Little Story 3 (very rough draft)

In 1963 I had nothing to live for but the thrill. School, college, a wash; jobs a wash; I had no training in anything but dieting and dressing to seduce. So that would have to do. Steve was smitten and my work in seduction would, at least for a while, pay off. I didn’t need a job—I’d just follow Steve Mork around, sit when he told me to, eat when he said so. My honors track in high school hadn’t kept me afloat in college; I didn’t respect or understand the man’s world of everything by, for, and about men only in every class offered including my parents’ points of view. The deans at Reed had given me the boot—I could take my 3.0 GPA and hit the road;go on home they told me. They had assessed me as “amoral.” Well, that was no surprise being without religion or any spiritual practice, and it even seemed to please my dad the atheist. My college-born attitude of trouble maker (murals on closet doors, hitch-hiking in Washington State, stealing gum and getting caught at the local store—horrid, unbearable crimes) wasn’t working out. Then out the door at home too; the house was crowded and my return to the nest hadn’t been anticipated; they didn’t want me at all. That was pretty much a shock but in my numb state of repression even shock barely registered. Tossed into the cold cruel world at seventeen, and I couldn’t even type. But I could drink--they had taught me that and smoking quite well. I could also look pretty, read, write, draw, cook, clean, change diapers, sew, and, well, keep my hair shiny—that was it. My hobby of singing folk songs got buried in my own confusion at Reed. I no longer wanted people looking at me. The unconscious plan would be to hide behind my man; everyone accepted that. In the fifties and sixties, men were not only, in most cases, the sole providers, they were also the sole decision makers. Women where I grew up were expected to bend to every demand, foresee a man’s whims and needs. Having had free reign in reading my father’s books, however, dozens, maybe a hundred literary novels and histories, I had inadvertently developed a world view that wasn’t going to tolerate mindless subjugation. Whoever owned me was going to have hell to pay trying to keep me in line, down on the farm. It wasn’t going to be a pretty picture, but who knew?