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.