When I was in my very early 20’s, I lived in a one-bedroom walk up on the Lower East Side, worked as a library assistant in a management consulting firm, and fell in love with one of the executives there. I subscribed to New York Magazine at the time, with the hope that it would provide the guideposts to becoming a real, sophisticated New Yorker (I had grown up in a New York suburb, but that didn’t count). Finding this poem in the magazine was probably the 1970 equivalent to finding your picture on a stranger’s Face Book page. It was that weird, but then I kind of reveled in it.
A LOT TO GIVE EACH OTHER
By Judith Viorst, (Poem originally published in New York Magazine, June 22, 1970. Reprinted by permission of the author).
He was born before television, and
She was born after running boards, and
He was born before Saran Wrap, and
She was born after the cha cha, and
Although he isn’t quite sure which one is Ringo and which one is Paul,
And she isn’t quite sure which ones are the Andrews Sisters and which ones
are the Mills Brothers,
They feel they’ve got a lot to give each other.
He worries about his prostate, and
She worries about her acne, and
He worries about bad vibrations, and
Although he isn’t quite sure which one is Tom Hayden and which one is Peter Fonda, and
She isn’t quite sure which one is Adolf Hitler and which one is Don Ameche,
They feel they’ve got a lot to give each other.
He doesn’t relate to astrology, and
She doesn’t relate to deodorants, and
He doesn’t relate to acid, and
She doesn’t relate to Gelusil, and
Although he isn’t quite sure which one is Woodstock and which one is Hesse, and
She isn’t quite sure which one is Pearl Harbor and which one is Veronica Lake,
They feel they’ve got a lot to give each other.
She wants the baby after they’re married, and
He wants the baby before they’re married, and
She wants a high-rise with an answering service and a doorman,
And he wants a crash pad with mattresses and Weathermen, and
Although they aren’t quite sure which one adjusted and which one sold out,
They feel they’ve got a lot to give each other.
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January, 2018
Dear Judith Viorst,
You once wrote a poem about a 20-something-year-old me and the much older man I was seeing at the time. It was published on page 32 and was listed in the Table of Contents of the June 22, 1970 issue of New York Magazine as “A moral fable in verse, with the thesis that you don’t have to be with it to have it.”
I have no doubt we were your inspiration. Did you see us after that first tryst, as he put me in a cab outside the Hotel Taft? Did you catch us in a furtive embrace behind the Lachaise in the MOMA Sculpture Garden? Or feeding each other bites of moussaka from that little steam table Greek restaurant on the far West Side that no one from the office would ever frequent? Or did you spy us sneaking off for a noontime assignation in my mattress-on-the-floor barred-windowed flat on East Third between C and D? Or perhaps we were stealing a goodbye kiss on a Midtown corner before making our way, separately, back to the office on 6th Avenue, he balding and in business attire, me with braids and dressed in my mini-length pink flowered dashiki and Danskos (and, oh yes, love beads). Or were you on that train from Penn Station to D.C where I joined him on a business trip and had my first (and last) pheasant under glass at the (not-yet-notorious) Watergate Hotel?
I want to tell you how it all turned out. How we were rapturously happy for many years, until we weren’t. How he eventually figured out which one was Ringo and which one was Paul, and how I could always tell the difference between the Andrews Sisters and the Mills Brothers, thank you very much.
I want you to know that somehow, our daughter got the idea that her parents met at Woodstock, because she saw a naked someone who looked like me in the opening credits of the movie of the same name, and because I told the kids that I had once dragged their three-piece-suited father to an anti-war protest on Wall Street (was that where you saw us, Ms. Viorst?). Our first meeting was much more prosaic, though. He was a management consultant and I was a library assistant in his office. The first day we were introduced, he made a comment about how I filled out my sweater. This was pre- #MeToo. I was young…and flattered.
Nowadays, I am definitely relating more to Gelulsil (Zantac, in the interest of veracity) than acid (of the Timothy Leary ilk), and the father of my children has long since slipped this mortal coil.
But we did have the baby (two, actually) before we were married, as he wanted (not after, as I wanted), because his divorce was not as forthcoming as we would have wished, and he wasn’t getting any younger. And he fiercely loved our son and our daughter, who were born more than 30 years after his fiercely-loved son from his first marriage (alas, now also gone). And we lived in a high rise with a doorman, as I wanted ( because, after he had gotten me out of my Lower East Side flat following a threat by a machete-wielding neighbor, both of us had had enough of crash pads with mattresses).
And we never questioned who adjusted and who sold out. We had a lot to give each other, and we gave: Twenty years, two children, and now two grandsons, the older of whom is named for the grandfather he never met.
It was a mostly good life. I just thought you would like to know.
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