They Still Ask: Who Was That Girl?

Somewhere in Ohio, Judy Cohen O’Brien is still worried about a bad rep. So worried that she called Helena Feldman Erlich in Los Angeles for a consult. And this is the only way I can tell her: Relax, Judy, it wasn’t you.

Judy’s been worried about her reputation for 25 years, since she graduated from my high school in Chicago. To me, she’ll always be a cool “older” girl--older than me--with a brush cut and a bucket bag.

But apparently she’s also an Ohio housewife whose deepest fears were triggered when she got hold of a book I wrote several years ago. The first story in the book described what life was like for adolescent girls in the bad old days before the birth control pill. It was about the one girl who broke the rules.

After reading the book, Judy sent a letter to me via Ten Speed Press, the publisher. “It was with absolute horror that I turned to the first story, ‘High School Nympho,’ ” Cohen O’Brien wrote. “Did she have a brush cut? Did she always carry a big purse? Would she be described as learning how to smoke at age 13 at Harry’s? Was she me?”

There were several funny things about this letter. One was that I had a brush cut, carried a big purse and learned to smoke at age 13 at Harry’s school store. So that killed the fantasy of my own uniqueness.

The other funny thing was how the letter punctured my theory of the high school nympho (HSN). Judy offered the names of several potential nymphos from our past. I thought each school was issued just one.

See, back then most of us were willing to go “some of the way” but lived in terror of the complications of taking things to the limit. My story, in addition to describing the seemingly charmed life of our HSN, also described the tragic life of the Girl Who Got Pregnant.

Judy wanted to set the record straight. She explained that her best friend, Helena Feldman (now Erlich), “kept me virginal by swearing she wasn’t doing anything--and I didn’t want to be the one they talked about.”

Then she offered the names of two girls who could have been the HSN. Interestingly, neither candidate was the girl I had in mind, the one about whom everyone said: She had to have it.

Meanwhile, Judy and Helena are worried that I might have meant them, and I have no way to relieve their anxiety. “Our breaths are bated for your answer,” Judy wrote.

But the final funny thing is that Ten Speed Press lost the envelope with the return address, and all I have is Judy’s description of her Ohio town as “like being at a giant casting call for ‘Deliverance.’ ”

So, Mrs. O’Brien of Deliverance, Ohio, here’s the whole story. While you were trying to go no further than Helena (who was gorgeous and had half the boys in the school running after her), I was trying to go no further than my best friend, Penny (who wasn’t even dating). I fell in love my junior year with a boy who finally left me because I wouldn’t “prove” my love. He was a chemist and demanded proof. All I ever asked of him was a hypothesis.

After we split up, I sat home and cried every night for six months because I was heartbroken. But I could never forget the Girl Who Got Pregnant. You knew exactly who she was, Judy, as you said in your letter. Who could forget what happened to her. Remember how she was kicked off the cheerleading squad and then kicked out of school? Remember how everyone stopped talking to her? Do you remember people wiping off the desk after she sat there?

No, Judy, it wasn’t you, and it wasn’t Helena, and it wasn’t me.

I guess there must be a lot of fearful readers out there.