by Seka
I was still a virgin.
I made the great escape and ran two blocks away to Mary Jo’s. I talked to Frank and told him, “Look, I turn eighteen on the fifteenth of April.” He said we’d get married a few days later. My cousin was a religious person and wanted it in a church. We planned for a small ceremony. Mary Jo invited my aunt, and I could hear her screaming over the phone, “Hell, no!” She forbade my uncle to show up, and he didn’t. She may have been small, but she was mighty. He still had to live in that house. I was very sad they weren’t there, and in spite of it all I loved them dearly. Even today with them gone, I miss them terribly. She meant well; she just didn’t know how to handle it. Although she never said, “I’m sorry,” she did tell me once, “Look, I know you’re a good kid. I just didn’t want you to be like your mother.”
Dad gave me away that day. He wanted me to be happy.
As we began to say our vows, I kept looking at Frank. I was very excited. I didn’t know what the hell was going to happen, but it was a new beginning. To me, it was like I had arrived. I was an adult.
Freshman year of high school. Still a brunette.
Junior year of high school. Suddenly blonde.
My cousin Diane, the closest I ever had to a real sister.
Miss Hopewell High School, 1971-72.
The beauty queen in her junior year of high school, waving to the Klansmen.
Me, my mother, and my sister just after my birthday in 1971. See how comfortable I look with them?
1972 senior class photo.
High school graduation, 1972.
With my first husband, Frank Patton, two months after our wedding. Told you he was tall.
7. Wedding Night
After saying “I do,” it kind of hit me that the honeymoon was on the horizon.
I knew that Frank and his dad had a little cabin down on Lake Gaston in North Carolina. It was a popular place for fishermen. Although it occurred to me we were going bass fishing for our honeymoon, it really didn’t bother me since I used to go fishing with my Dad. I didn’t know much about it then and still don’t, but it was soothing to be near the water.
After the cake and punch and a round of “See you laters,” we jumped in the car. Hopewell, Virginia to Lake Gaston was about a four-hour trip. I remember feeling like I was kind of outside myself watching someone else. It was almost surreal. It was April 21, 1972, and it felt very warm. I still felt like I was sneaking around — I was actually ducking down in the car seat while leaving town. Frank noticed and thought it was quite peculiar.
When we stopped for dinner, the restaurant had an old rustic look outside. It was fun and exciting and even strange to me, since growing up we almost never went out to eat because we couldn’t afford it. And the way my family cooked, it was better than most restaurants anyway.
I ordered a glass of milk — not exactly the most mature thing I could have done, but I like milk. Later, I had my first glass of wine. I’d never had alcohol before, although I had smoked cigarettes. But now I was suddenly an adult. It was a white German wine. Kind of sweet. Frank lit up a cigarette and offered it to me. All these bells and whistles and alerts went off in my head. “Don’t do this. Aunt Sis is going to smell it on your breath.” Suddenly remembering I was married, it was the first time I took a cigarette without having to worry. I don’t think a cigarette ever tasted so sweet or wine ever had the same effect.
Being the “wine virgin” that I was, I didn’t think about the wine and milk and cigarettes not making a real good match. It kind of made me nauseous.
It had been a whirlwind week. Moving out of my Aunt’s house, having the wedding and reception, driving to North Carolina, and now being on my honeymoon. Also, I had never had sex and was about to be intimate with someone for the very first time in my life. I was scared shitless.
The sun was going down and nighttime was coming. I had visions of a nice little fishing cabin nestled in the woods, with a few other similar places not far away. But it was busier than hell. It was like its own little city and I realized it wasn’t going to be as quiet as I thought. Still, I liked the idea of camping. I wasn’t going to let anything interfere with my fantasy of how this experience was going to be.
We went down a dirt road and I could hear crickets and the wind flowing down the trees. It felt like a Harlequin Romance novel. All the right elements were there.
We pulled up in front of this place and stopped. Frank turned off the car and said, “Okay, we’re here.” I was stunned. It was a trailer. I looked at him and went, “What?!”
He said, “What do you mean? This is the place.”
“Holy shit. A trailer.” Not that there’s anything wrong with a trailer. But it wasn’t what I envisioned for my virginal honeymoon. I don’t think I was misled; it just ran completely against the fantasy going on in my head. I thought, “Make the best of this. It’s only four or five days. How bad can it be?”
The trailer had all the amenities you could possibly want other than a phone. It was very well maintained, not dirty. A comfortable feel to it. Frank didn’t carry me over the threshold, which is what I dreamed about. But that was okay because I had to go to the bathroom really badly. He told me the bathroom was the second door on the left down the narrow hall. About four steps into the hallway I got really, really hot. I started sweating and my throat started closing up. I had never been in such a tight place before. I found the bathroom and it was even smaller and tighter than the hallway. I didn’t know I was claustrophobic. The only thing I could think was “I hope there’s a trashcan in here, because I really want to pee and I’m going to throw up.”
The combination of wine, cigarettes, milk, stress, and exhaustion hit me and I started puking. Once I relieved myself of everything that was inside of me, I got really clammy and cold. I was sitting there with a cold washcloth on my face. I also felt like I was burning up and my hands were shaking. Frank gently knocked on the door and asked, “Are you okay?”
