It was in the summer of my sophomore year that I took up with my college boyfriend. We met at the University of Arizona’s swimming pool, where we each had taken to hanging out when we weren’t attending summer-school classes.
Paul was eastern European. I wanna say he was Bohemian or Slovakian. What he was, though, was American. His family had been here for a couple of generations, and he grew up in Chicago
Nothing about him shouted ALIEN!!! If no one had told you his predecessors had immigrated from Eastern Europe, the idea would never have crossed your mind. If it did and you had stared carefully at him, you probably would have thought his background was middle European or maybe British. English, that is.
But…
I brought him home from school one weekend, so as to proudly show him off to my parents. Little did I know…
They were shocked and dismayed, I tell you: shocked and dismayed. Seriously: it was instant hate…the minute they saw him.
I knew my parents were wracked with racial hatred. They would have disowned me if they’d caught me dating someone of the African persuasion. Or Chinese. Or Japanese. Or…apparently anyone even faintly different from themselves. My guess is, British was the desired ethnicity, and American the only acceptable nationality. My mother’s antecedents were English with some French thrown in. My father’s: Germanically English.
I met Paul in the summer between my sophomore and junior years. After having spent my first college-age summer at the new parental home in Sun City, I realized living in a ghetto for old folks was not for me. So, the following summer I engineered the opportunity to stay in Tucson and go to summer school. There, I used to hang out at the campus swimming pool. And that’s where Paul and I met.
How he triggered my parents’ racist instincts mystified me. And it escapes me to this day: he was as white as I was. The damning difference was that his family came from Eastern Europe.
Whaaa?
They had trained me up effectively to hate racial groups that were Not Us. But European nationalities? Huh????? I had no idea we were also supposed to hate people who came from certain regions of Europe.
WhatEVER…. /eyeroll/ They were just abhorred when I brought Paul home one weekend. And from that moment on they launched a campaign to get rid of him.
I was madly in love with the man, myself. He was handsome, smart, fun to be with…what more could a college kid want? And as for our family’s tradition of rock-solid racism: to my eye, he was as white as me.
Having seen The Enemy and realizing he was about to be Us, they set out to get rid of him. I resisted for quite some time, even though I understood that if I married Paul, I might never see my parents again.
No, that is not an exaggeration.
What did in poor ole’ Paul for me was this:
His best buddy — closest male friend on this earth — was married. This guy’s wife was advanced in pregnancy. So much so that she could not accommodate him sexually. Determined to get what he believed was his by right, he took up with a bar maid, whom he met one evening while out drinking with his pals. So now he’s having grand fun fu*king this chippie and bragging about it. Paul thinks that’s just hunky and dory.
No kidding: Paul saw nothing wrong in his pal’s philandering with a chickadee the guy picked up in a bar!
Because, after all, his wife couldn’t “give him any.”
This episode removed the scales from my li’l teenaged eyes: my parents’ racism aside, the guy was an immoral lout. So I dumped him.
Years have gone by — a lifetime of years, eh? He went back to the Midwest and became a university administrator. Had a successful career. Photos on the Internet show a handsome man; reports indicate he did well for himself. And incredibly, for awhile he was working in the president’s office at the Great Desert University. That was during the time when I was working on the campus editing a research publication for the graduate college.
I had no idea he was there. I must have stumbled across his path now and again, but never noticed him or heard his name uttered. Did he know I was there? Dunno. Probably: he was smart, and that publication did ultimately come out of the university president’s office. But…possibly not: there was no reason he would have known my married name, which I was using by then.
On reflection… Today, I think my parents were right, in a way. Given his morals — or lack thereof — he would have made an undesirable husband. At least, for me…
In a moment of misguided chumminess, I lent my laptop to a business acquaintance. This is a guy I’ve known for years, outwardly very professional, a successful chiropractor by trade.
away!