Not a Poster Child

by Francine Falk-Allen

  The next one I received had a zipper on the inside of my little leg that disconnected at the bottom. The zipper tab rested right at the ankle, a factor which led to a red scar and permanently broken blood vessels there from its rub. But at least you couldn’t see the zipper gap as easily.

  It was necessary to wear a pair of heavy, opaque “flesh-colored” (pale, beige-peach white girl) hose—much heavier than normal support hose—to try to mask the fact that I was wearing this apparatus. I had to wear the hose on both legs so I would not have one leg opaque and one with normal skin showing. Over these I wore regular nylons, which made the whole arrangement look just slightly more normal, at least at night and assuming no one was inspecting. I mean, you could tell something was odd there, and that I was wearing some pretty thick stockings, but the two-inch limp was mostly what made you look.

  Colored tights didn’t come into style in northern California until my first year of college, and I bought a plethora of them then. What was in style, much to my chagrin, was short skirts and then mini-skirts. The high school would not allow us to wear minis; if a teacher thought your skirt was too short, you had to kneel on the floor, a ruler was brought out, and if your hem was more than four inches above the floor, you had to go home and change. If you didn’t have a way home, your mom was called.

  I wore my skirts as short as I could without the tops of my nylons showing, and even shorter in college. I was determined to be “in,” despite how the short skirts emphasized my leg differences.

  The prosthesis was hot, especially during our sizzling summers. When I took it off at night, my leg was sweaty and I sometimes got heat rashes. I’d usually sprinkle baby or talcum powder all over my calf and ankle, plus a cotton “stockinette,” which was essentially a lightweight piece like the top of a sock, prior to donning the prosthesis, the heavy hose, and nylons. All this was held up by a garter belt or girdle; panty hose didn’t exist yet—and even when they did come out, the thick hose underneath still needed a garter belt to hold them up.

  I wore one of these prostheses almost every day for four years of high school and a couple of years afterward. After that I chucked the thing and wore pants, granny dresses, muu-muus, maxi dresses, or jumpsuits all the time until ballet-length dresses came back in style (and even those I’ve worn only rarely). You have to know me pretty well to see my vastly different calves and thighs.

  The other girl I knew in high school who had an obvious leg difference from polio did not go the prosthetic route, and no one seemed to care.

  I have always loved dancing. My mom said that when I was a toddler, I used to stand in front of the TV, plant my feet shoulder-width apart, and bounce my body up and down in time to the music. She’d say, “Pick up your feet!” and I’d lean over and grab my feet and try to pick them up. Clearly, music was thrilling to me at an early age.

  In grammar school summer days, I recall making up elaborate dances with the other girls. Daralyn took ballet and tap, and I was envious, partly of the costumes she wore in recitals, but mostly of all those steps and doing them to music. I liked making up my own ballet-looking movements, throwing my arms into the air, spinning around on my strong leg, and throwing that Other Leg out in some way resembling a kick, singing while I danced.

  Mother was a remarkably graceful dancer. I only saw her dance a few times—once at an Arthur Murray exhibition dance (where she took lessons after my dad died), and several times at church dances. She sat out a lot of dances because she was a widow, however. I realize now that if men had asked her to dance, Church People Would Have Talked and Made Assumptions. There also were few single men at the church.

  Mother thought I should learn to do the hula. As a child, I thought she must be right, that the hula would be a dance I could do, whereas other types of dancing would be hard for me. Obviously, ballet was out of the question, and tap as well. What she did not know is that the hula requires a great deal of thigh strength, because much of the dancing is done with bent knees. And a paralyzed foot would have made some of the moves pretty difficult, especially the one where you have to set your foot down flat repeatedly. The feet do move a lot in hula; you just can’t always see them through the long muu-muus or grass skirts. So hula was out.

