More on the Romance Addict

Going through some old papers recently I came across some pages from a notebook, not part of my regular journals, that I had put away goodness knows when. From the date on them, I wrote these short narratives in the spring of 1960, late in the school year I was out of school, when I was seventeen. It jolted to see how little I have changed in many things and also how painfully I reached for what I could not have at that time for many reasons. I am both a bit surprised at the serious and practical views I sometimes held and also at the pain and need I was feeling.That young woman still lives in me in many ways.

Below is a link to the recent post (14 Jan 2019)  on the subject of my romance addiction. I had no name for my malaise then, but it was certainly present! As a Crone or aged woman now, it is pretty well conquered. Memories and writing suffice.
LINK: https://deirdre-fourds.blogspot.com/2019/01/memoir-monday-addicted-to-romance.html


***

I guess I was about fifteen when men started looking at me, not just a glance and away but really looking. I mean really looking, long slow looks that made you feel they were thinking things they probably shouldn’t. If you were a properly raised girl you probably felt a stir of guilt knowing you should be angry but you knew you weren’t. You liked it. If you had some rebel in your blood, you looked back at them and smiled. They’d smile in return, a bright, hungry smile and keep watching you with unveiled insolence until you dropped your gaze and turned away.  Even then, you could feel their stares boring into you, stripping you, taking your measure. You started wondering if something was too tight, critically ripped or your blouse was unbuttoned too far.

I don’t remember who the first one was but there were many after him. I do remember how I felt and how I fell passionately in love with each of them and was grieved and enraged when one after anther turned out to be married. I don’t know what drew them to me: these tanned, hungry-eyed, almost angry seeming and easy-talking men who stayed late in town after work because they were in no hurry to get home.

What was home? A plain little house or a cramped trailer and a frowzy blonde or redhead, probably heavy with child, short tempered and perpetually too tired, nothing like the cute little chick they had married a year or two or five ago. The romance—or maybe the lust—had worn off and it now seemed a terrible mistake so they pretended to be carefree young bachelors again. They drank too much, fought and flirted, raced their cars or their horses or motorcycles while their wives sat home and grew sad faced and bitter, older than their years. That was how young America lived, especially in the west and the south. 

***

A guy can look at you in a lot of ways. They can compliment your politely and you feel flattered. A guy’s eyes can slide up and down you slowly, insolently, with a leer. With them, you feel like he is mentally taking you to bed. Others strip you, put you in black lingerie, a brief bathing suit or a dancer’s tights that leave little to be imagined. From one you feel valued and from the others you feel cheapened and slandered with an ugly label.

A man can look at you with a personal tenderness, a look as intimate as a touch, a look that tells you you’re the only thing he sees or wants to see. That look can say a lot of things. A man can kiss you with his eyes and even if there is a crowd of hundreds around, no one will know except the two of you.

***

A person’s honor is an odd thing. I know some wild girls. They are not much concerned about who they date in terms of the guy’s reputation but there are some guys even they avoid. Maybe they would give in to a guy they really liked but they scorn girls who can be bought.

They all stand by one principal though. They hate to see a shotgun wedding where the bride dresses in white and wears a veil, puts on a big wedding show. With brutal honesty they say, “No use trying to pretend to be what you aren’t. If you are not a virgin, especially if you’re pregnant, you have no right to have a fancy wedding. You’ve forfeited that privilege.” It takes some courage to say that—especially if you are trying to decide what color you  are going to be married in, probably eloping or at most having a very small and informal kind of ceremony.

***

Of course I am not old enough to get married and I don’t want to get too serious but I want someone to care for. Maybe you mature physically more quickly than in other ways. You feel needs and wants that you can’t understand, much less satisfy, but like huger and thirst, they need answering.

At my age some girls are married. At least most of them are going steady and have an outlet for their pent up feelings. You need to know that people care about you. The love of your parents, relatives and friends is good and necessary but there is something about the feel of a special guy’s are around you, his hand holding yours that cannot be replaced.

It is some desperate need to belong to someone, I guess. I think it is in a woman. She wants, like a horse, to be responsive to someone and to count on him to care for and protect her.  At seventeen or so you can be told that all your life is ahead of you and it doubtlessly is, but there are still those voices hollering inside of you. How are you to answer them?

