Size 4...yikes...
Size 4...yikes...my bathing suit is not a bikini. A strategic sarong hides less than perfect thighs. More importantly it hides an odd bruise on one thigh that never goes away. I don't know where it came from. It looks like fingerprints.
He came back for me that day. He didn't have to. He stood on my front porch dressed in the same clothes. He rang the doorbell and stood confident and straight waiting. He was there to help me pack. There were no dark shadows around his eyes back then, that 1993 day.
He was a touch moody and iritable in school. I tip-toed around him on those days or he went off alone. Then we all snuck up on his isolation and jumped him! My co-plotters were his best guy friends. He was a blur of brown compared to there contrast. He tanned. He worked out. He kept his light brown hair military clean. His clothes always looked about the same, boring and starched. Something about him transcended the dull clothing. The schoolgirls fought over him. The frat boys watched incredulous. A group of us conscripted him to a "hotel excursion." We'd wait till no one was looking and sneak into a hotel pool. He noticed me that day with all the "schoolgirls" vying for the "hot" guy's attention. I was the size 4 in an out of style one piece black bathing suit trying to swim. He was swimming trying to avoid looking at all the women sunbathing. The other men glared slightly at him. He worked out and lived on the beach. Where else do you get such a great perfect tan?
I'm not sure why we plotted so much to get him out and about. We should have been studying. His best friends became my best friends at some point. My best friends became his best friends. It was an odd mix of people. I kept "skaters & goths" and a vogue male model in my "blue" book for impromptu outings. A couple of guitar players with "wanna be" rock bands and most of the theater majors. I got invited to the theater parties and guitar play offs. We shared a small group of shy introverted science geeks. He usually got invited to Religious devotionals or debate competitions. His friends were the Fulbright scholars, the Lawyers, the Preps expected to take over "Daddy's" company, and a few military men. Most tended to look at me a bit like an odd bug. Women in that group are always very smart and usually very sarcastic and a bit boyish. He got in a few fist fights with one or two of them after we got married. I felt like that moment in "Splendor in the Grass,"
did I watch that with him at the old
Movie theater? That moment when Bud's Daddy takes him to the speakeasy in New York with the dancing girls, "Look Bud! They're all the same! Pick one!" "Pick any of those beautiful girls except the one you already love!" Every woman he loved got that from those friends. It's sick. It's perverse. Mom said half of them are gay. Most of them have empty fake marriages. A few pine after the one they "gave up" for the team. That IS there RULES.
I grew up with them and there rules. One of them made those rules up on an elementrary school playground before they even knew girls existed. You play along until you fall in love. Everyone knows that. You fall in love and school RULES END. You marry or you don't. Your Fraternity does not get to pick your wife. We had already gotten married when his Frat brothers decided "Love" was in control of him. I'm not sure who they actually wanted him with, anyone except me. They did the same thing with the beautiful girl who followed him there from high school. I was told she was his high school sweetheart.
The Sororities were about the same way. I decided not to join any of them when I understood. MY likely choice of Sororities did not date his Fraternity. There "approved" Fraternity was filled with men I'd known since elementary school and men they "let into" there group. He had been invited and joined "Gryffindor." I just decided to not choose, rather than choose "Slytherin" and be "forced" to marry another. I confided in a "Gryffindor" girl trying to recruit me. It was a painful but easy choice. That is what being raised in a House of Hearts is like.
Come Rain or shine, death or miserable life, come an eternity of poverty, come Hell's fire and man's ire you choose by LOVE whom you Love. YOU CHOOSE.
That's pretty good huh. I made that up just now.
He came back for me that day. He didn't have to. He stood on my front porch dressed in the same clothes. He rang the doorbell and stood confident and straight waiting. He was there to help me pack. There were no dark shadows around his eyes back then, that 1993 day.
He was a touch moody and iritable in school. I tip-toed around him on those days or he went off alone. Then we all snuck up on his isolation and jumped him! My co-plotters were his best guy friends. He was a blur of brown compared to there contrast. He tanned. He worked out. He kept his light brown hair military clean. His clothes always looked about the same, boring and starched. Something about him transcended the dull clothing. The schoolgirls fought over him. The frat boys watched incredulous. A group of us conscripted him to a "hotel excursion." We'd wait till no one was looking and sneak into a hotel pool. He noticed me that day with all the "schoolgirls" vying for the "hot" guy's attention. I was the size 4 in an out of style one piece black bathing suit trying to swim. He was swimming trying to avoid looking at all the women sunbathing. The other men glared slightly at him. He worked out and lived on the beach. Where else do you get such a great perfect tan?
I'm not sure why we plotted so much to get him out and about. We should have been studying. His best friends became my best friends at some point. My best friends became his best friends. It was an odd mix of people. I kept "skaters & goths" and a vogue male model in my "blue" book for impromptu outings. A couple of guitar players with "wanna be" rock bands and most of the theater majors. I got invited to the theater parties and guitar play offs. We shared a small group of shy introverted science geeks. He usually got invited to Religious devotionals or debate competitions. His friends were the Fulbright scholars, the Lawyers, the Preps expected to take over "Daddy's" company, and a few military men. Most tended to look at me a bit like an odd bug. Women in that group are always very smart and usually very sarcastic and a bit boyish. He got in a few fist fights with one or two of them after we got married. I felt like that moment in "Splendor in the Grass,"
did I watch that with him at the old
Movie theater? That moment when Bud's Daddy takes him to the speakeasy in New York with the dancing girls, "Look Bud! They're all the same! Pick one!" "Pick any of those beautiful girls except the one you already love!" Every woman he loved got that from those friends. It's sick. It's perverse. Mom said half of them are gay. Most of them have empty fake marriages. A few pine after the one they "gave up" for the team. That IS there RULES.
I grew up with them and there rules. One of them made those rules up on an elementrary school playground before they even knew girls existed. You play along until you fall in love. Everyone knows that. You fall in love and school RULES END. You marry or you don't. Your Fraternity does not get to pick your wife. We had already gotten married when his Frat brothers decided "Love" was in control of him. I'm not sure who they actually wanted him with, anyone except me. They did the same thing with the beautiful girl who followed him there from high school. I was told she was his high school sweetheart.
The Sororities were about the same way. I decided not to join any of them when I understood. MY likely choice of Sororities did not date his Fraternity. There "approved" Fraternity was filled with men I'd known since elementary school and men they "let into" there group. He had been invited and joined "Gryffindor." I just decided to not choose, rather than choose "Slytherin" and be "forced" to marry another. I confided in a "Gryffindor" girl trying to recruit me. It was a painful but easy choice. That is what being raised in a House of Hearts is like.
Come Rain or shine, death or miserable life, come an eternity of poverty, come Hell's fire and man's ire you choose by LOVE whom you Love. YOU CHOOSE.
That's pretty good huh. I made that up just now.