My situation with girls in the 1940s and the early ’50s wasn’t good—to put it mildly. It started in eighth grade with a mad crush on Cookie Riedbord, but Cookie wouldn’t go out with me because I was too short—at least four inches shorter than Cookie, who had a mad crush on the high school quarterback, Pete Neft. I was about five one then. Now I’m six feet, but this is now, and that was then. I moved on in high school to an even madder crush on Judy Gotterer. She was the star of the class play, a cheerleader, and the editor of the school paper, along with being gorgeous. Judy wouldn’t go out with me because I was too young—six months younger than she was.
Recently, my daughter, who is a stand-up comedian, was appearing in Pittsburgh. Some of my friends from the Pittsburgh Playhouse showed up and told her that all the girls had a crush on me when I was there. I knew about one girl, but I had no idea about anyone else. Then I came across a high school graduation picture of a girl I’d known since kindergarten. On the back of her picture she wrote, “All the girls had a crush on you.” I was oblivious to that as well. I’ve never assumed that if a girl or woman smiles and is friendly to me it means anything other than she’s friendly to me. Oh, well…
One of my attitudes about sex and romance that caused me a lot of problems first occurred in high school. A beautiful girl transferred to our school from Tennessee; I asked her to the prom, and she accepted. She wasn’t older or taller than I was. We began to date. I don’t even remember kissing her.
One evening she felt she should tell me she had been married. She was only seventeen when I knew her. I took her to the prom, but in my Jewish-raised orthodox mind, all bets for anything serious like marriage were off.
The attitude of no sex before marriage, for girls anyway, was the dominant moral code of the fifties. This changed completely in the sixties. My big problem was that I couldn’t make the change. I couldn’t imagine marrying anyone who wasn’t a virgin. As years went by, close to twenty-five years, anyway, this became a serious problem, because there didn’t seem to be any virgins.
Sometime in the sixties when I was still in the throes of this “you have to be a virgin before marriage” issue, my girlfriend said to me, “Aren’t you happy for me that I’ve had a lot of wonderful sexual experiences?” It was a rare instance when I was rendered speechless.
Later in the sixties, I went out with a girl who said she was a virgin, and I believed her. I actually considered marrying her, but I realized that although the woman I was going to marry should be a virgin, maybe a marriage should have more going for it than a woman’s virginity. Quite hypocritically, I didn’t apply that rule to myself. I believe I saw the light when someone asked me if I wanted my daughter to be a virgin prior to marriage. Immediately, I said she should do whatever makes her happy that doesn’t land her in jail. I couldn’t have a double standard when it came to my own kid, so that affected my attitude quite a bit. I believe it’s a good idea to try to personalize everyone’s situation. It can’t help but raise your empathy level.
My attitude toward virginity really went away when I got in touch with my mortality. It terms of being bothered by something, mortality easily trumped lack of virginity.