***

It is an itch, a fever in me, just to touch him. To run my fingers over the planes of his face and feel the roughness of his sideburns and the living hardness of his body, to feel the warmth of his lips against mine and his fingers curled around my hand. To know he is mine and no one else’s. What I want or need is just to share his strength and know the security, the tenderness and the wonder of his love. Is that too much to ask? Too great a wish to want a man of my own? I have so little else; don’t deny me this.

Regressions to Help Phobias

I'm a day late but it was a Sunday Monday yesterday and a Monday Tuesday today so that's my story and I stick to it! Here's the Monday Memoir anyway.

I am aware everyone who reads this is not going to accept there is such a thing as reincarnation. That’s okay. I do believe but even if it is just a quirk of one’s mind, going back to the past, real or imagined, can help to ease the hold of old traumas and phobias that bring you down.

I’ve had a life long fear of water and the idea of drowning. This is one I have not been able to fully resolve or even help. I say it is because the drowning in a recent past life is still too immediate and difficult for me to deal with. No, I am sure I did not go down with the Titanic or anything nearly so exotic. I may have been on a vessel sunk in war, possibly in WWI. Perhaps I can work on this one someday or resolve it before I come back around again.

Another example, I have always had a dislike for high necked shirts, choker style necklaces and the

Melinda and me in Oct 2014

like. If anyone put hands near my throat or around my neck, I freaked out. After having had a couple of professional regressions—my dear friend Melinda Rucker Haynes is licensed hypnotherapist as well as a wonderful writer—I learned how to do some brief ones myself. Some years ago I was cooking dinner and had a flash.

I used Melinda’s opening cue—what do you have on your feet? “Why jackboots, o’ course,” came the ready answer from a voice in my head. Turned out I was in England about Elizabethan times and was a wild younger son of minor nobility. I played at being a highway man and got caught. My elder brother who wanted to rid himself of an embarrassment had me hung as a horse thief. Whoa! That was a shocker. I was not totally cured but from then on the issue was much less of a serious inconvenience. I could wear turtlenecks and necklaces that did not fall to mid chest! I could even stand a gentle touch around my throat or neck.

Then from my teen years on, I was troubled with very severe menstrual cramps almost every month. I could usually force myself to carry on with my “cowboy girl” duties which normally involved several hours of strenuous riding and other heavy work but I spent many nights in tears, with a hot water bottle on my middle and as many aspirin as I dared to take. The agony continued on into my middle years and I occasionally even had to miss work because I hurt so bad I was nauseous.  My husband had learned some hands on healing or pain taking techniques from an old Manx miner he knew as a boy and he could sometimes pull some of the pain for me but I still suffered.

One evening in my early forties I was curled up in my favorite chair listening to some Celtic music, probably the Chieftains, and drifting after downing  a couple of Excedrins when I faded out for a bit. I found myself as a young girl in the Mediterranean area close to 2000 years ago. I was the daughter of a well-to-do Jewish merchant whose home was a walled compound near a major city. I had an older brother and envied his freedom to go off with his friends. One day I sneaked out and followed them. They were drawn to a crowd to hear someone like St Paul speaking. He had harsh things to say about the sins of mother Eve and the dangers of women leading good upright men to sin. I fled, shocked and deeply troubled. Although I made it home undetected, that night my first period came and I was terrified it was punishment for my willful misbehavior and evidence of my sinfulness.  I soon came back to myself but with a vague memory that a couple of years later I was wed to an older man in an arranged marriage and died in childbirth after my first pregnancy.

Wow, that was a jolt! In this life I have borne no children, whether by some deep subconscious choice or just fate. Still, from that time on I did suffer less in the succeeding several years before I came to my end of those cycles and began my time as a Crone or older (wise?!) woman! I’d called it “Eve’s curse” or “The monthly miseries” for some thirty years or more  but after that vision I started to realize how natural female cycles are condemned and denigrated by the paterno-centric society and religious environment in which we live. We are supposed to suffer for the original sin of Eve and the flawed nature of feminine beings! What a foul lie! I weep now for my daughter and granddaughters (step-family but no less loved) who are still struggling with this burden.

