by Mick Austin
Copyright 2021

Into the microphone, Rivka yelled,  “We are Mother Lode! Johnny will sing song for us now!” She started the piano intro to “What’d I Say,” moaning along with the intro she was playing, “Mmm . . . Hey, hey,” and then as the break was approaching at the end of the intro, “Everyone! Our drummer, John Dalton!” and we all punched in on the downbeat, and John sang “Hey, mama, don’t you treat me wrong,” and then we were rockin’ the student body at Grant High School in Portland. September, 1964. 

Song after song, Rivka, John and I traded off the lead vocals. There is a lot of nuance with singing. Even singing rock and roll. Phrasing, even just little breaks, deliberate cracks in a note. Vibrato, tremolo, singing on that edge between chest voice and falsetto, changing the tone by moving the sound to the front of your mouth, swallowing the tone, all techniques we valued so highly in vocalists we admired and tried to imitate.

When the gig was over and we were tearing down, kids from the school were kind of hanging out, apparently wanting to chat. A number of girls wanted to engage with Paul, John and me. A lot of guys wanted to engage with Rivka. Naturally friendly, interacting was always easy for her. Seeing her like that it didn’t occur to me to be jealous. It just made me smile and when she noticed me smiling at her from the stage she smiled back at me with one of her crooked smiles and I realized she only smiled that way at me.

“Those girls were quite taken with you, Misha.”

“Oh, I think they were more interested in John and Paul. I think they could tell who had the key to my heart.”

“Hmm . . . If I’d been one of those girls, didn’t know you and saw you for the first time tonight, I wouldn’t let anything or anyone stand between you and me.”

“Hmm . . . If I didn’t know you and saw you for the first time tonight, I think there would be an army of suitors I would have to fight to get to you . . . like Odysseus.”

She looked ahead down the highway. “You’re making me very horny, Misha.”

“Hmm, doesn’t take much. Turn left up here on Cornelius Pass.”

“Are you trying to get me alone . . . so you can get in my pants?”

Our first date, a few years earlier, after we almost kissed in the library, was almost a frozen disaster.

“Nice . . . you look . . . prepared,” Sean Patrick said, a neutral look on his face.

I looked at my reflection in the full length mirror in our entry hallway, my long sleeve Pendleton shirt buttoned correctly and tucked in, my blonde hair impossibly unruly, and I said, somewhat defensively, “It’s supposed to freeze tonight.”

“Right. No. Very . . . very practical.” He smoothed out my shoulders and clapped me on both upper arms. “You look very . . . appropriate.”

“Just can’t help it, can you?” Sally Anne was talking to Sean P and seeming to come to my aid.

“What?” he said.

“Look,” she turned to me. “You have been to the movies with Rivka probably a hundred times. This doesn’t have to be weird. I mean, just because it’s . . . a date.” Her face and voice got very serious . . . and dark, when she said “a date.”

“Oh, fuck you both!” They were both laughing, mostly at me.

Standing at the open front door as I walked out, Sean P turned to Sally Anne. “They grow up so fast.”

I flipped them off over my shoulder without looking back. They were laughing, hooting as they closed the door.

It felt funny ringing Rivka’s doorbell. For the last three and a half years I usually just kind of walked in gingerly and announced myself. I mean, I was basically one of the family. But in the past I came in the door because we were going to study, or play music, or eat or just hang out. It was just different that night. It was . . . a date. My breathing became shallow, my hands clammy. I could feel my heart rate speeding up. Rivka’s mama, her hair a few shades blonder than Rivka’s and almost the same length, answered the door and smiled as she drew me into a warm embrace, calming me instantly. 

“Doorbell . . . really?” she asked.

“I . . .”

She chuckled. “It’s alright, Misha. It’s understandable to feel a little nervous. I think Rivka’s feeling a little nervous too.”

Just then Rivka came down the stairs, pretty much destroying me. White, oversized, cowl neck sweater, tight jeans inside black leather boots coming almost up to her knees, hair pulled back in a ponytail, ready to rock.

