Johnny was buried in Brisbane, but I have never to this day wanted to tie a hangman’s noose.
13
Ideas about Women
“Women ain’t going to do you no good, Joan. Takin’ them by and large they’re mostly liars anyhow, and the ones you find around the waterfront is just plain head winds.”
We were tied up at the dock in Brisbane, Australia, when Father delivered his dictum. I knew he meant by “women” the gold-toothed, plump barmaids and the laughing sweethearts that swarmed around every arriving ship to get the sailors’ pay, or beg curios from them. Those women had always been objects of curiosity to me and Father knew it.
“If any of them women try to talk to you, you go below and don’t have anything to do with them, understand?”
I understood and promised to obey. I did not imagine that there was any danger of my not obeying, for two reasons. First, I was afraid of women. Second, they were all much too grand and beautiful ever to pay attention to me. Father had planted that fear of my own sex in me to keep me from picking up with chance women. He was afraid I would learn things from them that would destroy his years of careful protection of my ideals. He never let me look at myself in a mirror.
“You’re an ugly kid, Joan, so you won’t gain anything from looking at yourself in a mirror.”