Читать книгу From the Dark Domain - Keith Potter - Страница 11

It was 1964. While Northwest Christian College hardly boiled with revolutionaries, I gaped as students from the University of Oregon next door began to grow out their hair, tear off their cardigans and experiment with new paradigms in politics, racial relations, and sex. Then came the drugs.

My roommate, Chad Harbor, a freshman from Bend, Oregon, slid into each fad. Having toed every line drawn by his conservative parents, he now blew over and around every form of constraint. First, he tossed his ties in the garbage, then his razor, and ultimately ignored any purposeful regard for hygiene. I used to quip that this was one way to attain a high rank in our class. Which says as much about my humor as his humus. Puns are supposed to be a high form of comedy, but they enjoy only low levels of appreciation.

One day, I walked into a cloud of smoke in awful dissonance with his usual body odor.

“What is that?” I asked.

“Relax. It’s only incense.”

“Distinctive.”

“Not as distinctive as what I burned last night.”

“What do you mean?”

“Can I trust you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Not to squeal.”

“What you . . . burn . . . is your business.” He paused long enough to feign disinterest in my disinterest; then burst with childish exuberance.

“I tried weed.”

No response from me.

“You know. Marijuana.”

Still no reaction.

Then he gushed with detailed word pictures of the party at the cemetery near Mac Court, where he and other “more mature” students smoked dope, talked politics, and practiced gradations of “free sex.”

Don’t think I wasn’t titillated by the last part. I’d heard rumors and seen snippets of raw sexuality across the street. On our Christian campus, no “public displays of affection” were tolerated by a careful code of conduct that we signed at orientation. In the raging world of secular university, “mature” students were all over each other, in between rock concerts and vomiting spells. It was early yet for war demonstrations or wanton drug abuse or flower children or the “summer of love” and the like. But all of that brewed in and around a fairly traditional life of frat houses and sorority belles. And our safe little campus, virtually across the street from the dilapidated fraternity that would once be a playground for John Belushi in Animal House, was an island.

“Why?” I asked Chad, only curious about the influences that lend toward acting out, and much less about the influences of the things themselves.

“What do you mean?” he said, turning my favorite question back on me.

I never explained myself and I never understood him. Chad lasted less than two years before flunking out or freaking out or both, and I never saw him again.

Between studies, choir, chapel, and innocent hall parties, life filled up. Always shy around girls, I stretched into some friendships that taught a modicum of entry-level charm. So, when Alice Stratton asked me to a Sadie Hawkins event, I knew enough to bring a corsage and hold the door and ask polite questions. Alice, by the way, carried her petite form with confidence in a way that allowed her assets fore and aft to stand out in inspirational and conspiratorial ways. I fell in love with them or with her. And though we barely touched during three years of courting, Alice teased and strutted and blushed and batted her eyes in a way that portended equal interest on her part.

“I love you, Alice,” I dared to say to her on the porch of the girls’ dormitory.

“That’s so sweet,” she said carefully. “What are your intentions?”

“I’d like to meet your parents,” I said.

She arranged for a carefully chaperoned trip to Madras, where I met her quiet father and smart but stern mother. I remember little from that weekend except that I passed muster and uttered a private word of thanks that Alice was more cheerful than her mother and more forthcoming than her father, lest I should be headed toward a life too familiar to the one my parents shared. Needless to say, I hoped for a marriage that was at least collegial and at best affectionate. I had no experience in recognizing or cultivating the potential for either.

“Sir, I’d like to ask for your daughter’s hand in marriage.”

Mr. Stratton’s eyes bulged slightly. Then he paused to edit a response laden with emotion. Finally, he said, “You have my blessing. And my prayers.”

I took both in the spirit in which I wanted to hear them.

We planned a wedding in her parents’ church on June 15, 1968. She, of course, poured herself into the planning in a way that made me eager for it to be over. Since I was busy with finals and graduation, it was easy to excuse Alice’s disregard for me. I graduated with honors again, and even won the coveted Kendall E. Burke Award as the outstanding student. It seemed obvious by the vanilla-flavored applause that I was a safe if not popular choice. I ran in circles of older, more serious students and would have been called a nerd in the parlance of that day. Still, it was a welcome boost to my spirits during a ceremony at which I had no family other than Dr. Everson and the professors who treated me with respect and kindness.

Now, for the story of our wedding night.

It’s uncomfortable to share it with you, since a son hardly wants details of his parents’ sexuality. Still, my hope is that it lends understanding that leads to healing and help, even for us both. Please forgive the archaic language and stilted tone, but it suits the nature of that time and of that union.

We finished the wedding at two-thirty on a Saturday. The receptions in those days were more about receiving lines and cashews than dinner with dancing, so we were on the road to our honeymoon in Ashland by four o’clock. The ride along Interstate Five, so recently replacing slow and winding old 99, seemed to speed by. Alice recounted her highlights from the wedding. No, actually she recounted each detail that went awry and applied blame on appropriate players.

We checked into a nice old hotel a few blocks from the theaters that performed Shakespearean plays through the summer. We’d eaten a lunch that Alice’s mother packed in the car. When we went to our room, a rather luxurious suite for the time, our tensions increased.

We exchanged gifts. As seemed fitting at the time, we both gave monogrammed items—a pen set for me and a journal for her—with cards that declared our love in rather formal tones.

She withdrew to the bathroom. I changed into a new pair of pajamas and rearranged the bed in a manner that seemed welcoming and not presumptuous. My only coaching had been gleaned from the school chaplain, who always showed an interest in me. He’d been frank about the mechanics but naïve about the woman I’d be marrying. But who wasn’t?

After one full hour Alice opened the door, wearing a thin, floor-length robe. I suppose it was called a peignoir. Her face looked pale and her eyes nervous, so I tried to put her at ease.

When we lay together, she felt stiff and hesitant. I attempted to arouse her, but she gestured for me to move the process forward. She didn’t want to be undressed fully, so I accessed the necessary parts and proceeded to have my first experience in lovemaking. As I spoke my affections tenderly, her face tightened up and her terse reply froze me. “Are you done yet?”

Oh, forgive me. No son should read such personal accounts. But it seems you must know that I discharged against a flurry of conflicted emotions and then allowed her some space. She rolled to her side, faced the window, and either slept or feigned sleep. My prayers that night, and for many nights thereafter, were sprinkled with fear.

In that way, we consummated a marriage that, I dare to confess, I soon regretted. But to salve that regret, we conceived that night a child whose life I treasure as my own.

You became, dear Donnie. My flesh and blood.

It was the only time that Alice Stratton Gilliam allowed me to love her in that way. So, you see, your life is a miracle in my eyes.

You were meant to be. I am grateful to God.