Memories of Spitz

I met him sometime in my sophmore year at Hopkins; he was one year ahead of me, had a motorcycle, and was considered very "cool". His name was Arnold Spitz, and he was pre-law at Hopkins. Actually, he was as very nice guy, welcoming and interested in things and people outside himself. I remember him pointing out to me two freshmen---two of the oddest freshmen I had ever encountered in the Hopkins community. They lived in the dorms, but the seemed to have created a world for themsleves that excluded just about everyone.  They spoke only to each other, in almost their own language. To me, they were silly, but Arnie (as he will be known for the rest of this post) found them interesting and unique. Their names were Walter Murch and Matthew Robbins---I will say no more. Once when he saw that I was upset about a girl I was dating who lived with her family in Baltimore,  he put me on the back of his motorcycle, and we went to her house for an unexpected visit. Did not turn out great, but he was nice enough to see that something had to be done.
   In his senior year (my junior) he had an apartment in one of the residence hotels right off the campus. I visited him many times there that year---we had many talks about women we were dating---there always seemed to be some girl from Goucher who was interested in him. The year was 1963, and in the middle of one of our conversations about women he told me that, though he enjoyed the heavy necking that he had with his girlfriends, he expected to be a virgin until his wedding night. He wanted the woman he married to be his first real lover. I remember thinking as he told me this: "Well, that seems normal". I suppose you might call 1963 or thereabouts a "cusp" time---too early for the frenetic and free love vision of "the sixties" but moving away from the "normality" of the late fifties. At any rate, our  friendship remained until he graduated; I forget what law school he was accepted into, but that was going to be his next move.
   Arnie lived in Queens (Jamaica Estates) and I spent the summer with my family in the Bronx, so it was easy to remain in touch. The last time I saw him was a Sunday in August of 63. He invited me to spend a day with him (and possibly some of his family) at one of the beaches in either Queens or Long Island. So I took the subway from the  Bronx and met him there. My last memory of him is the two of us running along the shore of the beach, full of late teen age, early twenties excitement. I remember feeling very happy that I was with him, and glad to be alive.
   I left the beach around 5, found a subway in Queens and took it to the 34th and sixth avenue station. I got off and walked to the Martinique hotel a few blocks away. Off the lobby of the hotel was an off Broadway theater---playing there was a much praised production of Six Characters in Search of an Author, by Pirandello.  I bought a ticket, then saw the play. in an extremely imaginative production, directed by William Ball, a young director making a name for himself with his strong visions.The play, itself is about a six "characters"--with real identities and feelings, who have been abandoned by their playwright and come upon a group of actors rehearsing another play by Pirandello. They urge the actors to abandon their play and perform the characters' story. It is a great juxtaposition---the fierceness of the characters pain, played off against the bewildered actors, who feel invaded; they have no idea what to do with this group. If done well, it can be an very strong work; Ball's vision confronted the audience in a small space, and was performed by an amazing ensemble cast. including the late
David Margulies, who would later become a friend of mine. . I left the Martinique feeling so excited by what theater had to offer---then took the hour subway trip back to my family's
apartment in the Bronx.
       I never saw, or heard from Arnie again. We had a great time that afternoon, yet
 he never made any attempt to contact me during my last year at Hopkins, and I never reached out to him. To this day, I am stunned by that--no contact since that Sunday afternoon in 63---only the memory of the two of us, running along the beach, feeling so full of life---time had stopped---no future, no past, only the energy of the moment.