Jenny the Midfielder

“I am not going to be this person in a year.”

I made this silent vow as my parents’ station wagon, stuffed with all my worldly possessions, pulled out of the driveway. Getting away from Harrisburg had been my goal since we moved there six years before. Now it was done.

I’d dated desultorily through tenth grade, then decided that my only chance to get out was to go to a distant college. That meant really hitting the books. Not that one cannot study and socialize, but I couldn’t, or at least I didn’t. Dad and mom made decent money and could pay the tuition, room, and board. But everything else was up to me. I’d worked since I got a paper route at age 13 and had saved my pennies, but I had to be frugal, especially since books were expensive. I put myself on a $10 a week allowance.

When I arrived at Dartmouth in September, 1961, I was ready to start living all aspects of life. Classes were tough, since everyone was smart and focused. I had to work harder than I did in high school. Still I wanted to have a social life.

Alas, that was more easily said than done. Hanover then contained effectively no girls, the only ones under thirty being faculty wives or children thereof (“townies”). Adultery was an exotic sport well beyond my skill and the townies were much in demand.

Fortunately there were mixers, where we freshmen were bussed to nearby women’s or coed colleges for dances. Colby and Green Mountain Junior College, Mt. Holyoke, Middlebury Smith, and UVM were all destinations for us, and Dartmouth was a destination for them (or at least the women’s colleges).

I paid my $4 for the bus to Green Mountain that October Saturday with hopes of meeting someone. I wore thick horn-rimmed glasses of the Buddy Holly type, was unathletic but trim, had neatly trimmed black hair and a decent complexion. My voice had even changed, so I was a generally acceptable package for the era.

My standards for a girl were not exotic: I valued conversation over looks, interest in politics over interest in partying, and preferred thin with long-hair, the current style.

After a while I spotted a girl in a dark dress among a small gaggle. Like me, she wore glasses. She turned out to be a better dancer than I but we couldn’t talk over the music. I asked her if there was somewhere we could go that was quieter. We went out into the lobby and sat on the stone stairs leading to the second floor.

Her name was Jenny. She was from a steel town near Philadelphia and also wanted to get away, although she had lived there all her life. We walked around the gym and talked about our interests. She told me about the college, which she liked for its opportunity to learn but found isolated.

The subject of our high-school research projects came up. I had discovered a book in our municipal library that purported to be the autobiography of a woman who had an affair with Warren Harding when he was President. I checked it out and wrote away to an encyclopedia company that offered quick research reports for a fee, to find out if it was real. Not only was it real, but the story was pretty risqué, most famously the part about having sex in a White House closet. The book was published in 1927, after Harding died, and was a minor sensation. I regaled Jenny with this story.

She topped me. Not only did she know the book, she had read Dorothy Parker’s review of it for her senior paper (on Dorothy Parker). I was very impressed.

The bus’s horn honked and it was time for me to leave. I asked Jenny for her phone number and she gave it to me. Monday night I called her to ask her to come to Hanover for the weekend football game, but she had a class that ran past the departure time of the college-sponsored bus.

“Why don’t you come to Poultney?” she said. “We could study together in our library.”

“Will that cause you a problem?” I asked, thinking that I would stick out like a sore thumb at an all-girls college

“Nope, there are usually a couple of guys around on weekends. You’ll be safe.”

“Is there a cheap place I can stay? I’m on a pretty tight budget.”

“There are a couple of places that have rooms they rent out weekends. I’ll see if I can find one for you.”

She called on Tuesday to say she had gotten a room for me for Friday and Saturday nights, Since I would be hitchhiking, we decided that, when I arrived, I would go to the gym and call her from the pay phone.

The thumbing was pretty good. I got one ride all the way across Vermont on Route 4 to Route 30, but it took three rides and a long walk to get from there to the gym. I was on the phone around 3.

Jenny seemed glad to see me. We went to a house owned by the woman she worked for at the library. Mrs. Dwyer had a second-floor bedroom that she rented out to visitors. I passed muster and received a front-door key and instructions not to make noise when I came in, and please do that before 12. She would provide breakfast if I wanted it, at 7:30. Otherwise, I was on my own.