  I was in jeans, the aforementioned Pendleton shirt, a woolen scarf and a heavy winter coat, suitable for a polar expedition. The forecast was for freezing temperatures that night, close to 10 degrees. But right then it was about 50 degrees.

“Rivka, you look . . . wonderful.” I almost said “beautiful” but self censored at the last second. I wasn’t sure how Mama Rakhel would feel about me calling her daughter “beautiful” and I realized at the time how badly I was overthinking everything. Sort of like, when I asked her to go to the movies . . . with me . . . as a date. Exactly like that, “movies . . . with me . . . as a date” only with some stuttering, and blushing, and dropping my notebook and books, because I was so nervous. And the whole time Rivka was just standing there, in the hallway, by her locker, smiling, her head tilted, looking into my eyes, with an expression that made me feel like my heart was exploding as, at the same time, I couldn’t string together a cogent sentence . . . because every word had to be perfect.

“Thank you, Misha. You look . . . very nice. Are you taking me to movies on dogsled?” All three of us burst out laughing, them more than me. Just then Papa Itzak walked in from the living room and wanted to know what we were laughing at. Mama R told him and he started laughing too. 

         “Ok, ok, I know,” I said, patting the air down with my hands. They were still chuckling. I said, very seriously, “You know, it wasn’t that funny.” Which started all of us laughing again.

Rivka put on a three quarter length cobalt blue wool coat, looking like a teen model in Vogue. Good for moderately cold weather. I hoped it didn’t get really cold until after I brought her home. We set off. I had removed my coat because it was so warm, and just carried it over my shoulder as we walked to the theater, less than a half mile away. She asked me what we were seeing, and I realized we hadn’t talked about it.

“Oh . . .  ‘West Side Story,’” I said. “Is that ok?” I felt like I had failed Dating Etiquette 101, not checking with her about the movie. I had “how to act as her best friend” nailed. I didn’t even have to think about that. I had no idea how to do “boyfriend.” That word, “boyfriend,” gave me the heebie-jeebies because it carried with it societal expectations of what a “”boyfriend” should be, how a “boyfriend” should behave, and clearly, in my case, given my clueless nature, unreal expectations.

  “Oh, I heard it was really good.” Either she decided not to call me on my dating faux pas or she didn’t care or she wanted everything to go smoothly for our first date. I made a mental note to step up my game.

“Sally Anne has the album, the soundtrack. It’s amazing. I’m sure she’ll let you borrow it.”

“That would be really cool.” She briefly took my arm, then released it, somewhat self consciously. I thought, She’s nervous . . . like me. Calm facade . . . nervous on the inside. Like me. Only with me, not so calm a facade.

We chatted for the twenty minutes it took to walk to the theater. 

I wanted to hold her hand, but the only other time our hands had ever touched prior to her taking my hand in hers in the library was when we danced or grappled in fight class. I didn’t want to chance it . . . rejection. I thought, Mickey, you’re such a pussy. But, we were once more best friends. Best friends . . .  on a date. It just felt so fragile. I didn’t want to move too fast. I didn’t want to fuck it up. So I kept my hands to myself.

Halfway there she removed the band holding her ponytail, combing her fingers through her long, wavy strawberry-blonde-auburn hair. I thought, She is so gorgeous. Five-foot-six, only four inches shorter than me. Impossibly beautiful sky blue eyes with a tiny birthmark on her left upper eyelid. Full pouting lips that now, since our moment in the library, seemed to be constantly teasing me. There were girls in our year, in fact, most of the girls in our year, who already were well on the way to having developed mature breasts. This was to be expected given they were all fourteen. This had happened already to our friends, Ava and Maria. This had not yet happened to Rivka, who, like me, was twelve . . . going on twenty, but I was pretty sure it was about to. I had difficulty not fantasizing what she would look like when it did.

The movie was amazing. We were captivated from the first moment of the first scene. The Jets and the Sharks chasing each other, dancing this wild, crazy beautiful choreography. We gasped and moved with the music and the dancing. When Maria and Tony met for the first time at the dance, Rivka involuntarily, almost inaudibly cried, “Oh,” when they saw each other across the room and everyone else in the dance hall faded away.

