In junior high I was the studious tomboy with braces who never went to
parties, and Peter was the unkempt, irreverent charmer who could make anybody
laugh. We encountered each other multiple times each day—English class, Latin
class, theater productions, the Indiana Players, even an Industrial Arts class.
Absorbed as I was in playing sports and flute, I wasn’t part of the dating
scene, and Pete seemed like the first guy to begin noticing me as girlfriend
material.
In ninth grade we learned the balcony
scene from Romeo and Juliet and performed it for our English class. We made a
short film with some sort of anti-abortion message that featured the words of
an in utero fetus—I believe I wrote that script. Then there was the horror film
parody, “Night of the Living Gloves,” filmed in my bedroom by Pete and Matt
Salerno using Ian Gallanar’s Super 8 camera and starring Lisa Burkey, which
then and now seemed like mostly an elaborate ploy to get Lisa unclad in the
shower—she insisted on wearing a bathing suit but was otherwise a good sport
about her role.
For our Latin class in 10th
grade with Mrs. Fredericks, there was a field trip to Italy and Greece. Pete
couldn’t go, but he persuaded his family to let me take their expensive camera
overseas. This necessitated lengthy photography lessons from him beforehand, delving
into the finer points of F-stops and shutter speeds. Shortly after I came home
from that trip, Peter officially became my first boyfriend, with a kiss in the
Dairy Queen parking lot.
For the next year and a half, we were inseparable.
Hour-plus-long phone calls every night—what in the world did we talk about? The
ineffable meaning of life as depicted in Franny
and Zooey, Stanislovski’s acting method, but also lots of poking fun at
teachers and Pete’s efforts to turn me on to the music he liked—Grateful Dead, King
Crimson, Pink Floyd, U2, the Talking Heads, and the Beatles. I preferred the
soothing, literate harmonies of Simon and Garfunkel but appreciated his efforts
to find a window into my tastes through orchestral-scale rock, especially
Genesis and Yes.
That summer between 10th and 11th
grade we’d swim at Mack Pool and walk home sunburned, stopping at Guadalajara
for chips and salsa before heading to his house. Once there, we’d ascend past
the endless piles of his father’s hoarded books and newspapers to Pete’s attic
bedroom, where I delighted in teasing him with my tan lines and what lay beyond.
That summer we attended an I.U.P arts camp together, Peter for theater of
course, I for flute, modeled after the Pennsylvania Governor’s School for the
Arts, where we’d both applied and been rejected,
We had all of 11th grade
together, which included Mime Club, A Capella Choir, and unending theater
productions. I never got a single juicy role, whereas Peter starred in nearly every
play and graduated high school with a perfect record of significant or starring
roles in 12 productions, 4 per year in 10th, 11th, and 12th
grades. I know he stayed up late memorizing lines at the expense of his
schoolwork. It was the year our town celebrated the 75th birthday of
its most famous son, Jimmy Stewart, and our high school teachers made sure to
acquaint us with Stewart’s most iconic roles. At the highly impressionable age
of 17, Pete was exposed to films such as Destry
Rides Again, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and The Philadelphia Story. He could do such a spot-on impression of
Jimmy Stewart that the ghost of Stewart seemed to hover indelibly over his
performances forever after.
That fall my parents brought Peter with us
for a sacred family tradition, a college football game at Pitt Stadium, where
Dad had once played. From the afternoon game through to our dinner at
Tambellini’s, Peter was a bit of a fish out of water but rose to the occasion
and comported himself well. Other than their ability to make me laugh, these
two, Dad and Peter, could not have been more different. Hard to believe they’re
both now gone.
By spring semester we shared the joy of
both finally gaining acceptance to the Pennsylvania Governer’s School for the
Arts, five glorious weeks of arts immersion on the campus of Bucknell
University. I loved the idea of attending this camp with my boyfriend, but we
agreed we didn’t want to be constrained by our relationship and decided to keep
it from our fellow campers. It was like a secret office romance. That lasted
about three days before we settled comfortably back into our dual identity as a
couple. All of the friendships we gained there, the people whom we stayed in
touch with throughout senior year and beyond, were friends to both of us and
another bond that Pete and I shared.
By August, camp had ended, and I was
feeling restless about our looming senior year. I felt like I wanted to date
other people. Though I initiated our break-up, Peter did not seem heartbroken
and found other girls. He and I remained friends throughout senior year, all of
college, and well into our twenties. Anytime I came home to Indiana we’d hang
out, sometimes with Markus, sometimes with Dan Murphy, often with Ann Maderer. When
all four of us could be together—Peter, Markus, Ann, and me—it felt kind of
magic, especially one night in Pittsburgh with acid and the Talking Heads movie
Stop Making Sense. Much later, in our
30s, I remember going out for drinks, just the two of us, after Pete had
performed in an Indiana Players production. Our rapport was unbreakable. After
Peter, I wanted every other boyfriend and husband to make me laugh as hard as
he did, to understand me as well. He formed my expectations, because you never
forget your first love.
