I met her that summer in Rockaway when nearly every boy in our crowd had girlfriends. I picked her up on the beach, which was the way we boys met girls. They all wanted to be part of our crowd. Helen was sixteen and I was eighteen and going to summer school at City College in the years when they still called it CCNY. Even so, I always made it back to Rockaway by two in the afternoon, which bought me nearly three hours with our crowd on the beach. I loved the way Helen looked. She had a big face with big brown eyes and what they called in those days dirty blonde hair. Also she had a great big warm smile and a body that was described then as zoftig. I was proud as hell of Helen's looks. She thought I was good looking, too. I was tall and thin and tan and some people said I looked like Gregory Peck. We necked a lot in those days. It wasn't always easy finding enough dark corners to do it in, but when we were on the beach or walking on the boardwalk we always had our arms around each other.
