He and Marilyn were lovers, but this was never said in so many words. Explicitness about one’s romantic arrangements had apparently been deemed gauche. In my middle-class teen-age world, the whole apparatus of going steady, exchanging ID bracelets, smooching at dances, fighting, breaking up, submitting to the arbitration of friends — that was the point, the public drama.
Edmund WhiteI made a garland for her head, And bracelets too, and fragrant zone; She look'd at me as she did love, And made sweet moan.
john keats