I took my books and we walked to the library. Jenny worked at the reserve desk and had a small personal bin there. We went to a very visible location in the reading room and spent the next three hours reading, sitting next to each other. When it was time for dinner we left our books in her reserve desk bin.

The dining hall was table-service. I told Jenny that I had tried to find out more about Britton and Harding but could only find the Dorothy Parker review. She said we’d probably exhausted that topic and let’s talk politics. We had the same liberal views and she knew a great deal about national and Pennsylvania politics.

After dinner she walked me around the campus. It was dark by then, and chilly. I’d travelled with my windbreaker but she wasn’t wearing one, so we went to her dorm. I remained in the living room, of course, while she went upstairs.

Now warm and dressed appropriately, we resumed our walk and wound up back at the gym. There was a secluded niche and we drifted to what I said looked like a White House closet. She snorted. We leaned against the wall and kissed. I pulled her buttocks toward me and she wiggled but didn’t break the kiss. I felt my erection stir and she must have felt it too, but we kept kissing.

We broke off the kiss. “Thank you, that was wonderful,” I said. “We should do more of this.”

“There are places in the library we could go. I don’t work weekends but we can’t spend all day there. There’s a field hockey game in the morning, we’ll go to that, then we can have lunch and study in the afternoon.”

She walked me back to Mrs. Dwyer’s and kissed me good night.

Women in skirts fighting with sticks for control of a hard white ball on green grass on a brisk fall morning should be seen for the first time with someone you want to get physical with. Jenny had played in high school and was on the practice squad, which meant scrimmaging with the team but not playing in the game. Afterward we were invited to join the team for lunch in the dining hall. We sat with the midfielder whose nose had been dislocated in the first half.

By 2 p.m. we were back in the library. We picked up our books and Jenny took me to a carrel in the stacks that had a lockable door. It was one of several reserved for students who needed to keep research material in one place. This one was not in use. Jenny had the key and we settled in.

Within a half hour we acknowledged that we weren’t going to get a lot of studying done. She sat on my lap and we necked, steaming up our glasses. Illicit thrills like this were new to me but Jenny seemed quite comfortable. We kissed and began to touch each other. She loosened my tie and stroked my neck, then opened the top buttons of my shirt and flicked my nipples. I held her head as we kissed and ran my hands up her back. I made a successful pass at her left breast but she wouldn’t let me open her blouse.

We had dinner in the dining hall and returned to the carrel for more necking. This time she let me open her blouse and touch both breasts. She brushed my erection through my pants but didn’t give it any further attention.

The bell sounded at 9 and we were out. Back at the gym alcove we pressed against each other some more. She touched my cock through my pants, which increased the passion of our kissing, but it was so cold that we decided to call it a night and she walked me back to Mrs. Dwyer’s. I got a very warm kiss goodnight.

Sunday breakfast and there wasn’t another guy in sight. We had our own table, even though it was set for four. We walked around the campus holding hand until 11, which was when I had to get on the road. We kissed prominently and I stuck out my thumb, heading north.

Jenny wasn’t in when I called Monday night, but she called back around 10. The guy who answered the phone yelled out “Pete, it’s your girlfriend!” which didn’t bother me at all.

“I had a wonderful time this weekend. You made it very easy to be with you. Will you come to Hanover next weekend?”

“Peter, I can’t. We have an away game next weekend and I’ve been promoted to substitute. The following weekend is Parents Weekend. But the weekend before Thanksgiving is okay, except that I have to be around in case they need me on the team. Can you come down here again?”

“Sure. Do you think Mrs. Dwyer’s room will be available?”

“She’s already rented the small room, but she has a larger room open. It’s $2 more. Is that okay?”

I arrived around 4 on Friday afternoon after a freezing trip. I’d stood for more than an hour outside White River Junction in the cold. I probably looked less like a clean-cut college kid than an axe murderer in my parka. When I got to Route 30 the same thing happened, and I was lucky to get to Poultney before dark.

Mrs. Dwyer seemed glad to see me and showed me the room. Unlike the upstairs room, this one had its own bathroom and, being at the end of the house, its own entrance. There was also a telephone, which I could use if I didn’t make any long distance calls.

“It was pretty rough hitching, Jenny,” I said when she answered the phone. “I’m chilled to the bone. Can we get something to eat now?”