Tony Bennett will be 82 years old this year, and he still keeps up a very demanding performance schedule. To say that I am envious of Tony Bennett’s continuing success as an artist in two different forms and his apparent good health at an advanced age is indisputable. One of the things Bennett says in the film, which really touched me, is—and I am reconstructing this quote from memory— “I am very happy with the way my life has turned out.” Tony Bennett, a man also very involved with the civil rights movements in this country; Tony Bennett, a very impressive human being.
Reviewing One’s Life
How many of us can say that we are very happy with the way our lives have turned out? I find that I spend a lot of time reviewing my life these days and thinking of the ways my life could have turned out differently—and yes, in some respects, better. It’s an exercise that my mind forces me into, in part because of my age, my circumstances, that is, health, and the fact that I am very analytical and very curious, traits that I think go along with my being a writer.
One of the conclusions I have come to is that the decisions that we make during our early years have everything to do with the person we are during our later years. A related conclusion is that even the slightest change in a decision, especially during the early years, will result in a major change in the outcome of a life. When I look, for example, at decisions I made as regards women, these conclusions become vivid in my mind.
Decision Means Turning Point
A clarification is very important before I go much further with this discussion. I am using the word “decision” to mean turning points in my life resulting from choices that I made. Seen from the distance of time these decisions or choices look really large, but at the time the decisions were made, many of them did not appear so monumental.
Part of this clarification has to deal with the nature of the word “decision” itself. Many times the decisions we make appear to be made for us and are the result of pressures coming from our families and others important in our lives. Many times the decisions are coming from very deep seated sources fundamental to our psychological makeup, and we can‘t be certain of their origins.
A Steel Pier Adventure
Let me take the case of a young woman I will call Alice who I met while working on Steel Pier in Atlantic City. It was the summer of 1955, and I was 16 years old, as was she, I think. Starting in the summer of 1953 and for the following four summers I worked for the refreshment stands of Steel Pier, an entertainment complex started by George Hamid and extending half mile out into the ocean at the Boardwalk and Virginia Avenue. For most of my four summers on the pier I was a stock boy doing jobs like emptying trash cans, sweeping the floor and keeping the counters supplied with orange and grape drink, which I and the other stock boys mixed in hidden ice houses on the pier, and with hot dogs, hamburgers, and ice cream.
Working behind the counters and attending to the customers were young women, also teenagers. Some of these young women attended the local public high school, as did I, but a number of them attended the local catholic high school and some of them commuted from the mainland and attended mainland high schools. It was thus an opportunity for teenagers who might not otherwise meet to get to know each other. Alice lived on the mainland. She was a pretty and intelligent young woman, and I enjoyed talking to her. She was also well endowed and as it turned out much more aggressive physically than I was used to.
Encounter in a Stock Room
I enjoyed talking to Alice, but it soon became apparent that she had another kind of relationship in mind. First she arranged for me to see her changing from her street clothes into her uniform with another of the counter girls in an area that doubled as an additional stock room. By simply opening a door when I knocked—which is the procedure that we stock boys were supposed to follow— Alice surprised me by letting me in and thus allowing me to see her in her bra, and she allowed me a long enough look that I had no doubt how well endowed she was. Second, a day later she came after me in one of one of the areas where we stock boys kept the ice and where we mixed orange and grape drinks.
That a girl could be that aggressive was entirely alien to me, and I rejected her. Not only did I reject her, but I lectured her on her behavior. A day later I carried the lecture even further. Accosting her on an outer deck that was used by some of the Steel Pier performers for periods of off stage relaxation, I said to her in an angry voice, as best I can remember, “We’re not the same religion, and I don’t see how any relationship between us could ever work out.” The poor girl was so chagrined by these multiple verbal onslaughts from me that she quit her job that day, and I never saw her again.
Such a Prig
Over the years I have frequently thought about the Alice episode in my life and with a variety of conflicted emotions. “How could I have been such a prig?” I have frequently asked myself. “How could I have been so cruel to her?” Given how my life turned out, my lecture on the differences in religion is especially absurd. Then I think about the squandered sexual opportunity. I was obviously not blind to her considerable physical appeal. Why then did I spurn her?
Was this then a case of her being the aggressor and my inability to deal with any situation in which I was not in control? I do have to admit that it would be a long time before I could be comfortable with any situation with a woman in which I did not feel I was in control. As a result I passed up many another opportunity for sexual experience after Alice during my early years. Then too there are the issues of class, issues I hate to admit but I’m afraid they were there. Despite her intelligence, I saw her as a poor girl, as an underprivileged girl; I saw myself as better than her economically. When it came to Alice, was I a snob? I’m afraid so.
Fear of Entrapment
Related is the fear of entrapment, even at the age of 16. I saw myself as college-bound. I saw pretty, well-endowed Alice as a possible trap, as someone who could get pregnant and keep me from realizing my college dreams. Yes, that fear was at work as well. And finally there was just plain fear of the opposite sex. I was a heterosexual male all right, but that didn’t stop me from being afraid of women. This fear took the form of being afraid of women’s bodies.
In a future posting I may face head on this fear of the opposite sex, but I am not ready to do that now. The reader will have to accept as a given this fact about me.
Complexity of Sex Drive
Where am I going with this discussion other than to reveal a fact about my early life and how my mind worked when I was younger? One important fact is how important sex was and is, as both a positive and negative force, but how complex our feelings about the subject are. Is the sex drive ever a pure emotion disconnected from other considerations? Probably not.
I do hope life turned out okay for Alice. I do hope she didn’t waste too much mental energy dwelling on the mean stock boy who spurned her advances on Steel Pier the summer of 1955.
To see a sampling of the other writing of Stephen Alan Saft, also known as S.A. Saft, see the website http://www.sasaftwrites.com.
Copyright © 2008 by Stephen Alan Saft
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