The Summer of Love

The windows of the old Victorian house in Beach Haven open to sea breezes. The surf pounds like a heartbeat against the shore.

We sit on the floor in the darkened living room. Sagging sofas and chairs worn from endless summer rentals cast ghostly shadows in moonlight. My smooth and sun-burned skin makes me feel pretty, yet when he walks into the room, my confidence slides, and shyness returns. He has Jim Morrison’s long dark locks and good looks. “Listen to the moon, listen to the tide, hug me sadly ocean on our moonlight drive,” plays in my mind as I watch him light a joint.

“What’s your name?” he asks. “Mine’s Jim.”

I swallow. He even has the same name. “Suzie,” I say.

“Hey, Suze. Here…” he hands me the joint. It sizzles bright orange at the tip as I take a deep inhale. The lingering scent of coconut oil suntan lotion and the sweet fragrance of patchouli floats through the room.

I close my eyes and imagine, if I dare. It’s the summer of love —1970. We’re on the tail end of war, peace, civil rights, protests, and free love. I’m nineteen, about to turn twenty, the daughter of a school teacher and a housewife.

We talk about our summer jobs, me a waitress at an Italian restaurant on the bayside, him a bartender at the peach and pink motel on the ocean side. He says he’s from Virginia Beach. “You ever been?” Jim asks, taking another toke. I shake my head. “You should come down for a visit,” he says. He plans on law school after graduation, which makes him two years older than me. I tell him I want to be a writer. “Cool,” he says. “You writing anything now?” A novel, I say. (This when everyone wrote memoirs pretending they were novels.) I feel lightheaded and amazed. He’s spending time with me when there are prettier girls in the room.

Somebody puts on a record. The Guess Who.  “American woman, stay away from me”… Jim asks if I want to “split” …  walk on the beach. I nod and stand up. He takes my hand. He’s taller, much taller. I’m five-nine and taller than many men. I’m intoxicated and in love with this sexy stranger.

The sidewalk framed with roses and daylilies leads to the dunes. I reach down to take off my flip-flops and almost fall over in the sand, but he catches me. The New Jersey moonlight casts its corridor of glittering diamonds across the ocean, stretching out toward Spain. It’s low tide. Jim and I lie on the sand and gaze up at the stars. We take in the night, the sea, the surf and then he leans in and kisses me. “Hey, Suze,” he says.

Later, we walk to the water’s edge, cool summer surf rippling up to our ankles. We were never younger than we were then and never would be again.

***

I see him again after that, at a distance, holding the hand of another tall blond. “That’s his girlfriend,” my roommate tells me. “She’s up here visiting him.” I don’t know how she knows. I don’t ask. It’s the summer of love, after all.

I slip into my bathing suit. Towel, and paperback novel in hand, I walk  the sidewalk to the dunes. A good book and the smell of saltwater are my companions. An elixir, a meditation to be savored.

I wade into the icy water and dive under and up again. Here comes another wave, what my father called the haircombers, rushing over my head. A ship sails toward the horizon. What exotic port or destination waits, I wonder, pondering the endless possibilities of the summer of love.

Our Women’s Writing Circle prompt this month was to write a summer memory. Do you have a summer memory that lingers?