Annals of the Floored & Flabbergasted

They did hate him. Yes, indeed. WHY, I never fully understood, except that he was THEM and we were US.

My parents were born & bred to think of themselves as Yankees: specifically, as Whitey-White natural-born Americans.

This, despite the fact that my father was at least a quarter Choctaw Indian. More like half, far as I could tell. But he believed himself to be all Honkey.

Anyone who was different from them, my parents hated. With élan, we might add.

Welp, my boyfriend Paul was no American Indian. He was Eastern European, as a matter of fact. Far as I could tell, his people were mostly Bohemian.

Whatever, they apparently didn’t come up to my parents’ standard of whitey-whiteness…though to my eye, Paul was as white as or whiter than me.

Paul was the first love of my life. And oh, my: I was in love with the man.

We met in my sophomore year at the University of Arizona. Got a-goin’ and kept on goin’ until I was in the middle of senior year, when my parents finally succeeded in breaking us up.

There was a point at which, though, I realized that if I married Paul, I would never see my parents again. That’s how much they hated him. And I was very close to my parents: especially to my mother.

And “never see my mother again” was not, to tell the truth, what I wanted for my future. So, at the point where I realized that probably would be the outcome of any serious affair or marriage with Paul, I gave him the heave-ho.

He was shattered. I was deeply unhappy, too. But alas, I was not willing and ready to break up my family for a man.

So, that was that.

Every now and again, I think of Paul — as I was doing this afternoon while traipsing around the neighborhood on foot.

Would my birth family really have been permanently shattered if I’d married Paul?

Well. One never knows. But I suspect the answer is “yes.” That is how much they hated the guy. If I went with him, it would be at the cost of leaving them behind.

And that seemed…ungrateful, hm?

Would Paul and I still be married if I’d thrown over the family traces and gone off with him?” 

Very probably not. And here’s why:

One afternoon we were loafing in bed when he started to tell me what his best buddy was up to.

Buddy was a married man. Had been for at least a year or more. At the time, his wife was advanced — very advanced — in pregnancy. As Paul and I lay in bed chatting, he remarked, with sincere approval, that his buddy had picked up a chippy in a bar and was f*cking her merrily. Having a great time! Paul approved of this heartily; because, after all, the buddy’s wife “couldn’t give him any.”

Got that?

She’s so bloated in pregnancy that she can’t accommodate his dong, so it’s OK for him to pick up a barmaid and jump into the sack with her.

Right…Then…And…There: That was the end of my interest in Paul.

If he thought it was OK for his buddy to f**k a chippy while the wife was too bloated to entertain him, then Paul would figure it was OK for him to do the same. WOW!! What a guy, eh?

So, it was out the door with me, that very night.

I’m sure he wondered what got into me. Altogether too much of him, we might say…  {chortle!} WhatEVER: I threw him out of my life that week. The proposed marriage never happened. The grand life together never happened. The great careers together never happened.

Thank goodness, eh?