At six I had decided upon my husband. Jack was his name; he was a beautiful boy, fair, blue eyes, delicate and poetic looking. He was mentally my superior, he loved poetry and wrote good verses. He read a great deal and talked well. He loved me and I loved him, yet there was no demonstration of it in embraces. We played together constantly, and we spoke of the time when we might marry. His great desire was to have a colored child with light hair and blue eyes for a daughter, and we had agreed upon it. All of our plans were spoken about before our parents, there was no effort made to hide our attachment. I was by nature rough and a great fighter, Jack was calm and serious, and at times I fought his battles for him. I was maternal towards him. His mother died during our friendship, and I tried to take her place. It was a pure love, nothing cheap or silly. He was killed in the Iroquois Fire and my life was dreary for a long time. I remember the hopeless feeling I experienced when I heard the news. I did not weep, I turned to my mother and said, “I don’t want to live any longer.”
We had always been allowed to sit across from each other at school, and after Jack’s death, I was granted permission to keep his seat vacant for the rest of the year, and I kept a plant on the desk which I tended daily as a memorial to my friend.
... In college, a coeducational school, I was not allowed to remain ignorant long. I was young and healthy and a real Bachfisch in my enthusiastic belief in goodness. I was fortunate in having a level-headed senior for my best friend. She saw an upper classman [girl] falling in love with me, and she came to me with the news. Then she saw how innocent I was and how ignorant, and my sex education was begun. She told me of marriage, of mistresses, of homosexuality. I was sick with so much body thrown at me at once, and to add to the unpleasantness some one introduced me to Whitman’s poetry. I got the idea that sex meant pain for women, and I determined never to marry.
But the next year I felt very differently about sex. I was used to the knowledge and I went with a crowd of girls who were wise, and I had a crush. I had never been stirred before, but I was by her. She told me her ambitions, and I told her mine; it was the first time I had ever been a person to any one, and I was her loyal and loving friend. I kissed her intimately once and thought that I had discovered something new and original. We read Maupassant together and she told me the way a boy had made love to her. Everything was changed, love was fun, I was wild to taste it. I cultivated beaux, I let them kiss me and embrace me, and when they asked me to live with them, I was not offended but pleased. I learned my capacity, how far I could go without losing my head, how much I could drink, smoke, and I talked as freely as a person could. I discussed these adventures with the other girls, and we compared notes on kisses and phrases, and technique. We were healthy animals and we were demanding our rights to spring’s awakening. I never felt cheapened, nor repentant, and I played square with the men. I always told them I was not out to pin them down to marriage, but that this intimacy was pleasant and I wanted it as much as they did. We indulged in sex talk, birth control, leutic infection, mistresses; we were told of the sins of our beaux, and I met one boy’s mistress, an old university girl. This was life. I could have had complete relations with two of these boys if there had been no social stigma attached, and enjoyed it for a time. But instead I consoled myself with thinking that I still had time to give up my virginity, and that when I did I wanted as much as I could get for it in the way of passionate love. Perhaps the thing that saved me from falling in love was a sense of humor. That part of me always watched the rest of me pretend to be swooning, and I never really closed my eyes. But there was a lot of unhealthy sex going around because of the artificial cut off. We thought too much about it; we all tasted homosexuality in some degree. We never found anything that could be a full stop because there was no gratification.
During this period of stress and heat I met a man, fine, clean, mature and not seemingly bothered with sex at all. I kissed him intimately too, but it was very different. He had great respect for me, and he believed in me. I respected him, admired his artistic soul and his keen mind. There was no sex talk with him, it was music and world-views and philosophy. He never made any rash statements, nor false steps. He could sense a situation without touching it, and I felt drawn to him. I knew he had never been with a woman and he told me once that he could never express more than he felt for a person, and could sustain. After five years of friendship we married. There was no great flair to it; it was an inner necessity that drove us to it; we could no longer escape each other. We tried to figure it out, but the riddle always said marry. Sexually I had more experience than he, I was his first mistress, his wife, his best friend, and his mother, and no matter what our moods were, in one of these capacities I was needed by him. Our adjustment was difficult; he had lived alone for thirty years. I was used to having my own way, and he was a very sensitive man, nervous, sure of his opinion, and we quarreled for a while, but never very bitterly. Sexually we were both afraid of offending the other and so that was slow. But in four months we had found our heads again and were well adjusted. He was, and is, the best friend I ever had. I love him more as I know him longer. We can share everything, we are utterly honest and frank with each other, we enjoy our sex life tremendously as well as our friendship. But it was difficult for us to abandon ourselves. To allow any one to know you better than you know yourself is a huge and serious thing and calls for time and love and humor.
I have never known any one as fine as my husband. He is generous, honest, keen, artistic, big, liberal, everything that I most want in a person. I have never been tired of him. I feel confident that he loves me more now than ever before and that he thinks me very fine, a good sport. We have been thrown together a great deal through poverty, and I feel that we are alone in the world and facing it together, a not too friendly world at that. Yet with all this love and closeness, I don’t feel that I possess my husband, nor that he does me. I am still the same old girl, the same personality, and my first duty is to develop my own gifts. I have no feeling of permanency with him because we are legally married, but at present a separation is unthinkable. I am worth more to myself with him, and life is infinitely sweeter and richer within the home than any other place.
But if I had married the average American husband who plays the business game as a religion, then I should long ago have been unfaithful to him. I could never disclose myself and be happy with a man who had any interest more important to him than our relationship.
As long as our relationship continues as it is I think we will both be faithful to each other. But I need to have freedom to move about now with all this. And perhaps part of my happiness consists in the fact that I do have freedom. I have had intimate friendships with other men since I am married, kissed them, been kissed, been told that they would like to have me with them. But none of this seems to touch my relation with my husband. I want, and I need to be, intimate on my own hook in my own way with other people. I don’t honestly know whether I would take a lover or not. If my husband gave me the assurance that he would take me back, on the old basis, I think I would try it to see if it’s as great as it’s said to be. But if I had to give up my husband, I would not. I need him as I need my eyes and hands. He is the overtone in the harmony, and I am that for him. I like to experiment, but from past experience I believe the cost would be greater than the gain. I am free at home as I am not anywhere else. I love it, I express myself freely and completely emotionally, and the only reason I could have for being unfaithful would be experimentation. And if I were unfaithful I should have to tell my husband the whole affair; I could not enjoy it otherwise. I have no feeling against it, and no urge towards it. I can honestly say that I am a happy woman, that I have every opportunity to develop my potentialities in my present relation, that I am free as any one can be, that my husband is superior, as a mate for me, to any one I have ever seen. I regret nothing of the past; it could have been improved tremendously, but it was pleasant and human.[[56]]
CHAPTER IV
THE DEMORALIZATION OF GIRLS
The rôle which a girl is expected to play in life is first of all indicated to her by her family in a series of æsthetic-moral definitions of the situation. Civilized societies, more especially, have endowed the young girl with a character of social sacredness. She has been the subject of a far-going idealization. “Virginity” and “purity” have almost a magical value. This attitude has a useful side, though it has been overdone. The girl as child does not know she has any particular value until she learns it from others, but if she is regarded with adoration she correspondingly respects herself and tends to become what is expected of her. And so she has in fact a greater value. She makes a better marriage and reflects recognition on her family.