While I am mostly supportive of the #metoo movement, the pink pussy hats and all the rest of today’s current women’s efforts, I feel they are really not going to the root of the issues. Until we can go back to full acceptance of a female deity, even a primary female deity, and women can openly express their devotion for a “god who looks like me,” we will continue to have conflicts, disrespect, abuse and contempt from males. True, individual men can be very supportive, respectful and understanding but they too labor under the same notion that “God” is a male and thus males are His favored and most honored, in His image and somehow vastly superior to the female version of humanity. In that view women are almost a necessary evil since man cannot produce the next generation on his own. Yet what else could they possibly be useful for? While half the human race—regardless of color, ethnicity and creed—are considered second class citizens how can we attain the highest goals?

So I hope perhaps some other regressions will eventually lead me to many more ways to work on this myself. Meanwhile all I can do is write, think, talk and pray to MY Female Deity that we can begin to make real progress in this and other related ongoing issues.

Memoir Monday--Addicted to Romance

An Addiction to Romance—Part I

Little wonder I became a romance writer, perhaps. There certainly seems to be a kind of inevitability about that direction. I always wanted to write; I was addicted to the idea of romantic love--voila!

Before I turned ten, I had grown enthralled by the fairy tale love songs from the golden age of operettas and musical comedies. I knew which evening the radio offered the magical program called “The Railroad Hour.” Which railroad sponsored it I cannot say, though, as my big interest in trains grew a bit later. Anyway, that weekly show featured tenor Gordon McRae and a variety of leading ladies of the musical world presenting the highlights of an operetta or musical each week. They sang the major arias and songs while a narrator provided the synopsis of the basic plot. Of course these were not the tragedies of grand opera so they all provided a satisfactory HEA (happily ever after) ending.

Before many more years had passed my reading habit devoured all the Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys and Tarzan books in the local library and I moved on to ‘westerns’ by the likes of Zane Grey, Honore Willsie Morrow, Grace Livingston Hill and their ilk. To my delight, besides the adventures of saving the ranch, rescuing the wild horses, bringing down the bad guys etc. there was almost always a love story. By the time my teen years came along and hormones began to kick in, I knew exactly what I wanted: a handsome hero who would sweep me off my feet and carry me off to his castle or even better, his beautiful ranch full of fine proud horses and wonderful dogs!

The only problem was, I saw all of my puppy love beaus and celebrity crushes through rose colored glasses that magically wiped away almost ever flaw, wart, failing and very un-princely trait! They were actually all just regular boys or heroes only on the screen or in the rodeo arena. When their clay feet finally emerged I was devastated, but my insatiable hunger and faith that “He” was out there forced me to keep searching. Despite an exhausting sequence of heart breaking disappointments and disillusionment I kept trying. Surely all those books and love songs could not be wrong!

I was in sixth grade when I first noticed a boy as something special and not just another kid, basically all gender-neutral up to that point. Marvin was in the eighth grade in the one room school I attended at that time. He was a blue eyed blond with a fetching dimple and kind of a teacher’s pet, that teacher being my own father. Typical of puppy love, he noticed me slightly but had really not quite reached that “Oh wow, girls” stage. He teased me a bit and sometimes chose me for his team when we divided up for various games in which all the kids took part. I was not terribly athletic but could run fairly fast and did try, so I was not a really bad choice.

About once a week we had a kind of show and tell where everyone had to recite something, tell a story or sing a song. This day one or two had belted out “Your Cheating Heart” with good Hank Williams accents but I chose a tamer ballad, “Little Things Mean A Lot” which I had heard Kitty Kallen sing on the radio. I am quite sure my adored one did not get it although I looked right at him all the time!

The next year he was off to high school and gone and the following year I changed from the small rural school to a larger town school. My eighth grade class of about two dozen had only eight girls but I did not become an instant queen of the May. I was too busy trying to deal with the culture shock to spend much thought on romance. For the duration I focused mostly on the current top rodeo cowboys and a few movie and TV stars since the era of “the westerns” was just gaining real steam. One favorite was Casey Tibbs, the champ saddle bronc rider of the time. I was heart broken when he wed the daughter of the governor of South Dakota for I had dreamed of doing that and becoming a champion barrel racer myself. He was ‘cute’ (though my classmates did not think cowboys were ‘cool’) also with a dimple and a pug but fetching Irish mug.

