Memoir chapter: "My Semester of Scarlet"

A slightly fictionalized, coming-of-age short story and memoir chapter about my turbulent high school romance in 1973. It’s a tragicomedy about Scarlet, the girl. And scarlet, the color -- of scandal.

1.

I suspected Scarlet Flynn would be my first high school girlfriend when she suddenly disrobed right in front of me.

I mean, completely disrobed, down to the buff, the first time I had seen an 18-year-old girl naked, or any girl naked, in real life.

I was 18 years old, too, a senior in high school, and had just resigned myself to not dating until college.

After all, it was 1973, and there were important things to do! Get the high school paper out! Get Nixon to resign! Graduate!

But there was this girl in my journalism class, Scarlet Flynn, and she suggested we “go cover a story together.”

Scarlet was a real-life Marcia Brady: long, shiny blonde hair, great body, radiant smile and mini-skirted legs. Plus, she was super-smart, “with it,” and, I gotta say, a strong writer.

“Sure, let’s cover the story together,” I said.

“Great,” she said. “But it’s an off-campus event, so we’ll have to go by my house so I can change into nicer clothes.

“My family isn’t home this time of the day,” she said, touching my arm.

“Sure, let’s go to your house,” I said.

2.

And that is how I came to be innocently standing in Scarlet Flynn’s bedroom on an otherwise ordinary September school day.

Scarlet was making friendly chit-chart about our story in progress, as hair tossed, she flung open closets and rooted through drawers for fresh clothes.

We really were on our way to an off-campus event – a speech, I think it was – so this was a mere interlude.

I figured she’d step into another room to change.

But, no, without missing a beat in the conversation, she pulled off socks, jeans, bra and underwear, and stood in a pool of sunlight wearing only a smile.

She paused ever briefly, hand on her hip, as if to say, “Ta-Da.”

In fact, she did say, “Ta-Da.”

I smiled back with surprise and genuine appreciation.

“You look beautiful,” I said, “like an art model beautiful.”

“Thanks,” she said, with a cute, self-deprecating shrug. “This is me.” And she began to put the fresh clothes on, just as matter-of-factly as the old ones had come off.

I didn’t budge. I didn’t know how to budge.

3.

You might ask me why I didn’t budge when Scarlet Flynn took off all her clothes in front of me.

For one thing, I just guessed being nude is what “cool, mature” 18-yer-olds friends of different genders do: “We undress in front of each other. Totally normal.”

Til that moment, we had been friendly (though flirty) “co-reporters” with nothing “romantic” discussed.

And for the most thing, I would have had at that time NO IDEA what to do if it was more than that. Me: Virgin. Experience: none.

Experience even talking to girls outside classrooms: almost none.

So yes, while it’s true, she put back on her clothes as casually as they came off…

And while it’s true we did leave her house, attend the speech, and write a newspaper story about it…

Our story quickly evolved.

That was immediately more flirting and physicality at the speech: touching hands, friendly jostling, sparkling eyes, and after all, a good night’s kiss.

“I had such fun today,” she said.

And as things heated up in the days ahead, but before it all went South, I realized that trip to change clothes wasn’t an interlude.

It was a preview.

4.

And so we became official girl/boyfriend, Scarlett Flynn and me, that fateful Fall semester of 1973.

And we became almost immediately almost inseparable, in a few different senses.

Inseparable at the school paper, writing editorials side-by-side, scandalizing our mostly conservative school community by endorsing for U.S. president… Democratic candidate George McGovern. (Spoiler: he didn’t win.)

Inseparable in the evenings, rehearsing for the school play, in which we had just been cast, scandalizing some classmates by making out a little too conspicuously in the dark corners of backstage. In costume.

Inseparable most weekend nights, at a nearby drive-in theatre, steaming my car’s windows, and scandalizing even each other, I think.

And inseparable sitting in front and back of each other in the very popular American history class of Mr. Zagreb, the handsome, charismatic, 30-year old teacher, everybody’s favorite.

