It wasn’t a hip ambition, but I wanted to be Mrs. Joe. I practiced writing my married name: Angie Greenfield, Angelica Greenfield, Joseph and Angel Greenfield. It’s fun to remember all of this without regret and anxiety. I must reminisce more on powerful analgesics.

I hardly noticed Don back then. That’s not true. I noticed Don. Everyone noticed Don. Don made sure we all noticed him.

Big gawky Donald “Duck” Taylor. His father was on the school board, as he never tired of telling us. He was over six feet tall, over 200 pounds, and stomped around on size 13 feet. Back then, 13 was considered very big feet. He walked toes-out, like the Duck we nicknamed him for, and he had that caricature’s self-importance then and now.

Duck wanted to be liked. More than most he wanted to be liked. He was helpful, interfering, cheerful, interruptive, steadfast, pushy, and true. He was forever organizing activities that no one would join.

And he’s still that person. Involved in every benevolent association in the county, a model citizen, my husband is a loyal, good, boring, awkward gentleman.

I was supposed to marry Joe. Don wouldn’t be more than an anecdote to me if I had.

My head is really starting to buzz. What an apt term: buzz. It’s as if I have bees in there making honey. The good feeling oozes outward. Like that old game when a friend pretended to crack a raw egg on the top of my head. Thunk, goes my friend’s fist on the back of her own hand spread upon my crown. And ooze, go her fingertips lightly through my hair down behind my ears. Delicious sensation.

The night of the senior prom. Joe and I boycotted the affair, per agreement with our friends. We played in Sausalito and on the headlands. Then we most of us drove to Muir Beach, where Chris’s parents had an unoccupied place. Chris promised us coffee and French cigarettes.

Joe and I parked on the way there. For over a year, we had resisted going all the way. That’s what we called it then. We’d done just about everything but, we thought (hah!), and we’d come close to the ultimate act several times (sweet nastiness of youth), but one or the other of us had always stopped us  Until that night. And what with all the anticipation (I guess), well – the best way to say it is it was over before I knew it had really begun. On the front seat of the car, too.

Joe was abject. I was very careful. I did what I could to let him know it was all right, that we had our whole lives ahead of us. But I really couldn’t say it was good for me too. I was kind of frustrated and, forgive me for feeling it then and again now, Joe was kind of useless. We went on to Chris’s parent’s place but the evening had lost its sparkle.

Don wasn’t around on senior prom night. He wasn’t involved in any of it. Joe and I kept seeing each other that summer but we just weren’t as close as before. Don and Joe and Chris and I all went our separate ways to college, and only saw each other now and then on break. I was home for the summer after my junior year when I ran into Don and things clicked. Joe met Beth at USC, and I remember they got married a year after Don and I.

I wish I had a cup of coffee now. I can see Joe’s profile against the lights of Mill Valley. I wonder what my life would have been? I guess I would have had a child. Or more than one. We know our problem’s Don, and Joe’s son is proof of his ability to procreate…

I shouldn’t think like this. My husband is a loyal lovely man. He really is more handsome middle-aged than he was. He has good hair. He’s portly now, instead of fat.

But I’m a little high. And Beth is dead now three years. Joe’s son lives across the country.  I’ll bet Joe’s lonely.

Funny how the most successful men from our high school group are all Jewish.

There’s so much we could discuss. We hold each other’s memories for most of 1966 and 1967. His computer animation meshes with my photographic collage work. He’d understand what I’m trying to do; Don doesn’t even try.