“I don’t know,” and I didn’t.
“Honey, unlock the door.”
“I can’t.” I couldn’t move. I was paralyzed from being in this small, tight space. I was thinking, “What the fuck is wrong with me?” I was burning up inside like someone had put a fire in me and I couldn’t put it out. Yet, I was clammy on the outside. I knew I wasn’t sick at this point; it was psychological. I felt like I was in a cage. To this day I do not like enclosed spaces, even crowded elevators.
So I spent my honeymoon on the bathroom floor in a trailer in Lake Gaston, North Carolina. Frank was excellent about the whole thing. He stood by the door for a while and kept asking if he could get me anything. I kept saying, “I need to sit here for a while.”
I heard the pop of cans as Frank was drinking beers and I heard the TV go on. I covered myself with towels because I was cold. When I finally woke up I was ravenous. What woke me was the smell of bacon, eggs, and coffee. I thought, “God, something smells good.”
I finally came out of the bathroom and squinted from the morning sun. Frank just looked at me and laughed. It was an affectionate kind of laugh. I also realized, although I didn’t realize it at the time, part of what I smelled was pot. I didn’t know he smoked pot all the time, which made everything seem funny to him. I got a pass on a lot of crap because of it. I think he was just stoned and didn’t give a shit. In either case, it was a win/ win for me.
He asked, “Are you hungry?” When I told him just how hungry I was he said, “I figured you would be.”
We had breakfast and he had the windows and doors and everything open and I remember it being very noisy. It was the kind of noise I had never heard before. He said, “Come here, I’ll show you something.” There was a little porch and it was like being at an amusement park. There were all these little worker bee people doing things. There was a special buzz about the place. They were mowing and cleaning their yards. Boats were everywhere you looked. And there were “Bubbas” all over the place. Bubba shrimp, Bubba fish, and guys nam
ed “Bubba” or looking like they should be. It was sort of a civilized Deliverance. For me to think that it was “bubba-ish” is something because I was a country bumpkin myself.
As for all the activity, there was a fishing tournament that weekend and guess who was entered? Frank. Get married and have a fishing tournament and honeymoon all at the same time. But I didn’t care. I was still feeling woozy and the idea of being on my honeymoon with a man I didn’t know all that well made me anxious. I figured I could sleep some more and I didn’t have to sleep with someone else. I understood at some point I had to get naked and have sex with this man. But at least with him fishing, I could familiarize myself with the trailer and try to be more comfortable.
It was really odd not having to hide or worry about what anyone thought. I kept thinking, “I’m going to catch hell when I get home.” And then it would hit me. “That’s not going to happen because you’re married.” It took quite a long time, a good six months, before I didn’t feel like that, before I realized I was my own person.
Frank came back and was very excited because he caught some big fish that day. Not knowing what he wanted to do, I hadn’t fixed dinner. We ended up making steak and potatoes, watched a little bit of TV, and he said he had to get up early because they left around 4:30 in the morning for the tournament. He asked, “Do you want to go to bed now?”
I said, “I guess.” I didn’t feel the panic I thought I would. But I had always worn long-sleeved pajamas with long pants, and at that moment I felt like there weren’t enough pajamas in the world to cover me up and keep me protected.
I washed my face, brushed my teeth, and put on my pajamas. When I came out, Frank laughed at me because I was wearing them. My face got beet red and hotter than hell. I was embarrassed.
He came over and started unbuttoning me. Kissing me. I was five-eight and he was six-seven, so it wasn’t that comfortable for him to be bent over. We were standing and then he picked me up and brought me into the bedroom. It was romantic. He made love to me. It was very slow and gentle. And passionate.
Considering I’d been sick on the bathroom floor the previous night, I thought it was a good experience. I had never been around anyone who told me about sex or anything like that. God, no. To say the word “sex” back then around my family was taboo. You were a nasty person if you talked about it. So I didn’t know what to expect. But I enjoyed it. I felt very close to him. In my head, a husband was supposed to be understanding, and that’s just what he was the night before. A real gentleman. I thought everyone was wrong about this guy. He was soft-spoken, gentle, and kind. I think I learned more about him the night I was in the bathroom than the whole time I was sneaking around with him.
It was the first time I knew this relationship was real and not just some teenage game. But right after he made love to me I thought, “I am going to go straight to hell.” Then I realized again I was married. It still didn’t seem real to me.
In general, my feeling about the lovemaking was, “Hmm, so this is what it’s all about. It’s good stuff.” I thought I would be very freaked out about it, since I was still bashful and shy. I can remember somebody asking me after we got back how I liked losing my virginity. I was embarrassed about it because it was really nobody’s business. But deep down, I felt funny admitting to myself I enjoyed it.
I finally made it through my first sexual experience without any broken bones or bloody noses and all was right with the world.
8. Wife
I was a housewife, but I was still in high school.