  At church, they taught us ballroom dancing: waltz, foxtrot, jitterbug/swing, and cha-cha, all the simplest forms of ballroom. In high school, also, there was some ballroom dance taught on rainy days. None of it was easy for me, especially the part where I had to go backward. (As my husband will tell you, since our one-time foray into learning the foxtrot for our wedding dance, I am about 200 percent more stable walking forward than I am walking backward.)

  Then along came the 60s, with the Twist (both traditional and Philly style, which you’ll have to find on YouTube American Bandstand clips; it defies description but is much sexier), the Mashed Potatoes (plural on the record of the same name, later described by historians as a single potato), the Slotsun, the Watusi, the Monkey, the Swim . . . it was do-it-yourself on the dance floor. Thank you, Dick Clark and American Bandstand. Slow dances required coordinating your steps with someone else’s, but doing all this other new stuff, I could be a little off-balance from time to time and even incorporate it into movements so that it looked like I was doing it on purpose. And the Jerk! You barely had to move your feet!

  I really felt a kinship with these dances originating in the black communities of the US. There was a lot of hip action and cool stuff. I could feel those things in my body. Though I could not move my feet in entirely the same way, I did feel like I was doing the same movements as the kids on American Bandstand and the black entertainers, even though when I saw myself in a mirror it didn’t look quite as cool. But it at least looked kind of cool, and it felt really good. Hip at last, hip at last, great God almighty, I was hip at last.

  I had gone to only one middle school dance—my eighth-grade graduation dance—and there I’d had ONE sweaty-handed dance with a very self-conscious, sweet boy named Brad. I don’t know if he was prodded to ask me, or was simply brave. After that, though, I was at every high school dance in our town and in Marysville, across the river, from 1962 through the summer of 1966, unless I had strep throat or was grounded (for talking back or coming home too late). And the weekend dances at the local National Guard armories, with live rock and roll bands, were the center of my social life. Missing one felt like social suicide; if you wanted a boyfriend, there was about a 95 percent chance that a teen dance was where you’d meet him.

  Me & Mom, ready for 8th grade graduation dance and hopeful at age fourteen.

  16

  —

  into boys and rock ‘n’ roll

  I began having crushes on boys when I was four or five years old. I used to think that this early interest was because my dad died when I was seven, but the truth is, my interest in boys predated that. I am sure, though, that being fatherless contributed greatly to my thinking for much of my early life that it was very important to have male attention.

  Probably part of this preoccupation with boys was because my mother and father were so smitten with each other. They were really affectionate, and the best times for me were when we were all together. There was never any arguing—although I now think perhaps there should have been. Because my father died so early in my life, I held for decades the view that people who loved each other never quarreled. For that reason, I had a hard time developing skill in discussing things in a quiet, equal way with men I was involved with. I was easily upset by their anger or criticism and just didn’t know what to do with it; I often took it to mean I was at fault, would subsequently try to make sure I behaved in a way that would never make them angry, and then, when I reached a breaking point, would end up sobbing in grief or blowing up—or just leaving (the house, the conversation, or the relationship entirely).

  Given my frequent arguments with Mom over the course of our being housemates alone for over a dozen years, I never felt unequal to women and was not afraid to simply state what I
thought in any non-sexual relationship—which may have intimidated other people. Women were supposed to be shy, evidently, or at least not say what they thought.

  So, it was clear to me in early childhood that the best thing that could ever happen to you was to fall in love and get married, and the next best thing was to have children, because . . . well, I don’t really know why that was. Perhaps because it was what women did, and because churches and women kept saying it was the most fulfilling part of a woman’s life.

  My mother, to her credit, after having one divorce and being widowed by the time she was in her mid-forties, did emphasize to me that it was important that I be able to support myself. This was due not to early feminism but rather to the fact that she had lost two husbands and had not met the third and fourth yet, and also to her concern that I might not get “chosen” as a wife.