My left hand found itself resting on her hand on the armrest separating our seats. Not looking, she reached over with her left hand, took my wrist and I thought she was going to put my hand back on my lap. Instead she pulled my arm over her head, around her shoulders and held on to it with both hands. I had trouble breathing at first as she kind of snuggled in under my left shoulder. With great effort and some deep breathing, I calmed . . . mostly. At times I even almost forgot my arm was there . . . around her . . . almost.

When the scene in the dress shop reached the point where they were singing “One Hand, One Heart” I felt Rivka’s breath stutter on inspiration, and I felt myself starting to tear up. I involuntarily sniffled, and she held my arm tighter. At the end of the movie with Maria slowly walking away into the night, and dead-Tony being carried away by an ad hoc group of Capulets and Montagues, we were both breathing shakily.

We watched the credits all the way through. I wasn’t really watching as much as listening to Bernstein’s score. I wasn’t really listening to his score as much as gradually getting my breathing and my lacrimal glands under control. And I wasn’t really getting under control as much as milking every last moment of having my arm around Rivka, feeling her holding it, adjusting her embrace throughout the movie, seemingly sensing my discomfort at times and, without me even noticing, intermittently pulling my arm from around her shoulders and holding it in front of her with both her arms around it, her head leaning on my shoulder, then moments later, placing my arm back around her. The credits finally finished and the lights came up and neither of us made any attempt to move for at least a full minute, during which she held my arm even more tightly.

As we were sauntering through the warm lobby on our way out neither of us seemed interested in speaking, having come to an unspoken understanding that speaking would break the spell of whatever had been happening. We were close together, our hands and fingers languidly brushing against each other, playfully toying with the idea of becoming entwined until a little dark-haired girl, maybe six years old, ran into us as she was exiting the restroom, preceding her mother. She apologized, her mother apologized and the spell was broken.  

We were still smiling about the little girl when I said, “That was amazing.”

    “I know, so beautiful . . . music, choreography, songs . . . and so sad . . . Natalie Wood, I love her. But in Romeo and Juliet, they both die.”

“Well, I think maybe Maria’s spirit died. I mean, she had that soliloquy, holding Chino’s gun, threatening to shoot various gang members, asking how many bullets, or how many people could she shoot and still have one left for herself.”

“Misha, that was so . . . so wrenching. Yeah, maybe her spirit died.”

  As we passed through the entrance the cold hit us and it felt like we had just walked into a freezer. It was 20 degrees and falling.

“Rivka, you’re going to freeze.” I put my coat around her. “Put your arms in the sleeves.”

         “No, Misha, now you’re going to freeze.”

“I’m a furnace. You know I don’t get cold. I’m wearing this woolen shirt and gloves and scarf. Maybe you should wear the scarf too.” I started to take it off but she was having none of that and firmly rejected it.

“No, Misha. Absolutely not!”

“I’ll be fine. And besides, If you die a frozen death on the streets of Hillsdale I’ll never hear the end of it from your parents.”

She chuckled briefly. “Alright, but let’s not dawdle. I don’t want to arrive home escorted by popsicle.”

So, we walked, rapidly, holding hands through my coat sleeve, and talked about the movie and the music. I told her I had the songbook with the piano accompaniment, and she said maybe we could do a few of the songs in our act. The air was so frigid I should have felt cold, uncomfortable, something, but I was walking in a dream, floating on the air, light as a feather in the wind. We had regained the easy way of being together we’d lost for the last few months and my heart was singing.

About two blocks away from her home she stopped and turned to face me. Looking up at me, our faces were inches apart. She seemed a little distressed . . . but focused. “Misha, I’m sorry I was so mean to you last few months. I kept hoping you wou”

“There’s no need for you to apologize. I was stupid. I should have just asked you what was the prob”

“No, I should have just told you what I wanted, what I needed. I needed ro” 

“Rivka, I wanted to tell you, in the library . . . I wanted to say” 

And then she kissed me. It was brief, but a definite kiss. Then she backed off with a surprised look on her face, matching, I am sure, the one on mine. And then I kissed her back, this one lasting longer, with soft lips, slightly parted. Again, backing away with the same looks. And then it was, as they say, “Katy bar the door” with tongues hungrily seeking, her hand on the back of my neck, my hand cradling her head, the smell of her hair, roses, so brisk in the still, freezing air, both of us breathing hard until she pushed me away.

