A Letter Intercepted

true story

One day, my junior year of high school, in the Fall of 1964, near the end of the day, the intercom came on and and the secretary asked that I stop by the office before I leave school. What on earth could that be for? I thought, as some of my classmates chimed in with curiosity.  But I honestly could not guess.

 

When I stopped by the office I was handed a number ten business envelope, with the return address from the Congress of Racial Equality in New York. What was this? I sometimes sent away for things, such as sample magazines, but did I write to them? Why would they send something to me at school?

 

When I got by myself, I opened the envelope and saw it was a letter from Lynn Shapiro, my forbidden friend who was now a freshman at college, at N.Y.U. Of Course. What else would it be? She had written with a plan for me to come and visit her. Basically, I would take a train to and from New York. I would tell my parents I was spending the weekend at the home of one of my friends from U.S.Y. My father would drive to to someone's home in Sharon or Milton, as he had before. From there I would take the train to New York, and she would meet my train, and bring me back to the train at end of the weekend.

 

She was confidant of her plan, but not really confidant of me. Was I a baby or a grown up? She challenged me, somewhat unfairly. Pretty clever, she declared of her ruse to "get the letter by the witch," meaning my mother, which also bothered me, even though my parents were wrong to have forbidden our relationship, with my mother the henchman who had to administer their joint judgment.

 

And what was our relationship? I can only speak for myself. I think I was a budding lesbian who was not ready to go down that path. I was attracted to her, but I was defining myself as a bisexual at that time. I may also have made a decision just not to have any lesbian relations yet, a decision made out of ignorance.  But I did like her with a lesbian element on my part.

 

The whole summer before she went away to college, every weekday afternoon, I would meet her at two o'clock when she got off work at Savage's Deli, and we would have lunch there and yack for an hour or more. I would fib to my mother on the phone before I left the house. On weekends, Lynn's friend Mark, who had become my friend, too, would pick me up at my house, like a date, but drop me off at Lynn's. I seldom lied to my parents, but because I knew they were wrong, and because I liked her so much, I lied to them repeatedly to be with her.

 

Then, she went off to college, and I must have been a fickle person, because when the letter came to me at my high school, I was quite surprised at what it was. Nevertheless, I silently joined in the scheming for the next few hours, until I got home. Then, fifteen minutes after I got home, my mother sought me out and asked if I had something to tell her.

 

"No," I said, totally unsuspecting that my mother knew the contents of the letter, too. The principal had opened it, called my mother, sent her a copy, then resealed it, and had the secretary give it to me.

 

My mother "positively forbid" me from ever seeing Lynn again, which she had already previously done, but this time she affixed a major threat. If I was ever caught seeing her, meeting her, communicating with her, my mother would not pay for my education.

 

"What! That's so unfair!" I was stunned. She knew how to control me. My education was really important because I had already imagined a life for myself with a job teaching college in social studies -- to have a steady income while I was also a writer. I would need an advanced degree to teach at a college. I had the whole thing planned out, vividly. I needed my parents to help me.

 

I did not write back to Lynn, although a couple months later, when she came home on a school break, I went over to her house to visit her. She had cooled off toward me, because I had not come through.  We were both reserved toward each other.  She seemed to be doing well at college.  That was the last time I saw her. 

 

Decades later, my mother apologized, which I appreciated.