Where Were You the Day That Innocence Died?

I was sitting in the New Asia Cafe on Broadway and 114th having lunch with Mike Segal. He had just asked me if I was a virgin, when the music on the radio stopped. “We interrupt this program to report that President Kennedy has just been shot in Dallas. . . .”

Where were you?

Mike Segal was wearing a gray tweed jacket and a blue plaid scarf. At first we ignored the announcement and kept eating egg foo yong and drinking jasmine tea. I was sure I hadn’t heard it right.

“Wait a minute,” I said, as Mike Segal attempted to get personal again. “Did he say someone had been shot?”

“Maybe it has something to do with Madame Nhu’s visit,” he said.

Then he explained that someone named Madame Nhu from a country I had never heard of called Vietnam had spoken at Columbia University that day. He had protested her visit.

Mike Segal was “political.” I had never met anyone like him before. To think you know what’s right for your government at the age of 19--not to support everything the President did--was unimaginable to me.

But I didn’t say these things to Mike Segal because I had only been in Manhattan for three months and this was only our fourth date. I coyly tried to conceal the truth. I was the worst thing you could be in sophisticated New York: I was a hick from the Midwest.

Still, a hick from Chicago is not totally innocent. I knew about local politics. Local politics were simple cash transactions. Fixed tickets. Calls to ward committeemen. The fiefdom of Richard J. Daley was a straightforward place.

But Washington was a complicated place. Washington was part of history. I didn’t pay much attention to it until that day when the announcer said, “I repeat: The President has been shot. He is said to be moribund. . . .”

Moribund? Did that mean bound for death or still alive?

The know-it-all look left Mike Segal’s face. We put down our forks. He left some money for the check. The date was over. We wandered out into the streets and said goodby in a daze.

I walked over to Juilliard to find my friend who was in dance class. By the time I got there, the meaning of moribund was clear. Girls in black leotards were leaning against the mirror sobbing as they stood in weird Martha Graham poses.

For the rest of the week, everyone walked up and down Broadway, learning history from newspapers and TV sets in shop windows.

Since that day, I’ve carried around this box of old newspapers, from one coast to the other, like some people carry a favorite teddy bear from childhood. The New York Post, Friday, Nov. 22, 1963: the entire front page is only a headline--JFK SHOT TO DEATH. The New York Times, Saturday, Nov. 23: KENNEDY IS KILLED BY SNIPER AS HE RIDES IN CAR IN DALLAS; JOHNSON SWORN IN ON PLANE. The New York Times, Monday, Nov. 25: PRESIDENT’S ASSASSIN SHOT TO DEATH IN JAIL CORRIDOR BY A DALLAS CITIZEN; GRIEVING THRONGS VIEW KENNEDY BIER. Then, the New York Daily News, Monday, Sept. 28, 1964: OSWALD ALONE THE KILLER.

That last headline was the beginning of an intense questioning of everything the government said and did. We all became political. Whatever security lay in not asking “why” was over.

For a year, we’ve been having anniversaries of the events of the late ‘60s. Twenty years since Sgt. Pepper. Twenty years since RFK was shot. Twenty years since Martin Luther King’s death. Twenty years since Soviet tanks rolled into Prague. Twenty years since “the kids” got gassed at the Democratic Convention in Chicago. Twenty years since a generation dropped acid.

But it all began on Nov. 22, 1963, and already I’m anticipating the 25th anniversary, wanting some ritual that befits the day. “Where were you when Kennedy died?” became a conversational cliche among my generation, and I know that by November the anniversary will seem trivial when it’s been dished up on TV specials and the covers of Time, Rolling Stone and People magazine.

So I clutch my pile of old newspapers now and remember how I felt in the New Asia Cafe then.

The news saved me from having to answer Mike Segal’s question. When we said goodby forever on Broadway I think we both knew. Nobody was a virgin anymore.