“Wait a minute, cowboy!” The Russian word for cowboy sounds like “cuvboy” and it usually elicits peals of laughter from me but, for some reason, it was not so funny at that moment. “Where did you learn to kiss like that? Have you been kissing other girls? And if you say ‘I read a lot’ I’m going to punch you.”

I took some deep breaths, weighing my options. Where were my fucking fannings when I needed them? I had been about to say, “I read a lot.” Then I thought . . . Ah, fuck it!. “I-I watch romance movies.”

“Romance movies?”

“Da. They kiss a lot and I notice how they hold themselves, their mouths . . . and I know about . . . French kissing.”

“How do you know about French kissing?” There was fire in her eyes. 

“I don’t want you to punch me . . .”

She calmed and her eyes softened. “What did you read?”

“I read . . . God, don’t tell anybody . . . I read romance novels.”

“Romance novels!?? Romance novels? Misha, y-you read Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, fucking Faulkner! You don’t read romance novels?!”

“They go into great detail about kissing, tongues and such.” I was feeling just a little defensive.

“When did you start reading . . . those kinds of books?” she asked with disdain.

“The day I met you . . .” Her face changed to a question mark. “I wanted to be ready to give you excellent kisses when . . . if, if you ever wanted me to.”

My explanation seemed to have been acceptable because she tilted her face and murmured, “Oh, Misha . . .” as she grabbed my shirt with both hands and pulled me in again with even more passion until I pushed her away. “Wait a minute, cowgirl!” There is no Russian word for cowgirl. “Where did YOU learn to kiss like that? Have YOU been kissing other boys?” I didn’t really believe she had been but I was actually kind of curious.

“Only three,” she answered quickly, then looked up like she was adding in her head. “No, four.” 

I felt the cold night suddenly get colder. I can’t imagine what my face looked like.

“Oh, no, Misha . . . I was only kidding.” She started laughing then abruptly straightened up. “It was only two.”

“Oh, fuck you, Rivka!” I said without fire, knowing she was messing with me. I was mildly annoyed, but I admired her delivery. Then I thought, She could be telling me the truth. But when she put her hand on the back of my neck and pulled me towards her, I happily resumed kissing her, all thoughts of her improper kissing history forgotten. Soft lips, tongues, quiet moaning.

She backed off briefly. “Misha, I’ve never kissed another boy in my life . . . I was just following your lead . . . you know . . .  kissing.”

She tilted her head up, signaling she was ready to resume when I started to shiver and realized I was in the early stages of hypothermia.

        “Oh, my goodness, Misha. You’re freezing.”

         “I b-b-believe you’re right.” and my teeth started to chatter. 

“Come on, we’re two blocks away. Let’s run.”

  We ran, gingerly, as the sidewalks were frozen and my legs weren’t working too well and I couldn’t feel my toes. We finally made it to her front door whereupon she threw me up against it and kissed me again, aggressively, urgently. But my teeth started chattering again. She looked at me longingly, then shook her head and we went in.

She immediately led me over to a thankfully roaring fire and sat me down on the sofa in front of it, shedding my coat and placing it around me and placing, in addition, a large blanket from the sofa over me and over my head like a hood, saying “Hello, Papa,” to her papa, who was sitting in the easy chair beside the sofa he must have pulled over in front of the fire earlier. The inside of my coat was warm from her body and I smelled her scent wafting up as I continued to shiver.

I managed, “Hello, Papa I,” with my teeth chattering. I believe that was the coldest I had ever been in my life. The things we do for love. She had disappeared into the back part of the house. I had just saved her from a frozen death on the streets of Hillsdale and if I did not recover from my hypothermia, at least she would memorialize me at my funeral. I still couldn’t feel my toes.

         “Pretty cold out there, eh, Misha?”

“Da, Papa I, it’s really cold.”

