The Fall of '68

Later it's the fall of '68 and I am walking Katy Wilson down Clayton Boulevard. We are on our way back to her dorm on the south forty where we will not make love. But the trees are dropping leaves, a hundred versions of red & gold. The wind is just mild enough, the odor is that evening perfume from October. The girl is short, darkhaired, catholic girl ready to break away.And I am on my own, cruising St. Louis, looking for what I imagine truth is. One thing truth is: my arm around her shoulders, our words still pregnant with ideas that haven't been knocked down by the wintery intellects of the University, the semi-erect penis in my jeans. Somewhere June Christy is singing that song "I'll Take Romance." So Katy Wilson became a psychiatrist, & I never really was a writer. But I can put myself on the corner of Clayton & Big Bend in the Fall of 1968 any time that I want. There's June, singing in the other room.

A leaf from my memory, falling to earth in this, the Autumn of my years. Katy Wilson went to Washington University, but I knew her well in Wichita where she was the valedictorian for Mount Carmel Academy's class of 1968. Marcia Froelke and I used to go hang out with Katy some. After the Marcia thing went away for me I started seeing Katy. I was at St. Louis University, and she was five miles up the road at Washington University. Her dorm didn't have parietal hours so boys could be there any time and me and my friends from SLU would go over there and hang out until all hours. She was a pretty little girl, one of the few brunettes in my life, and I certainly could have made love to her and almost did. But, not quite. And then she moved on, tired of waitng for me to pull the trigger no doubt. I remember she wore panty girdles. Girls did that in those days. Here's what she was like, though, she bought me a book of Rod McKuen's poetry. That is to say, someone who was more of a pop artist than an actual poet.

I often think about Katy Wilson when I see Hillary Rodham. If you went to a catholic school in the sixties you knew that girl. And I'm not being negative at all here. I appreciated Katy, but I was never going to be good enough, or successful enough, for what she wanted from her life. Good enough, though, for a roll in the hay. The artist thing. It did work for me, occasionally. I gave her a handmade book of my poems for xmas, 1968. I'm sure she threw it out years ago.