clue for later life, surely, but I was dense.  So there indeed.

 

Later on, perhaps nearing nine o’clock, parental chaperones herded us into the living room.  Zan stood in front of an octet of girls, an assemblage flensed off from our all-school Glee Club.

 

Our Glee Club was, politely, a joke.  A bad joke.  A sadistic torture forced upon fellow students so that prep schools would be impressed with the extra-curricular activity of the applicant. Normally, it only lacerated the aural landscape at school assemblies, but then - in a badly advised move by the PTA to involve parents more - weekly assemblies to which the community and parents were invited were added to their schedule. These ceremonies were entirely enforced affairs for family and extended victims to endure, and the very thought of thirty mostly tone-deaf  children fourteen and under was probably enough for most adults to fortify themselves at the glove compartment bar before assembling in the gymnasium for the punishment. 

 

During the previous year’s season, wherein a medley of current show tunes often became scientifically indistinguishable from a playback of marsupial torture and rodent flayings, the authorities quickly decided that, this year, a school that taught music ought, somehow, to be able to keep a song alive.  The Music Director was ‘encouraged’ to improve the group sound.

 

This was not easy.  Since the first salvo of sound nearly always curdled the water dripping from the shiny new gym’s ceiling, the general embarrassment of the Glee Club further horrified the appalled recipients of their vocal artistry, whose appreciation filtered off into hollow  applause - carefully metered by each audience member so as not to encourage an encore or one second more - followed by a lot of fidgeting and the attempt by the music director to pull the first notes of the second number from the constricted throats of  the Glee Club. 

 

By forceps and hardly breathing at all, much less correctly, the second song would painfully emerge assisted by a stomping beat and vocal encouragement from the Music Director not considered too loud on the oar deck of a trireme for problem slaves.  Even so, the pianist was instructed to rest her left foot on the left pedal, rest the right foot on the left, and view  any chords not on the first beat as cultural distractions and best avoided, saving all energy for the assault on that first beat.  In any and all cases, a musical event to forget, however impossible. 

 

Just like the military  eventually figured out that only fifteen percent of combat soldiers ever actually did any fighting, Glee Club directors established  that eighty-five percent of their  members never did any singing, and for the same reason that eighty-five percent of combat soldiers did not fire their weapons: they can’t live with the guilt. 

 

Also like the military, Glee Club directors developed Special Forces for public combat by corralling the valid fifteen percent and putting them in a special group - often an Octet called something like The Meistersingers - to “add variety,” we were told with a straight face.  This group would be pushed out in front as often as possible at all ceremonies for which the Glee Club was the ostensive entertainment.   Listening to these talented older kids sing was reputed to be much better and merely boring, rather than curling hair in the nasal cavity like the entire Glee Club did, but I had avoided all concerts that year, and had never heard this new group.

 

It was Zan who rather nervously came forward to sing at this stilted but altogether typical party.   She smiled shyly at her classmates and friends.  I had just flensed that distinction for her.

 

In the America of December, 1960, John Kennedy was still alive and was still a god.   We had fallout shelters, or the parents discussed building them.  The Kingston Trio and The Highwaymen were the big groups, but Bobby Darin and even Fabian were still hot recording acts.   If you impregnated a girl you got married and damned well endured it.  We believed our government, and admired our leaders.  We actually cared about high school football.  Nobody had heard of Vietnam.  Most shocking to those too young to remember, Christmas decorations didn’t go up till after Thanksgiving in proper homes and stores.

 

 I was then unblemished with liquor or drugs, the prospect of sex, or a clear idea what any of those things were.  I had not even thought about these things much.  I mean, I was twelve, and it was 1960 and my childhood had only minutes left, and what cracked it all open was Zan.

 

After an appropriate hush, the octet started to sing I Wonder As I Wander, with the first verse sung by all eight, hitting hummed harmony just before the second verse, which Zan did alone.  My back rippled at her first notes.  She had a lilting, powerful, beautiful adult voice, utterly surprising from such a small person, something never revealed in our six years of acquaintance.  It was a moment as powerful as any since encountered, helped with drugs, liquor and a very clear idea of what sex is.  I cannot entirely explain it, but suddenly I knew things, knew them as surely as the goatherd did having stumbled into a temple of the Mystery.  Knew things I had only sensed before. 

 

Immediately, for example, I was re-tutored in the smell of young women, their hair's fragrance and the wash of their breath as they turned their faces towards you and how a smile is all in the eyes, but it was more than that.  It was, I am afraid, as close to a religious experience as I will ever have.

 

Perhaps because she was as shy as I was, or because I was staring at her like a demented basset hound, Zan found me a friendly face towards which to sing, and she gazed into my eyes above her lyric sheet.  I can safely assure you that no sexual moment I have ever shared defeats in memory that intimacy and remembrance of her eyes, dark hazel or green before the advent of colored contact lenses, widely spaced in a delicate face, high cheekbones framed with dark red hair, all lit by the flames of a driftwood fire in the huge fireplace, the whole room in lush Christmas decoration and smelling of pine and salt water and cocoa and hot food.  And that ethereal voice.... all of which sounds hackneyed and not a little treacly but it is also true.  A sweet-scissored voice cutting aside what seemed a cowl around me.  

 

It was an opening to another world, and although I have tried to explain this coherently all my life to a wife, lovers, some friends, I cannot even make it sound important or relevant, much less an epiphanic moment of excitement, even to myself.  Nothing has proven to be so frustrating.  Although I keep trying; my punishment in this life is the inability to explain its most magic moment.  A moment absolutely chaste and pure built upon unknowing lust and spiritual need.  I was in love with the sound of a woman's voice and with the thought of a woman who could manipulate words by tone and inflection and shape my life, my view of life, through that magic vessel of expression.  I once married such a woman.

 

I am not clear on the precise method here at work, but Ellen was now and forever revealed as a giggling bimbo.   Yes, big breasts.  But no voice, a child.   I had heard.  Zan knew that which I needed to know.   And I needed to know now if she would dance with me after this interlude.  Talk with me.  Something.   I knew she was speaking only to me when she sang.   Certain of it.

 

I’m... pretty sure, anyway.  Never found out.  The octet did a few songs, and at the end Zan was surrounded by adoring friends.    I caught her eye and smiled and started to say something but her attention was drawn elsewhere and that was that.  I turned away and bumped into Ellen, who smiled at me and started to talk.  She was a nice kid. 

 

My parents arrived to pick me up and I went home to the holidays and the empty spot under the mantle where my brothers’ stockings would not hang this year. 

 

 

The graphic in this story is unknown and un-credited but is not mine, unfortunately.  If anyone knows whence it came, please advise.  Thank you.

 

Zan That Christmas condensed and excerpted from

Padanaram Harbor and Other Stories

First written 1968

Offered 1997 Boulder Lout

Copyright 2002