But it wasn’t until I noticed how hard Scarlet laughed at Mr. Zagreb’s jokes, how she lingered after class for an extra question or extra credit, and noticed how he leaned in close to her long, blond hair…

That I started to sense “inseparable” wasn’t “unending.”

5.

Were Scarlet Flynn and I getting “too serious” for a couple of high school seniors with a full plate of studies and jobs and extracurriculars?

Our families thought as much, and said so. “You’re only 18 and you’re acting like you’re engaged,” they said.

We didn’t think so. We loved being in love. The romance, the camaraderie, the fumbling, backseat comings of age.

In mid-semester, our hearts were still high. Walking in a light drizzle, she took my hand and said, “Maybe someday we’ll get married in the rain.”

A novice to all this, I swooned at that. I didn’t;t think we were being “too serious.”

I thought the laws of attraction were being obeyed!

But I see now what we actually were:

Too young.

The tumblers in Scarlet’s teen girl heart might not yet have totally clicked into place.

Because while my attention was riveted by our proximity, as the semester was ending, young Scarlet’s attentions were turning in an also “too serious” way.

You guessed it: to Mr. Zagreb.

But as the semester wore on, her literal schoolgirl crush on the handsome Mr. Zagreb seemed more obvious, and as graduation loomed, she spent more time with him off-hours as an unofficial “teacher’s assistant.”

6.

Soon it was an open secret in our high school that my girlfriend, the ravishing Scarlet Flynn, was herself being ravished in the nearby apartment of our history teacher, the handsome, funny 30-year-old “Greg” Zagreb.

An open secret, that is, to everybody but me.

Scarlet started making excuses for not seeing me on the nights I wasn’t already working long hours.

“I need to help Greg grade mid-terms, she said, flipping that long, blonde hair.

I stumbled around not processing for a couple of weeks, then:

A photographer pal for our school paper showed me a picture he had taken of Mr. Zagreb for a “teacher feature.” In the pic, Mister Zagreb was sitting at his desk, smiling his charismatic smile.

Scarlet was in the photo, too, in a tight blouse.

She was sitting on his lap.

Finally, I confronted Scarlet in a crowded school hallway.

“What is going on with you and Zagreb?,” I demanded.

“I’m late for class,:” she snapped, turning to walk away.

She turned back.

“And quit following me like a puppy.”

A puppy?

7.

It’s a very weird feeling to find out your 18-year-old high school girlfriend has moved on to somebody else.

A 30-year-old somebody else.

Suddenly that funny handsome history teacher didn’t seem like just a history teacher.

He felt like a rival.

“I can compete with my other seniors,” I thought to myself, “But I can’t compete with that!” The deck, some deck, I didn’t even know what deck, seemed stacked.

But as Scarlet made it clear that she was in love with him now, and didn’t care who knew it, I went through the stages of grief.

Denial, of course. “This is too surreal to be happening!”

Anger. “I’m writing a letter to the principal!”

Depression. “Every sad song on the radio is about my life!”

And finally, acceptance. I graduated, single, and threw myself into a summer job and prepping for Freshman year of college.

Scarlet graduated, too, and Mr. Zagreb resigned from our school district and started at another. They stayed a couple, and not too long after:

They got married.

Repeat the “surreal!”

8.

Yes, my ex-girlfriend Scarlet Flynn married our high school history teacher not too long after our class graduated in 1973.

They stayed married, too, as far as I know, over the years, had kids, I think, looked happy when I saw rare photos of them.

(It was easier to blissfully lose track of people before the internet.)

I’m finally remembering that hot-but-suddenly-halted romance with Scarlet half of a century later, not out of “setting the record straight” or “settling a score.”

I write not out of old wounds.

I write out of gratitude.

I’m grateful to Scarlet — for many things.

For being the first of great girls to actually go for me, and for helping us get our “early love learning curve” out of the way.

(Let’s just say, when college did start, soon after, I was better prepared.)

I’m grateful for our early 1970s political writing and advocacy: we stood for something, when we finally stood up.

And I’m grateful for the memories of that red rush of young love, that red blush of young cheeks, those red scrapes on young knees.

It was the shade that colored that crazy semester.

My semester of Scarlet.