You cannot imagine how many clothes
You have to put on a girl,
When the sole purpose is to get them off.
John Steinbeck


I was a teenager in the late forties when virginity was a prize offered to every man on his wedding night. The double standard was firmly in place. Nice girls didn’t. Period. Men needed “experience” if they were to introduce their innocent bride into the mysteries of coitus. No matter how tempted I was to give in to the raging hormones that seethed inside me, I hung on to my chastity like a lifeline to decency. ”No man wants used merchandise,” said my mother and I believed her.

I clenched my teeth, crossed my legs and dutifully saved myself for the Romeo who would sweep me off my feet and support me in the manner my father had provided.

It didn’t happen quite that way.

By the time I was twenty-two I was desperate to find someone to rescue me from the job market. I sent out valentines to every single man I could remember from my college days and hoped one little heart would land on pay dirt.

It took almost three months for one of them to locate its target. The ex- boyfriend of my former roommate had just been discharged from the army. He received my valentine and wrote that he would stop in Toledo on his way home to New York to see me. That was the beginning of a series of sexual and social surprises that destroyed any foolish illusion I had about the difference between reality and romance.

Tommy proposed the first night I met him at the airport and then disappeared to give his own family the news while my mother went wild with wedding arrangements. I was suddenly engulfed in decisions about dresses, bridesmaids, silver, china and wedding music. Tommy flew to Toledo on weekends but our schedule was so packed with obligatory visits to relatives, caterers and celebrations that we were far too tired to so much as hold hands. Although I was sexually ignorant, I knew there was more to marital love than a kiss on the cheek and a pat on the head. Now that I was engaged, I was ready to learn a few of those techniques but contrary to every warning I had every heard about the male libido, my fiancé was not interested.

During the wild, demanding time that I was galloping all over town with my mother either shopping for things I would never use or being entertained by her friends, I listened to rapturous stories of how exciting the wedding night would be and how wonderful the honeymoon was for those smart girls who saved themselves for their big moment. ”If I thought I loved him before I married him, it is nothing compared to the way I feel about him now,” said my friend Helene.

“There is nothing like married love,“ said my ex-roommate who was now safely married to a very wealthy man from Chicago. “You might have a problem with Tommy, though. He’s a little backward.”

My mother’s friends were uniformly positive about the magnificent change that would take place in my life once I was married. “Love (meaning sexual intercourse) is the ultimate expression of devotion, ‘ said my aunt Molly who was so fat I didn’t see how my Uncle Sam could get within ten feet of her.

“Being married is wonderful,” said my friend Sylvia. “You have a best friend, a lover who adores you and the security of sharing problems instead of facing them alone.”

It took me one week to figure out that she got that idea from a movie she had seen… a grade B one at that.

“You will be glad you saved yourself for your wedding night, said my family doctor. “It is not healthy or clean to have sex with more than one person. Your wedding night will be a climax you will never forget.”

He didn’t know my husband.

After a disastrous wedding where everything that could went wrong, I staggered upstairs in the hotel to change clothes for our trip to Massachusetts. We could not afford a honeymoon and we needed to get to Cambridge right away so Tommy could register for his classes at Harvard Business School. We decided to make the trip to the east coast our honeymoon. “We’ll just drive a few hours every day,” said my paramour. “We’ll stop whenever we feel like and relax.”

I thought we would stay at luxury motels, take long walks, soak in saunas, indulge in champagne dinners and make love. I thought he thought so too.

He didn’t.

Tommy was a compulsive driver determined to break the record for cross -country driving. We managed to arrive in Cambridge in less than three days and when we stopped at a motel on those two nights, he was so exhausted he fell asleep on the instant.

I wasn’t in such good shape myself after sitting in a moving vehicle with almost no pit stops for fifteen hours each day. In fact I was thankful that he didn’t argue when I took my hot bath and crawled in bed beside him to sleep as soundly as he did.

So it was that I was still a virgin when we arrived in Cambridge, Massachusetts waiting for that climax the doctor told me about. It was beginning to seem like an ever-receding utopia.

We tramped the streets of Cambridge and finally found a fourth floor walk up we could afford. It was a remodeled Victorian with a huge kitchen, a tiny living room and a bedroom that had formerly been the master closet in the original design. The bed was wedged between the two walls so tightly that the only way to get into it was to run from the hall and jump. If you misjudged the distance, you hit your head on the bedstead and woke up with either a black eye or a huge lump on your forehead.

I saw very little of my husband during those first few weeks in Cambridge because he was registering for his classes, going to orientation meetings and trying to get all his books and supplies. I was trying to find a teaching job to supplement the $130.00 the government gave Tommy for tuition. At night, we hurtled into the bed and slept as if we had been brutalized with clubs and whips.

It seemed there was no room in our calendar for that Great Experience everyone told me would change me into a fulfilled woman.

And then the worm turned…or should I say it rose?

I had been job-hunting all day, and then unpacking the boxes our parents sent us filled with wedding gifts like chafing dishes, punch bowls and candelabras. My husband had been at a series of conferences and orientation meetings all night. The clock struck four as he staggered up the steps and pushed open the door. I had drifted into an uneasy sleep and when the door opened I screamed, “WHO ARE YOU?”

“Tonight’s the night!” he exclaimed.

I looked up at him from my position on the floor sorting through cream soup bowls and silver compotes. “For what?” I asked.

“Tonight is our wedding night!’ he said.

“Have you eaten dinner?” I asked. “I have some soup I can heat up. It’s tomato.”

“I ate at The Commons,” he said. “Come here.”

“I have to unpack this last crate of china,” I said. “I have an interview at seven with the Brookline School System.”

“That gives us three hours,” said Tommy.

“Three hours for what?” I asked.

He moved toward me, stubbed his toe on a carton of soup bowls and fell into the box of linens. I tiptoed over him and did the leap into bed. I pushed the door shut with my foot. I slept as if drugged.

The next morning, I maneuvered around my sleeping husband, grabbed a piece of toast and left for my interview. That weekend, my husband was determined to do his duty. I was astounded. “You want to do “WHAT?” I asked.

“You will LOVE it,” he promised.

He lied.

Men marry because they are tired;
Women because they are curious
Both are disappointed
Oscar Wilde