Then I too got to high school, still in the same building and setting, and there was suddenly a “new kid in town.” Tyce was a brown eyed blond which combination I thought was “the most.” He was also into western things since his parents had bought a ranch in the area and he wore western shirts with his Levis and talked of horses. We never “went steady” or anything—both at the  too young to drive stage and I was already kept on a very short rein. But he pestered me all the time and very easily conned me into helping him with most subjects, even doing some of his homework or letting him copy mine. Oddly, he was exactly twenty days older than me, and for many years was the only guy near my age to win my regard. That lasted for the whole year, but after school ended, I never saw him again. He was sent off to military school since he’d not made good grades or behaved as his parents felt was necessary.

When the next year began, two districts had been consolidated to create a larger high school. Lo and behold, Marvin was now back, a senior by this time and swaggering around like a BMOC. He’d grown into a big galoot, suiting his new nickname of “Moose” and was really not very cute any more but my old infatuation returned and stuck to me like gum all year.  My admiration was not reciprocated now but it did not make much difference to me. I just knew he was waiting for me to grow up a little more. Alas that proved not to be the case! However, he managed to be co-salutatorian and at his graduation I recklessly vowed I would be valedictorian to surpass him.  The odd thing is, I did it!

During all that time, I still followed the rodeo and several of the TV westerns and even had a few short-lived other crushes but they never survived more than a few weeks or even days. Maybe I was actually ready to make a sea change…

The next year I dropped out of school fairly early in the semester  after missing several weeks due to a couple of injuries in riding accidents since by then our family was deep into a growing horse and mule business. When I recovered, instead of going back to school, I became the ‘segundo’ or #2 wrangler at Chuck-a-Luck Ranch. I was a full time ranch hand and mid-level trainer for the influx of animals that came our way. By the time I did return to school the following year, my perceptions and even my character had undergone some huge changes. For a year I had done an adult’s work, even a man’s work, and dealt with adults on near equal footing.

As a working cowboy girl, I had next to nothing in common with my schoolmates and boys no longer had any appeal at all. What did some stupid kid have to offer me? I recognized my celebrity crushes were equally pointless for they were not real nor physically present and for them, I did not even exist.  I had started to look at men and they were definitely looking back. At seventeen I might have been slim rather than buxom but I was athletic and filled my Levis well enough to be noticed. I wore some makeup, polished my nails and curled my shoulder length or longer hair despite my masculine duties. I was a strange mixture of hoyden, hussy and innocent which I later realized was appealing to many men on some level or other.

The new group I began to flirt with and dream of were flesh and blood males, wiling to play the game, at least to some degree, since most realized I was still jail bait and probably most were at least a bit intimidated by my dad’s reputation and even perhaps mine since I always carried a sidearm and was seen riding some clearly half-wild and not docile mounts. I suppose we brightened each other’s days a bit, me and these guys I now call “the young and restless.”

They were mostly 20-30 year old blue collar types who drove trucks, ran heavy equipment, delivered beer, propane or other commodities, worked on telephone and electric lines and similar jobs. Most were married and had become a bit disenchanted. The new had worn off on the cute bouncy little teen they had married, often hastily. She was now plump approaching fat, often slovenly, cross and tired, dragging around two or more little kiddos who were still at the whining, messy and demanding stages.

The men had to work to pay the bills and were often not happy in their jobs, so they amused themselves with motor cycles, fishing, hunting, cowboy pursuits like team roping and of course boozing and hanging out with their buds. And flirting with the older teens, especially the ones past eighteen who might be “available.” Actually I wasn’t available even after my eighteenth birthday, but I never said that in so many words unless pushed into a corner. The pistol usually precluded that as well as the horse or mule who was liable to jump, kick or otherwise act up if approached too quickly or aggressively. I was rarely seen apart from those activities, in truth.

In retrospect, I did walk a narrow edge for a time where one misstep could have  ended matters very badly. Either some innate caution or perhaps the intervention of my very overworked guardian angel saved me. Thus I turned twenty-one, working full time since my graduation, without having so much as been kissed! This now being the frisky sixties, that is little short of incredible. I hardly believed it myself.