         “You gave your coat to Rivka?”

         “Da, Papa Itzak, I gave her my coat.”

“You could have let her freeze.” But I could tell he was smiling . . . I thought, Russian humor.

“I thought about that but . . . she is too precious to me.”

         “Mmmm. And to me,” he said, chuckling.

As the feeling started to come back to my toes they began to hurt like hell and I quietly moaned.

Papa Itzak said, “Take off your shoes, Misha. Your toes will get warm faster.” I remembered saying the same thing to Rivka a few years earlier when, during a sleepover in her back yard, she repeatedly complained that she was freezing. This was just before crawling into her sleeping bag to warm her up. Very innocently. I resisted the urge to tell all that to Papa Itzak. 

I was, even after three and a half years, still a little in awe of him. Actually, more than a little. Tall, imposing, strikingly handsome with the Koen bluer than blue eyes. And strikingly brilliant. Arguably one of the biggest brains on the planet. 

  I found my fingers were warm enough so that I was able to untie my shoelaces as I did as he suggested. I knew what he said about taking off my shoes was true and I should have done it already, but I believe I mentioned . . . I was hypothermic. Brain doesn’t function so well hypothermic.

Rivka reappeared just then and sat down beside me, getting under the blanket with me, it partially covering both our heads. She held the blanket together tightly in front of us with one hand to make us even warmer and surreptitiously put her left arm around my waist under my coat and squeezed me tight. That felt good.

“Movie was good?” Papa Itzak asked. I couldn’t help but think he was feeling that Rivka and I were maybe getting a little too cozy under that blanket.

“Oh, Papa, it was wonderful,” both our heads tossing the blanket back and looking over at Papa I. “Retelling of Romeo and Juliet on the streets of New York City in modern times with Puerto Rican gang as Capulets and mixed white gang as Montagues. The music was heavenly.” 

         “It sounds amazing. You think Mama and I would enjoy it?”

“Oh, Papa, yes, I think you would definitely enjoy it.” And, right on cue, Mama R arrived with a tray bearing hot chocolate.

         “Hi, Mama Rakhel.”

      “Hi, Misha. It got a little cold coming home, eh?”

      “Da, Mama R. Really cold.”

“Looks like you’re warming up nicely. Would you like some hot cocoa, sweet boy?”

      “Da, Mama R. That would be really nice.”

“Izzy, it’s minus fifteen degrees,” said Mama Rakhel, handing her husband his cocoa and kissing him on the cheek.

Rivka said quietly, “That’s five degrees fahrenheit, Americanskie boy.”

I rolled my eyes, smiled ruefully and slowly shook my head, saying, “I think I could have figured that out, Russian girl.”

She seemed to consider that for a moment. “I’m sure you could have . . . but not before it got down to minus sixteen,” she said, smiling at me sweetly.

“God, you’re a brat,” I said, side-glancing at her . . . and smiling.

Mama Rakhel, sitting on the arm of the chair next to Papa Itzak said, “Thank you, Misha, for not letting my daughter die a frozen death on the streets of Hillsdale.” I felt her smile.

“Nichevo (It was nothing),” I said, shaking my head, and smiling and my heart feeling so full. 

                                                                                               ***

Our band, Mother Lode, played at the Portland Memorial Convention Center Summer Festival third week in August, 1965. This time we played on “A Stage,” definitely moving up in the world, albeit in the early afternoon. Still, a lot of people came up to Paul, our bass player, after our set, inquiring about booking us. 

Later Rivka and I were sauntering through the middle of the Convention Center, just meandering. “I think John was a little embarrassed when I hugged him? Do you think he thought I was, I don’t know, flirting?”

“Oh, Rivka . . . he’s fifteen. I’m sure he’d do you if you let him.”

“Misha!!!”

“Look, I don’t think he got the idea you would . . . let him, from just a hug and a kiss on the cheek. I saw the whole thing. It’s just, well, if he thought you wanted to be more than a friend. That’s all. Most guys, I think, if they catch a whiff of a female being attracted to them, they start fantasizing about doing her.”

