When my high school girlfriends in Germany dressed me up in a sexy outfit with black mesh stockings, a push-up bra and low-cut blouse, and painted my face with heavy makeup, I was counting on my love of acting and mimicking others to help me overcome my fear and lack of confidence with boys.

I looked like one of the flirtatious barmaids at the local pub in downtown Frankfurt, a far cry from a general’s daughter. The risk of being caught by my parents, who expected me to be setting a good example at all times, increased the thrill.

The boys stood in line to get their dollar’s worth at the kissing booth. I shut my eyes and held my breath with each kiss, hoping it would be quick—and hoping I was convincingly playing the part of a girl who enjoyed kissing a queue of boys.

In a black and white photograph, documented for all posterity, is my tightly clenched left hand, the telltale sign of determination to do a good job on the mission to raise money, along with breathless discomfort.

In truth, I was worried. Why did I agree to do this? If a girl kisses a boy for money, does that mean she’s a whore? Even if it’s for a good cause? 

I had been chosen by the student body at Frankfurt American High School to man the kissing booth, a plan that came from a school-wide brainstorming session on ways to raise money to replace the football team’s worn out equipment. Yikes! They want ME to kiss the boys? Why me? The idea sounded really scary, but that made it all the more exciting. I liked to take on a challenge to see if I had the nerve to do it.

Being part of a family that moved every couple of years, I had grown up learning how to overcome many challenges by using my nerve. Throughout my short life, I had already found myself in repeated situations where I had to figure out how to be accepted by a new group of classmates in a new environment and new culture. I discovered that when I made an effort to look, speak, and act like the people around me at school, it was easier to make friends and avoid being picked on. To survive, I quickly acquired a talent for mimicking people.

I faced my first big challenge in England. My grade-school teacher shamed me into dropping my “Yankee accent” and speaking like a well-educated Brit. At the mere age of six, I had already discovered the key to easily making new friends and navigating the ever-present risk of shame for being different.

Another early challenge came when we moved from England back to the States—to Texas where we spent the next two years. The kids in my 2nd grade class had never heard anything like my crisp British accent. In the era of McCarthyism, I was obvious prey. The children regarded me with a mixture suspicion and curiosity; they asked me if I was a foreigner and a Communist. From the tone of their voices, those were obviously dirty words. I spent hours in front of the mirror until I mastered the Texan drawl.

To cover my bases, I tore up the PTA notices I was supposed to deliver to my parents. If my mother had come to the school meetings for parents, I worried that the teachers would hear her Swiss accent and view her with suspicion, confirming their thoughts that I was a foreigner. I also ditched my lunch with homemade whole-wheat bread after I heard two girls talking in a loud whisper, saying I was probably too poor to afford Wonder Bread from the store—the kind you can squeeze into a little ball.

Before long, my 2^nd grade class accepted me as a true Texan. I had them all fooled.

By the time I kissed the last boy in line at the kissing booth—my mission completed—I wasn’t ready to end the performance. My heart was racing from all the kissing and my body overflowed with surges of adrenaline that needed an outlet. I jumped onto a cafeteria table that was set up under the big party tent, and, with shameless exuberance, sang in the deepest Marlene Dietrich-type voice I could manage, “Hey look me over, lend me an ear, fresh out of clover, mortgage up to here…”

Mercifully, no one told my parents about my wild behavior.

Unbeknownst to me, the director of the drama department stood under the party tent and watched my spontaneous performance. He recognized my love of acting and asked if I would audition for one of the parts in the senior class play, Bye Bye Birdie. I got the part of Albert’s mother and managed to muster up a thick Brooklyn accent and act like a long-suffering parent. I adored playing the part of someone vastly different from me. In spite of being known for not being able to stay on key, I managed to belt out “What’s the Matter with Kids Today.”

But being in the kissing booth and then onstage was just the beginning of cutting loose. Spring break beckoned, full of promise and possibilities and only a few weeks away.

To my surprise, my mother encouraged me to spend my weeklong spring break in Paris at the home of a family friend, Jean Pierre (not his real name) whom my sister Jackie had known when she was studying at the Sorbonne in Paris.

I first met Jean Pierre when he came to the States to visit us while we lived in Phoebus, Virginia, the year after Jackie returned from France. I was twelve. His visit left little impression upon me beyond his hilariously thick French accent that I delighted in imitating. He was nineteen at the time, and as far as I was concerned, that was ancient.

Long before I had ever met Jean Pierre, I had fallen passionately in love with France and all things French. I was so infatuated with the French language that anyone who spoke French seemed irresistibly attractive to me. This long-time love affair dated back to childhood when I pretended to my playmates that I could speak French by stringing together every French word I knew. I would say with conviction, “Chevrolet, De Gaulle, ballet, s’il vous plait.” And, as a six-year-old driving with my family through the French countryside on holiday, I rolled down the window of our Pontiac station wagon and yelled out “Comment allez-vous?” to every passerby, including the cows, until my father put an end to it.

Spring break of my senior year arrived in no time. Jean Pierre met me at the Gare du Nord train station, as our mothers had arranged. I felt instantly attracted to Jean Pierre, even though he was way older than me—an “older man” at twenty-four years of age.

Jean Pierre gave me a grand tour of Paris, ending at the front desk of the tiny hotel I had chosen in the Latin Quarter. I preferred the freedom of a hotel to the strictures of staying in Jean Pierre’s home which I assumed meant acting like a refined young lady in order to meet his parents’ high standards of propriety.

