You Do Something to Me

You Do Something To Me



It was on a bright cold Boston Saturday afternoon in autumn 1955. I headed toward the Boston Braves Field that Boston University had bought as our new stadium. It would soon be named for the Golden Greek Harry Agganis who had died tragically the year before at age 25. He was an amazing triple threat athlete. Accompanying me was a platonic friend Deanna Rothschild a wonderful gal who I knew from my old sleep away camp days. Deanna was a sophomore at Simmons College and I invited her hoping to introduce her to one of fraternity brothers at the football game. We brothers of Phi Alpha sat together, drank Southern Comfort out of our flasks to keep warm and cheered Buff Donelli’s Boys on. He was the celebrated coach of Boston University’s Terriers.

Arthur, one of my fraternity brothers came to the stadium with a neighbor girl from his home town, Bridgeport Connecticut. She was there for a peek at Simmons College where she hoped to start her studies the next year. Even before introductions were made I looked at Susan and she looked at me and it was if we were both struck by “chemical lightening.” We all made small talk but I just kept looking at her and her at me and I knew something big was happening. Deanna told Susan about Simmons and I took Arthur on the side and told him I want to know all about this girl and that I want to go out with her next year if she comes up to Boston. She had already asked about me and expressed the same keen desire.

This was the first person who I ever was attracted to with chestnut color hair. She had beautiful high cheekbones, doe like brown eyes and looked like she would have a nice figure under her camel Loden coat. I was absolutely smitten. She somehow reminded me of a picture I had seen of my own Mom at that age. I could not wait to see her again.

What I was able to garner from Arthur was that she and a boyfriend back home recently broke up with and she known to be warm but not really promiscuous.

The months went by and Arthur told me that Susan was accepted to Simmons. After Labor Day we all returned to school. Arthur arrived a few hours after I did. I reminded him that I wanted Susan’s phone number. He had it ready for me and said she reminded him to have me call her as soon as he sees me. I called her immediately. She told me that she was required to go with her dorm sisters to a mixer at Harvard that night and that she would love if I could join her there. I boldly accepted to go and pass as one of the boys from “Ha-vid Yahd”.

I entered the reception area where the mixer was being held. We saw each other her and she immediately took my hand and I felt the current go through us.. The musicians started to play a Cole Porter standard and we locked into the closest possible embrace on the dance floor that just missed being obscene and she said,





“This will be our song.”
I quickly agreed and we danced and chatted all evening long and no one else even stood a chance to get near her. When the dance ended I drove her back towards her dorm. I already had a car at school and was in my sophomore year. We stopped about a block away and kissed the most passionate kisses imaginable that only young love can produce. We became an item and saw each other exclusively. Our intense passion for each other at our tender age had the boundaries of the morals of the time. But we burned with desire and she wrote me the most beautiful love letters that I have ever seen praising me, loving me, lauding my intelligence and looks and making me want her so much more.
.
On the Jewish Holy Days she accompanied me to Hillel House for services and then I borrowed the keys to a friends’ apartment who had gone home for the Holy Days. We kissed and embraced and I caressed and cuddled with her for hours. We were delirious with passion.
I was able to feast my hands and eyes for the first time on her more than magnificent body. It has been over fifty two years since then and I have experienced it all but never have I come across a more beautiful well appointed body than she had. Her breasts were like those described in Song of Songs in the bible. She had milk white skin, curvy hips and was nothing short of perfect. I just wanted to swallow the entire scene and etch it on to my brain so that I would never forget it, as I have done so many times after this with many women.

But she was special and I knew it. I was shaking like a leaf because from my background this was not something one did on Yom Kippur! I expected the ground to open before me and fall in. This was to be the first of many such repeated scenes with her that were never to be consummated.

Eventually she started to get me nervous by saying she was going to have my fraternity pin by Thanksgiving and get engaged by the springtime and married by next year. I felt like I was riding on a fast train that the engineer had no control over. I was the engineer of a runaway train. Whenever she talked like that I started to get my old nervous stomach reaction and it was very uncomfortable.

I heard she was telling everyone in her dormitory that she had these great plans for us.









This all started in September and I was seeing Susan every night because we both had steaming knickers. My grades were suffering and I never studied and I felt that drastic times called for drastic measures. I was in a state of panic and as long as we are talking train metaphors I felt that I was being railroaded. I knew I had to end it or flunk out of school or even worse have my car taken away from me by my parents.

One night while we were talking in my Plymouth car I told her that,
“the train is stopping at Back Bay station and, you are getting off” She exclaimed,
“What do you mean?”


I proceeded to tell her that my grades were falling off and that we were too young to be making the kind of plans that she was talking about and that I felt like I was in a pressure cooker and we must cool down.

She cried terribly for a few minutes and then I took her back to her dorm and she slammed the door to my car and ran inside the dormitory and that was that.

Two weeks later she showed up at one of my fraternity parties with one of the brothers who I regarded as a dorky type of guy who I never thought she would be seen with. then Two weeks later with an upper classman and I was annoyed. I was not seeing her anymore so no one needed my permission to ask her out but I was annoyed at her and them. I was even more annoyed when I heard she was partying with them the same way she was making what I considered love with me. Perhaps she was trying to get even with me.

Over the months Deanna told me that she heard Susan was upset, looked terrible and had lost a lot of weight. I felt very guilty about it, but I never promised her anything. What I felt for her was as real as could be at the time but she was in a faster lane than I was.

The new school year came and I began in retrospect to realize that what I did was terrible. I acted like an old Bogart movie in the way that I broke up with her. I mustered up the courage to ask one of my close friends to accompany me to her dorm. He consented and I went up the steps, entered the reception area and asked the dorm Gestapo to call down Susan Dorman. She announced my name ands rang up for Susan Dorman to come down. I heard her footsteps running across the second floor and she emerged from the staircase. She looked a little drawn and not as I remembered her from last year. She asked why I was there. I told her that,
“I acted terribly last year.”
She replied,
What do you mean
“I mean the way we parted, I was wrong and immature and I apologize for that, but I just wasn’t ready yet”
“”I hardly remember even going out with you; I can’t imagine what you mean.”

Not having mastered my silver tongue or having the gift of great oratory at that tender age, I was only able to come up with what crossed my mind.

“Go screw yourself “is what came out and I turned around followed by my “second” as "Eva Braun’s" jaw hit the floor.

I was so angry that after I worked up the ability to apologize, she figuratively spit in my eye

I felt better at the time, but I am older and wiser now.

I recently saw Arthur and asked him if he ever heard what happened to Susan but he did not know. I told him that I just had the feeling that she must have been married multiple times. I don’t know why, but it is a gut feeling.

To this day when I hear, “You do Something to Me” I think of Susan and quickly dismiss it from my mind.