Anne

I married when I was just twenty years old. My god, I had no idea about life or the world. I thought I knew it all but I didn’t. No siree, I did not know anything about life. My so-called world was the neighborhood where I grew up. Sure, I’d take the train into the city. That made me feel grown up. Invincible. And I took up smoking at the age thirteen! God, what a piece of work. When I was fifteen I went all the way to “second base” with some punk from the neighborhood. Jesus, his breath was awful! A combination of cigarettes and bologna sandwiches. Gag! I could throw up just remembering. And he never cut his fingernails! God knows what his toenails looked like. What a pig. He works for Pepsi now. I forget his name. Jimmy, Johnny, who knows?! Who cares?

So, like I said, I got married, when I was twenty, to the first person I had ever fucked. What a shock that whole thing was! I pretended to not be a virgin and laid there as if I’d experienced the whole thing before so I’d seem “cool”. I mean, it wasn’t a big deal. It’s not like I cherished my virginity, like some girls pretended to do. I just wanted to get it over with so I’d know what the big deal was. Yeah, it smarted but beyond that so fucking what? Or so I thought. Who knew it only takes one time? My worldly self certainly had no idea. Next thing I know I’m knocked up with some guy’s baby! WTF, as the kids say today. OMG.

Well, the only decent thing to do at the time was get married. That’s right. The decent thing to do. I may have been a piece of work but I also had morals. Truth be told it was my folks who had the morals. You can imagine the shit storm when I broke the news to them about my impending bastard child. My family was never religious but you’d think I was supposed to be the Virgin Mary, pure as the driven snow. We’ll just ignore the fact that my mom got pregnant when she was 19 and married my dad AFTER I was born! These details are mere technicalities when applied to your parents. They have a higher standard for you that you’d better live up to.

Cut to the chase: I put the baby up for adoption when it was 16 months old. It. She. She was named Amanda, my mother’s name. I don’t know if the people who adopted her changed her name. My husband proved to be unfit for human interaction beyond fucking and drinking. So much for doing the decent thing. One year later I met a man named Allan. We moved into Levittown, after the “police action” in Korea, and had three children. All of them have eleven fingers and eleven toes. That’s not a thing I like to talk about but, it is what it is and they seem to have made the best of it.

© Frieda Gossett 2009 Image and Text.