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%u00a9Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights ReservedHOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOKWhat They Did to the Kid 259us, late and soon, getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; little we see in Nature that is ours.%u201dOn the lonely sands of Edgewater Beach, where Lake Michigan rolled up to the neighborhood of apartments where I looked for rooms to rent, no girl dappled with sun rose from the waves. I was doomed to innocence. No sweet girl would ever appear. I%u2019d stayed too long at Misery, and she had become lost, or impatient, or whatever happens to women whom priests%u2019 celibacy declines. At least Lock, one New Year%u2019s when he was in Cuba, had a real choice when a woman had said to him, %u201cGive me an hour with you in a room and I%u2019ll change your mind about being a priest.%u201d After eleven years, I had nothing.I had been Seduced and Abandoned, the title of the Italian movie at the Bryn Mawr. That%u2019s what movie Hank would have said I was. Maybe I was lucky. In California, in some Marine Corps hospital, Sandy Gully handed my brother, Thom, a baby, a second baby, a third baby, triplets, the curse of the Irish triplets that ran in our family. Thommy named the babies Abraham, Beatrice, and Siena. Abe, Bea, and Sie. Our six-year-old sister, Margaret Mary, star of wonder, was furious enough to want to run away. Thommy was twenty-two, way ahead in life, way ahead of lucky me. I avoided Louisa, suspecting her wise eyes could see I wanted to move out. I saw more of Jocelyn. We borrowed Joe%u2019s car, his Lincoln, take it, kid, to drive to Ravinia%u2019s evening concerts on the grass. We walked to the movies the way I thought it would be. Summer evenings after the brewery, after classes, after the library, I came more and more to her apartment, taking blankets over to the beach.%u201cSidney Poitier gave me goose bumps in Lilies of the Field,%u201d Jocelyn said. %u201cThat body. No shirt. His smile. Negroes are so sexy.%u201d%u201cI can%u2019t compete with Poitier,%u201d I said, %u201cbut there%u2019s no nuns like the ones he helped. They prayed and hung medals all over the desert, and pretended they were experiencing a miracle, but they all knew it was him that built their chapel for them, not the archangel Gabriel.%u201d%u201cAlways so analytical,%u201d she said. %u201cI%u2019m cold.%u201dI put my arm around her. The rising moon hung low out over the still Lake. Somewhere far behind us an elevated train rattled late up the rails toward Evanston. The night was quiet. She lay back on the blanket. I folded next to her, over her, like Burt Lancaster up on elbow over Deborah Kerr in From Here to Eternity.%u201cI%u2019m cold,%u201d she said.My arm covered her gently swelling chest. Her ear lay cuplike near my mouth, tasting the sweetness of her hair. %u201cI%u2019m cold too.%u201d