However, I did not ‘date’ all through high school and opportunities to slip out at night were severely limited. I did go out a few times with the brother of one of my best girlfriends but those dates were very tame and chaste; maybe going to the movie or the Dairy Queen and home to an early curfew. We didn’t even hold hands! He was shy too.

Also in retrospect, I know now my state was greatly exacerbated by the emotional incest situation in which I lived. From about age ten, my father was determined to keep me snow-white pure, a virtual vestal virgin. Of course he could not claim me as an actual mate but I was a platonic surrogate spouse in many ways. It nearly choked the life out of me for I did not understand or have any idea how to deal with it. Ultimately I had to kick over the traces and my inappropriate flirtations were one symptom. In parental eyes I went abruptly from the chaste protected princess to an nonredeemable harlot and out-of-control slut. Considering how completely inexperienced I was, that is a supreme irony.

I never really took those flirtations seriously although I did have some crushes that could have gotten out of hand. I think I realized none of the young and restless were remotely prince charming material. Should one divorce or was actually single, if I let myself be ‘rescued’ I would soon be the barefoot and pregnant girl at home, out of one frying pan into another.

I also tried pen pals but that was no more satisfactory than any of the other efforts. One by one they drifted away. A few actually came and we met but none of them were anywhere near my dream cowboy or hero. They soon joined the rest of the ghostly hoard of “former fancies” along with Richard, the tractor driver putting in the gas lines; Vern and Gordon, the propane truck guys; Bud, the telephone lineman; Buster, the real cowboy; and the pen pals Howard, Wayne, Alfred, Daryl, Baird, Norm and Jose.  What a motley crew. Yet I still hoped. I had begun to lose that hope, really, but I still wanted so very much for my special someone to appear. There was no more telling me to wait and grow up, to be patient and stay clean and pure and deserving! Though I did not use such language then, I really wanted to say, “F**k that crap! I want to fall in love, to make love, to be loved and to get the hell out of this stifling prison you have me in!”

There I was, in the summer of 1964, a free love era anachronism. Most of my former schoolmates were married and moms, some had gone on to get a college degree and wed during or soon after. Without a prospect and having finally realized the futility of all the methods I had employed in my search for a fairy tale romance, I now simply kept my head down and slogged along, doing hard, dangerous and heavy work with which I had a love-hate relationship and feeling life passing me by like a fast freight.

Unbeknownst to me, I had caught someone’s eye. He was watching me from about May until we finally spoke in September. Another life changing event was heading my way. It was actually the first of several although I intended for some years that it be the one and only. Even there, fate had other plans. Still, I did get my very special romance and to this day cherish the memories. Better late than never or better to have loved and lost, perhaps.

What do I want to Be?

It may be a little bit ridiculous but at well over a half  century, I’m still trying to decide what I want to be “when I grow up.” Remember, growing older is mandatory but growing up is optional.  And I’m not at all sure I have gotten there yet!

Naturally I went through the usual kid ambitions such as a ballerina, an opera singer, a flight attendant, a nurse and of course my big rodeo queen and competing cowgirl phase. Even in the midst of them I sort of realized those were about as unrealistic and fleeting as my crew of “former fancies” (crushes and quasi-heroes) in the teen years. I was always a tomboy and a ‘tough little girl’ though, even in my most prissy and girly moments. 

In a lot of ways I tried to be ‘grown up’ from my mid teens on. A part of that I can now attribute to the Elder Daughter Effect which was well documented in a fairly recent book by a couple of wise women. Besides this inclination, I did have a lot of adult concerns, responsibilities and burdens to carry while parts of my development were blocked, denied and greatly delayed.  I was often in a semi-limbo of being fifteen going on forty five. Yet once broken free, there is no making up for lost time.

This was even more true of my youngest brother. He grew to biological manhood in an even more odd and warped situation and finally at thirty had to make a huge leap into adult life. I feel great compassion for him. In some ways his early death from an aneurysm seems almost a strange kind of suicide by neglect/default/denial. It is very sad. The middle brother fared somewhat better. As a Scorpio he had a fierce independent streak and basically went his own way  making little effort to ‘go along’ or fit in as Alex and I had mistakenly done, but he too bears scars. We did not have an easy youth. 