The students thought I was kind of weird because they wondered why I would get married and still be in school. Most of the kids were okay, except the “frou-frous” or upper echelon, and I wasn’t close with them anyway. I don’t think anyone had ever gotten married before while still in school, or if they did they hadn’t told anyone. I was in the heart of the Bible Belt in the early seventies. But I was Ms. Hopewell High and they didn’t take too kindly to my marital status. They wanted to suspend me from school because I was married.
I said to the principal, “It’s okay for the preacher’s daughter (who was pregnant and unmarried, not knowing who the father of the child was and with no intention of getting married) to be in school. But you want to suspend me from school because I got married and made it legal?!”
They decided not to suspend me from school, but I couldn’t open the Junior/Senior Prom because I was married, and they told me they would let me know if I would be allowed to even go to the prom.
I was pissed off about the whole thing. The girls at school were running around with their legs wide open, having sex with anything that moved, and I was being punished.
I decided not to even go to the prom. I just said screw it — I don’t want to be around that anyway. I was plenty busy with a new life and a house to set up.
On the way back from the honeymoon I asked, “Where are we going to live?” We hadn’t looked for a house or apartment or anything like that.
Frank said, “Don’t worry about it. Everything’s fixed.”
He took me to a part of town I had never seen before. A nice part of town. He said, “Okay, we’re home.”
It was a second floor apartment with hardwood floors, a small kitchen, a large dining room, one bedroom, and one bathroom. It was nice except there wasn’t much furniture except for a dining room table and bedroom furniture. There were curtains in the bedroom but nowhere else. It was nice enough. I’d been in a double bed back at home and when I walked in this bedroom, I saw a king-sized bed for the first time in my life. It was sort of like Ellie Mae comes to Beverly Hills. It was the largest bed I’d ever seen in my life.
Hey, at least it wasn’t a trailer park.
I think Frank was a little anxious because he’d never shared an apartment with a woman. He’d fished in a tournament earlier that morning, we had a long drive home, and he had work the next day. So we just went to sleep and that was my first night in my new home.
The next morning I headed out to school. It was weird because Frank dropped me off. It was strange because I still felt like I needed to hide.
Things were all so new between me and Frank. He arranged his schedule so he could take me to and from school. He got off at 3:00 and I got off at 3:30. Since it was such a small town, we were never very far apart.
Frank also made it clear to me he wanted kids — lots of kids. My own feelings about children were still developing and quite honestly, I might have been open to suggestion either way. But this was an area where Frank was insistent and I opposed him very strongly for one important reason: I was still in high school! Here I was, trying to finish out my senior year as conventionally as possible, and he wanted me barefoot and pregnant. Like being “the married kid” wasn’t weird enough. I didn’t want to walk the halls with a big ol’ belly out to here, nor did I want to drop out. Soon after we got married, I went to the doctor and got on the Pill. Frank threw them out — that’s how much he wanted his way. So I just went back to the doctor, explained the situation, and got another supply and hid them from Frank. Frank was willful; I was willful. Kids would be a discussion for another day.
I didn’t really know any of his friends. When we got home, I knew how to fix some dinner. I was going to make spaghetti, but there was a knock on the door and Frank was in the shower. There was some guy about my height — really skinny with long, long hair down to his rear end, a tied-dyed tee-shirt, with sandals and jeans and a cloth pack on his back, with a flute sticking out of the back. Who was this? A homeless person?
He looked like a member of the Manson family. I told him, “Wait here.” I didn’t want to let him in.
I described him and Frank laughed and said, “Let him in.”
He introduced himself as Lee. He said, “Oh, you’re cooking.”
With Frank still in the shower, he took something out of his bag and threw it down on the table. I thought to myself, “Oh, nice of him to bring some herbs.” I thought it was oregano. I grabbed the
pack and figured I’d use it. I took some of it and crumbled it up between my fingers, rubbed it between my palms, and started throwing it into the spaghetti sauce. By the time Frank came out to watch they both looked at me like I was crazy and burst out laughing. They were literally on the floor. I was still clueless. Lee was suddenly sitting at the table rolling the stuff up with some papers. I still wasn’t making the connection, even when they started smoking. I said, “What the hell is this?”
Lee said, “Pot,” matter-of-factly.
“You’re smoking pot?!” It was inconceivable to me. I couldn’t fathom anyone doing drugs. It just blew my mind. I went into the bedroom and started crying. I thought I’d married a drug addict. I figured I would have to leave him and go back to my aunt.
They thought it was funny because they were stoned. They figured I was a crazy little broad who didn’t have a clue. And they were right.
I locked myself in the bedroom and hours later I heard Frank’s friend leave. I wasn’t about to unlock the door with him there. Eventually, Frank started knocking on the door. I let him in and he said, “What’s wrong with you?”
“I had no idea you were a drug addict.”
He laughed and said, “It’s just pot.”
I was the perfect virgin. All of a sudden I was thrown into sex, booze, and drugs and didn’t know what to do.
I let everything slide for a few days. The weekend came and between dealing with the bureaucrats at school, I was relieved to just calm down. I asked Frank, “What is it with this marijuana shit?”
“It makes you happy and you want to eat.”
Now it hit me why he was laughing all the time. I figured if it made him happy and he just ate and went to sleep, how bad could it be? Still, I wasn’t in the mindset to try it.