I spent afternoons after school in the stacks of the New Rochelle Public Library, reading books that might explain the intimate problems of my life. Or in the movie houses. Movies became my passion. They were dreams, like my dreams. I didn’t have money, so I found a way to sneak into Loews New Rochelle. When the exit doors were opened and everyone was crowding out of the theatre, I would slip in against the current of the crowd. I was quick and I was slippery.

What did I want of life? Nothing noble. But, passionately, to be an American, to have what American kids had, a daily life like theirs, to be accepted by them, to enjoy what they were enjoying—each other’s company, cars, bell-bottom trousers, summer places, a pocketful of pocket money, a varsity letter on my sweater, to dance with a girl, to dance well, to neck with her later—nothing very noble, you see. Just the most ordinary, the most common, and the most precious things.