I wondered if my mother had any idea where this rendezvous was headed.

Jean Pierre came to visit me every day. He gazed deep into my eyes for long moments at a time. I barely breathed from embarrassment, shyness, and excitement as my eyes darted around, trying to avoid his penetrating blue gaze. I laughed and squirmed with discomfort and delight.

He took me home to meet his family. I discovered that my French speaking skills were quite adequate—a relief to me since the French people can be excessively critical about foreigners speaking their language.

Jean Pierre came from an intellectual upper class family whose home was lined with musty, leather bound books and filled with furniture from the late 19th century. At the time, I found their fastidious observance of good manners both quaint and fascinating. Fruits were eaten with knife and fork, cheese was sliced in a special manner, salad leaves had to be folded—not cut—before they went into the mouth, and only certain foods could be mixed. I was so afraid of doing something gauche that I carefully imitated the behavior of those around me. Jean Pierre’s mother, presiding in her stuffed, antique-winged chair, discussed French art and history with me, perhaps testing whether I was sufficiently cultured to qualify for her son’s attentions. Fortunately, I had lived in Europe long enough to hold my own.

At the end of the vacation, I left Paris with stars in my eyes and electricity in my body. As we were waiting in the train station, just before the train to Germany arrived, Jean Pierre reached over and held my face in his hands. We kissed. It was the first real, wet, on-the-lips kiss I had ever experienced. I held my breath the duration of the kiss, but loved every second of it. I jumped onto the train just as it began rolling away.

Even the drabness of high school back in Frankfurt was tolerable while I indulged in thoughts and fantasies of my first potential affair. When my parents went out during the evenings, I pulled out my collection of French records and played them over and over, belting out the words of Edith Piaf from the depths of my heart. In the late afternoons I lay in the tall pasture grass under the old apple tree behind our house, daydreaming about my time with Jean Pierre.

Although I thought I was being secretive about my feelings, my star-struck state must have appeared humorous to my perceptive parents. Mummy was definitely in favor of our relationship because, in her estimation, it was a good match since Jean Pierre came from a family she approved of. I’m not certain how my father felt. He once asked me in a suspiciously casual way if I was in love. Feeling virginal embarrassment, I tried to evade the answer with another question, “What does being in love mean?”

The rest of senior year passed quickly. I could hardly focus on my studies any more. My mind was on a distant horizon of possibilities.

In June of 1966 I graduated from Frankfurt American High School. The ceremony was marked by pomp and promise. We filed onstage in our black robes to receive our diplomas and awards. I was given a small scholarship for good grades.

The keynote speaker talked about Icarus from Greek mythology. Icarus’s father, Daedalus, built a pair of wings out of a wooden frame with feathers and wax and gave them to his son, Icarus, so that he could escape from Crete where they were being held hostage. He emphatically told his son not to fly too close to the sun or the wax on his wings would melt and he would fall to the earth. Ecstatic with his newfound ability to fly, Icarus forgot his father’s warning. He flew too close to the sun and his wings started to melt. He plunged into the ocean and drowned.

And that was the end of the story.

The speaker cautioned us not to fly too close to the sun once we were away from our families and on our own. What is that supposed to mean? It sounds like some kind of veiled warning. Was the sun supposed to represent something that would initially entice and then ultimately harm those that forgot the teachings of their parents? Would this something be too much knowledge? Knowledge about what? Sex? Life was so puzzling.

Graduation from high school coincided with my father’s retirement from the army. A huge ceremony took place to mark the event, with hundreds of people in makeshift bleachers, a big brass band, a parade and endless speeches. High honors and medals were bestowed, along with a letter from President Johnson commending my father for his distinguished service in the military.

My parents invited Jean Pierre to attend this milestone in our Merriam family history. He arrived a few days early. His presence in our house so completely excited me that I could do nothing but grin like an imbecile. When Jean Pierre looked at me, I felt so flustered, I had to look away or down at the floor.

Jean Pierre and I took long walks through the surrounding German countryside, hand in hand. One time we lay down on the banks of a little river with an onion-domed church in the background and the smell of freshly cut alfalfa in the air. As Jean Pierre explored my body, I felt excitement mixed with fear. I had the sensation of stepping out of myself as though I were a third person watching a movie about Jean Pierre and Rickie.

Later that day, in the downstairs den on a bed converted into a couch, Jean Pierre and I kissed passionately. I had heard about “French” kissing from Karen, across the street, but this was the first time I had ever experienced it. I felt something strange happening inside my body, especially below my waist. The peculiar sensations felt undeniably good.

Jean Pierre had only intended to stay for a couple of days because my parents had planned a family trip after my father’s retirement ceremony. It would be a farewell visit to places in Normandy on the northern French coast, including the beach where my father had landed during World War II on D-Day plus two.

I asked if Jean Pierre could come with us on our farewell journey. My parents agreed. Along the way, we picnicked in the French countryside and listened to my father’s intriguing and sometimes gripping war stories.

On our way back home, we dropped Jean Pierre off in Paris. His parting words to me were, “On se verra bientôt.” (We’ll see each other soon.) His words puzzled me. How can we see each other soon? I’ll be leaving for college at the end of the summer. Does he know something I don’t?

I found out soon enough.