  I was a teenager with a crush most of the time, but usually it was on someone who either was not asking me out or someone I probably should not have been attracted to as a realistic match. I liked the slightly bad boys a little bit, partly because they would flirt back and partly because they had an air of mystery. What were they doing while they were not playing sports? Probably just sitting around smoking and watching TV, which didn’t interest me, but the mystery was there. The baddish boys, somewhat like me, didn’t totally fit in—and they may not have wanted to, given that the draft for the Vietnam War was looming. And some of the boys I was attracted to were not so much bad as they were looking to the Rolling Stones rather than the school counselors or their parents for guidance.

  Being in a rock band was attractive, but boys advanced enough to do that might be having sex, too, and I was going nowhere near that one, believing in those years that intercourse before marriage was immoral. (Not to mention dangerous; birth control pills, rarely even heard of, could not be obtained until one was twenty-one or had a note from an adult.) And that longer hair—Beatle or Beach Boy. The school was measuring the length of boys’ hair (not below the collar!) just like they were measuring our skirts.

  I dated a couple of boys throughout high school, but none of the relationships progressed very far. My freshman year, I had had a big crush on a nice, bright, homely but popular older boy I danced with a lot at dances, who was killed in an accident. People were surprised by how much I cried at his funeral; I thought everyone had known how much I cared for him.

  Then I dated a boy who was a year younger, very sweet, blond, and not for me. I encouraged him to turn his head toward a girl who liked him more than I. Not long after that, I had a weird “meet at the dances and kiss in the parking lot” thing with another younger blond boy named Milo—very sexy, and possibly from the wrong crowd in another town.

  For the first three years of high school, no one else asked me out, and it wasn’t until my senior year that I at last met a boy I was truly interested in. I was at one of the weekly teen dances and our eyes locked—his green, to go with his freckled face and red hair. I thought he bore a slight resemblance to Mick Jagger, something he found immensely attractive in me when I told him later on.

  The next time I saw him, he showed up at our school’s homecoming football game and dance. He came with me to the dance—a big deal, since he more or less hated the moneyed, scholastic bent of our side of the river. But we both loved to dance, and he was pretty uninhibited on the dance floor, with moves not unlike Jagger’s. And that was it, we were a couple.

  Possibly the primary thing of value about my relationship with “Mick” was finding I could attract a male I was also interested in, and stay in a relationship with him for an extended period of time. In terms of emotional content, he was all over the place, probably manic-depressive. The relationship was a roller coaster.

  We’d go out to a movie, usually at the drive-in so we could make out. If he was in a bad mood, the evening would go something like this:

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Oh, Granny’s giving me grief.” (He lived with his grandparents.)

  “Why, what happened?” “She’s just crazy.” “But what did she say?”

  Silence.

  “Come on, cheer up; this is a good movie [or a good song, or a nice evening].”

  “Just sit there next to me. I like it when you put your hand on my leg. Just don’t talk to me.”

  I’d cry when we had an evening that ended badly, especially if he was unhappy with something I’d done or not done. A lot of nights and weekends of tears and trouble and silent riding around in his truck ensued. I did not know, when I was nineteen, that I was settling; I thought that was the best I could do in a boyfriend.

  Mick and I dated and tried to keep our love alive for nearly two years, but eventually the mostly unfulfilled heavy petting we were doing drove him into the arms of a younger, wanton woman who was not saving herself till marriage. When I graduated and moved away, he stayed at home—and, I heard, later got into a lot of trouble. To his credit, I will say that during our heavy petting he unwittingly taught me a lot about my body and how it responds sexually. He’d probably read up on things a little, whereas I didn’t have access to any porn other than the Playboys at the corner mom and pop. (We were not supposed to read those, but you could put one inside another magazine.) I did not know about induced orgasms until I met him, and before then could not for the life of me imagine why people would want to have sex—other than to have children, once I finally understood that sex was necessary for that purpose.