I used to joke about becoming a misanthrope and an eccentric old lady. I think I may have at least come close to accomplishing that, but that is not the serious sort of what-to-be I am speaking of. I tried to be a good mother and wife but as a ‘home maker’ I was probably not the best or my best. I had a very uncertain role model in that. My mother tried and excelled in a few areas but also fell far short in many. Had I been around my grandmothers more, especially the maternal grandmother, I might have absorbed some valuable lessons.

I tried always to be able to pay my way by being employed and keep the bills satisfied. In that I succeeded for the most part but the ‘career’ aspect never gelled. It was always just ‘a job’ by which my pay check was bought—I cannot really say earned although I tried generally to do well. Conscience would not allow less.

Certain things came easily to me and I thus never learned how to work-- I mean to focus, struggle, study and apply great effort. Oh, I can do manual labor and do so very adequately but ‘studying’ as one connects with academic efforts, managing and entrepreneurship are all really alien to me. Mental work was the odd part—some things I could do with only moderate effort while others were completely alien and incomprehensible to me. They still are, really.  If I did not ‘get it’ quickly I simply shoved things aside or detoured around them.

I always thought of myself as ‘creative’ and fancied I was good with words. My grades in such subjects were normally good to excellent and I scored high on verbal skills, vocabulary, and related aptitudes in many tests. I also had good spatial sense and manual dexterity. Other than hobbies, though, how have I applied such skills? Not gainfully, at least, sad to say.

The paid work I did so often involved my weakest traits: salesmanship, taking charge, convincing, leading, and talking/teaching. Although I eventually learned enough to get by, I was definitely no rock star! Had I been better or tried harder in math and science, I might have made a decent scientist, engineer or at least technician but that was not to be. Instead I was in Human Resources and did a somewhat mediocre job though I faked it well enough most of the time. My main specialty was in “classification” which was helping supervisors write job descriptions and then set the correct pay rate for that work. I was a fast study for picking up lingo and a good enough wordsmith to make things sound like whatever I wanted them to seem. It almost always worked.

Over time I grew very disillusioned and learned that the most frequent reward for doing  a volume of work and at least seeming to perform well was most frequently simply more work. Those who sloughed off and coasted along seemed to fare better, even more likely to be promoted (kicked upstairs?). When I finally had an opportunity to cut and run without literally losing my shirt, I did so and have never regretted that choice.  Had I stayed in civil service a bit longer, I’d have a few more dollars a month in my retirement but at what cost?

In my second career I became the paid or semi-professional writer I always wanted to be. It has been a good experience although not terribly lucrative. If I depended on those earnings I would be homeless and hungry! Still the extra dollars do help and it is an ago boost. I readily admit I am not a great writer or perhaps even a good one. I write genre fiction because I am a good story teller and can weave or spin a tale with no great strain. I suspect it is in my blood and genes from a long line of Celtic ancestors, mainly Welsh and Irish, both races fine bards and tale-tellers.

I never aspire to write literary fiction. Honestly, I do not generally like it, rarely read it, and find most of it depressing! In my opinion, there is more than enough disfunctionality, tragedy, darkness and gloom in real life that I see no reason to add to the overburden. Instead I lean toward hyperbole and wordiness, I ramble and yes, I call purple a favorite color for a reason! Melodrama and overkill I may allow and even a few too-precious metaphors and similes, especially when I go to poetry. But there are few literary pretensions such as references to Greek philosophers or any other ‘classic’ influences.

My other skills go to stringing beads and bending wire, shaping and shining stones and putting scraps of fabric together in what I hope are visually pleasing patterns for quilts, garments or fabric art of various kinds. So, I am still trying to create useful beauty and not sure whether the usefulness or the beauty dominate.

But what to be, ultimately and in the finest sense? Goodness, I have no clue. For now I can be an eccentric (or crazy) old dog lady who crafts stories, takes or draws pictures, puts bits and pieces together and does the same with words for rhymes and essays—like this one. Perhaps I can share a little bit of what I hope is wisdom gained in three quarters of a century of life—surviving if not truly thriving, and making many errors which I would spare others from if it were possible.  Do as I say, not as I did!  I can also be more independent than I ever was and really not care a hang what anyone thinks of me except a very few chosen folk whose regard and respect I value. That in itself is very liberating.  Maybe I should be content just to be me, grown up or not!