“Really? I think there are a lot of girls attracted to you. Are you fantasizing about doing them?”

“Really? You think a lot of girls are attracted to me? Hmm, I guess my receivers for that kind of thing are down . . . I guess my attraction receivers are only up for you.”

She chuckled. “Oh, you are so smooth.”

“I’m smooth for you, baby.”

“You’re hilarious.”

“I’m hilarious for you, baby.” We both chuckled, our heads together. “I don’t think you were flirting . . . at least, it didn’t seem so to me. You just be yourself, Ri. You’re a hugger.”

“I am, aren’t I? So are you.”

I put my arms around her from behind and nuzzled her neck. “I am. And I definitely would do you if you’d let me.”

“What’s stopping you?”

I looked around at the hundreds of people milling around on the floor. “I think we’d get arrested.”

She laughed as she took my hand and led me to the backstage area where we showed our all-access badges and found an empty dressing room. She locked the door, turned around and kissed me sweetly, then more passionately as she undid my belt, got down on her knees, pulled my pants down and sucked me, making me hard . . . or harder. Then she pulled off her panties and turned around and bent over and opened herself with both hands. I probed around with my rigid organ, prodding her, to see if she was wet enough. She was. 

“Just come inside me,” she said to me breathlessly as I entered her repeatedly.

“What about you?” I said.

“It will be enough for me right now just to feel you come. I don’t have to.”

“Hmm . . . that must . . . feel really amazing when we . . . come together.” 

She gasped, “You have no fucking idea!”

When Rivka and I began having sex together, making love, she told me of her empathic gift. About how she usually had the ability to control it, that is, turn it off, which she mostly did around me. She didn’t want to encroach on my privacy. When we made love, however, she couldn’t control it and had no choice but to feel my emotions. So she always felt my climax almost as acutely as her own.

 I decided that her not coming was not acceptable. She had braced both hands against the door as I began thrusting with a fair amount of force. She bent her knees and was off the floor, resting the backs of her thighs against the fronts of mine, her feet locked together behind my butt. I reached around and gently stimulated her clitoris. We climaxed together . . . loudly. Then I rotated her around as she threw one leg up over my head, whooping softly, me still inside her. I was holding her up, my hands on her butt, and was kissing and nuzzling her neck as her legs were wrapped around me, her feet then resting on my lower legs. There was loud pounding on the door.

From the other side of the door. “Excuse me! We need this dressing room!”

“One moment please,” she said, as politely as she could. We looked at each other and silently giggled as I pulled up my pants and she put her panties back on under her skirt.

“You’re very sexy with that short leather skirt and jean jacket,” I whispered.

“You’re very sexy with that post-coital smile on your face,” she whispered back.

We opened the door to find a large, red-faced man with an official Convention Hall jacket and nametag. “I’m so sorry, sir. We were just changing clothes after our set. We’ll get out of your hair,” she said as innocently and respectfully as she could.

He was speechless as we passed him. Both Rivka and I were looking very guilty and, I am sure, smelling strongly of sex.

                                                                                                  ***

With only a few weeks left of Summer break, Rivka and I spent every moment we could together, making love as much as possible. During the week, Al’s bedroom over the garage was a pretty reliable place of privacy. Some days the Cave. Sundays were problematic. My papa was often working in the garage so Al’s bedroom was out. Sally Anne had friends visiting frequently so she took over the Cave.

That Sunday Rivka didn’t feel like doing it in the back seat of her Chevy, so we went to the High School. I knew a way in through the basement and since it was summer there was no one anywhere in the building. We spent several hours making love in the Nurse’s office, then went to the Shake Shoppe, then to a movie.

“Hey . . . I had a truly wonderful time with you today, Ri . . . really truly wonderful time.” 

“I wish we could spend the night together,” she whispered into the phone in her room. They’d just had a new extension installed.

“Mmm . . . I can’t get enough of you,” 

“My mama is telling me I need to go to bed.”

“Mmm (I growled). I love you, sweetheart.”

“I love you, my darling.”

“Sweet dreams, my angel.”

“Sweet dreams, my beautiful, crazy American boyfriend.”