Susan's Breasts

Susan had the most perfect, symmetrical breasts I ever saw and touched. Neiether the largest nor the smallest, just, absolutely perfect, uplifted, responsive. Did I ever tell her that, back then? It is distasteful to dissect or worship body parts, so probably not. You take what you get, it's an all or nothing package deal. This is my recollection all these years later. I know I thought it, and I doubt that she needed to be told this by me, not being her only boy friend, yet, who doesn't want to be told they are beautiful by someone that they love? How can one ever say love and beautiful enough? One cannot.

Perfection, in this relationship, was skin deep: we did not last together long. Perfection breaks both ways; we were flawed, unlike Susan's breasts. I left for a three week trip out west, flying to Portland to pick up a new car, drive north to meet friends in Idaho, then down to California, then west to Steamboat Springs, Colorado, Aspen and eventually from Lake Ogalalla across the wide, dry plains and back to lush, manicured Connecticut. It was before the age of cellular phones and constant contact, and I wanted to be free. Intuitively, I knew something was not working. I was relieved to leave New York, and Susan and even her lovely breasts. Nevertheless, I was surprised--even hurt--when I returned to an empty SoHo loft at summer's end, only to find all traces of her gone. Had I really thought that she would still be there, waiting for me to caress her perfect melon breasts beneath me after alll those weeks away? Had I understood that no one with any self-respect would have stayed on in my room without some indication from me that they were really wanted there, not sort of wanted, but invited to please stay? She had wanted to go west with me, I intuited, never asking her, but I had not wanted her to come. What I knew was that I wanted "space." I probably never used that word. I hope. But this is hindsight and it is easy to see my own youthful self-absorption and inexperience; it was unlikely that I would understand this ahead of time. My trip was really just another one of the "Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover" that Paul Simon sang about that year. There were many ways I left and how I was left behind. One always remembers the latter, if not always the former, though I would like to say that I remember everyone I loved or who loved me, I am sure I do not.

I remember much more about Susan than her perfect breasts. I think that she loved me, I remember thinking that she was a wounded bird. Her mother had committed suicide in the Stanhope Hotel when Susan was a little girl, with young Susan discovering her dead after school. I remember meeting Susan's relatives, being trotted around to meet them, and Susan's remark "this is it, what's left of my family." They were all nice enough, but this was premature. My bond with Susan was not secure enough for such emotional overload. Susan's father died around the time we knew each other, leaving most of his considerable estate to a former nun, Susan's stepmother in name alone. There was no relationship between the two, no "there, there." The father was the last of his German Jewish financier tribe. Imagine that, he married a former Catholic nun? Imagine, his only daughter growing up between Palm Beach, Easthampton, Deal, and NYC's Stanhope Hotel. Later she would board at the Balwin School in Philadelphia and a private, college in upstate New York. She turned into a photographer of some reknown, publishing several books of photographs, a young heiress with absoloutely perfect breasts. I'd like to look her up, and down, and see how they, and she, have weathered over all these years. A married man, I can only think and write about them: I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.