  I had been listening to rock and roll on the radio every night since I was seven or eight. Daralyn’s brothers were in a dance band (“Earth Angel,” “Why Do Fools Fall in Love?”) and we knew all the current pop songs. Daralyn could also read music and played the piano. I’d walk to her house and we’d sing, even while the boys practiced, if we were allowed in the room. Later, there was a radio program called Shan’s Band Stand, named after a hamburger drive-in in the middle of town. If you bought something to eat or drink, you got a request slip to fill out: “Play ‘Purple People Eater’ from Francine to Stanley.” (Once or twice in several years, a song was dedicated to me.) This ensured that a lot of kids were listening to the program at night.

  In the mid-60s—late high school days for me—rock and roll became politically interesting, from the standpoint of both left-wing awareness and openness to sexuality. You did not have to be married to have sex, and this was no longer a secret, thanks mostly to popular music. And it might even be acceptable to not be in love with the person with whom you partnered, though I found this thought appalling at the time. In this way, we moved from “Be My Baby” and songs that portrayed the longing we girls had for the one, the only boyfriend, to “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?”—a song indicating that boyfriends were not necessarily the answer—and, later, “Love the One You’re With,” while also singing “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Eve of Destruction.”

  I went to a lot of concerts in the sixties: I saw the Rolling Stones twice with five-dollar, second-row seats, the Beach Boys, Paul Revere and the Raiders, Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin, Cream (Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce, and Ginger Baker) at the Fillmore, Ravi Shankar, The Chambers Brothers, The Youngbloods . . . on and on. It was a fabulous time—“groovy,” we called it then— with a lot of unparalleled music and dancing. I wore low-cut paisley jumpsuits I had made, thanks to sewing classes I’d taken when I was fourteen, and I loved the music nearly as much as I thought I loved the boys I met at concerts and in my college classes. Now I wish I’d spent more time singing and playing guitar than paying attention to boys.

  17

  —

  life as a co-ed

  I had a National Merit Scholarship I had earned on the basis of my high school grades, SAT and ACT tests, which gave me free tuition to any college in California—and I chose to use it to go to San Jose State when I could have gone to Stanford. Today, my husband relates this to people and shakes his head. But I was young and I had done all right in art class
es in high school, and though I had made excellent grades in accelerated English, history, French, and geometry, and good grades in most of my other courses (enough to get that scholarship), I was most interested in fiddling around in art and thought I was good enough to Be An Artist. I didn’t take the meatier subjects as seriously.

  San Jose then had the best commercial art department in the state; Stanford’s was mediocre in comparison. Plus, I’d still been attached to the boy with red hair and green eyes when I was applying to colleges, and had wanted to be within bus-driving distance of Yuba City. Mom thought it would be great if I became an artist as well, because from the time I was little I’d liked to draw, and it was a profession I could do sitting down. So San Jose State it was.

  College opened me up to a much more diverse group of people than I’d encountered in provincial little Yuba City. We had Bobby Seale and Angela Davis speaking on campus. The Vietnam War was in full swing and I felt it was immoral, especially compared to WWII. A squadron of police with tear gas bashed heads (a teacher who was dating a friend of mine ended up in the hospital) when we demonstrated against Dow Chemical Company, which made napalm. (I permanently stopped buying Saran Wrap.) On the day Martin Luther King died, we heard the news on the radio and my better-informed roommate cried.

  I was attracted to hippies, artists, musicians, and liberal politicos. I had one friend who did nude modeling, another who was a cartoonist who later introduced me to some of the more famous cartoonists of the 1960s (though I was too unsophisticated to know whom I was meeting), a roommate who made a film for her art project (A film! Imagine! In her twenties!), and another friend whose Unitarian minister boyfriend wrote me the note that allowed Planned Parenthood to give me birth control pills, which saved me from flirting with disaster in more ways than one. At home in the summer, I was listening to the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper album with my friends and smoking pot (which, at the time, did improve my art through greater concentration to detail, and a deeper emotional involvement; I’d smoke pot and paint all night sometimes).