It was a Sunday summer twilight, just the time to switch on a few lamps, when she asked that we leave the living room couch, which had been our home for hours and days. Her parents were away, and we had been kissing and fondling--only above the waist. Her parents were often away, and we often had the house to ourselves for kissing and fondling.
We were young, sixteen and fifteen. We had been a couple for two years. Our lovemaking was intense but limited in scope. It was 1956 and society was still a short decade away from the Sexual Revolution. Two years before, she had been the white-dressed May Queen of her Catholic parish. She actually had led the dance around the May Pole in the grade school playground. She was the youngest in an impressively Roman Catholic family. Of the nine children, two were nuns and one a priest. She was pretty, fresh and clean, my virginal American Dream.
I had been raised in this same small town, and my family attended the Baptist Church. Sex was never actually mentioned in the Church, but you could tell from the people of authority there that they thoroughly disapproved of it and personally did not have much to do with it. They did publically disapprove of dancing, suggesting that it would lead somewhere. My mother implicitly endorsed the Baptist manifesto. She inserted into my mind a series of aphorisms “sex was dirty”, “… was “disrespectful to women”, “would you want someone to do that to your sister?” A hit song of this period was Love and Marriage with the refrain: “you can’t have one without the other.” Yes, I really believed those lyrics---I was a Baptist.
Back in the twilight, while turning on the lights she took my hand and said that she wanted us to go into the bedroom so that the neighbors could not see us. I agreed without hesitation but with eager anticipation. Of what, I was not entirely sure.
The bedroom was dim and cool. The bed was large. I took off my shirt and she her blouse and previously unfastened bra. She pushed me onto the bed and onto my back. She perched on me and undid my belt and started to unzip my Levis.
At that very moment all hell broke loose. There was a clap of thunder. Both the Baptist and Roman Catholic Gods had found us. The knocking on the front door was thunderous pounding. Voices screamed for her to unlock and open the door. A face appeared at the bedroom window.
She blurted out the obvious, we MUST get out. She pushed me through a narrow hallway to the kitchen toward the back door. Simultaneously she was dressing as I tucked in my shirt. And then they were on us, her mother and her brother, Father Tom. He slammed her back into the wall while getting into my face yelling, “… get out and if you ever come back I will send you so far up the river you will never come back.” Over and over I shouted at him that I cared for her, and that seemed to inflame him further. I retreated, hitting the road home, shaken and sick. My mother and the Baptist Church were right. Sex is so wrong.
A close friend of mine lived across the street from her family, and Father Tom interrogated him about my character. Perhaps his endorsement kept Father Tom from pursuing me further.
She was grounded for the spring and summer. I was only able to glimpse her at the girls’ softball games that were played across the street from her home. Uncharacteristically I went to many of these games that summer.
With the school year, we resumed dating. We were delighted to be with one another again. Soon though, the fall and winter turned weird. On the way to the first school dance of the year, she came out the door of her home, gripped my hand and pulled me to my family sedan, the 1954 lime green Plymouth Savoy. She told me to drive away quickly, and I did. She slumped to the floor, and curled into a fetal position. She shrieked, “Help me” over and over again. I quickly found a quiet side street and parked the Plymouth. As I coaxed her back into the seat she calmed. She cried, she sobbed, but she could not explain. She quietly calmed but ignored my questions.
We went on to the dance in the school cafeteria. We danced holding each other close. After the dance we found our favorite “parking place”. We kissed until our lips were sore, and then I took her home.
The next Friday we went to the dance after the football game. It was a delight until during a slow dance with a tight embrace her head went back, and she became limp. I carried her off the floor. The dim lights prevented others from seeing us. After some time on the sidelines she recovered but would not talk about it. We left soon and on the way to the car she murmured “no, no!” and again she slumped to the ground. Struggling, we made it into the car and onto the front seat.
These episodes continued during the fall. In the time between the spells and spasms, she was more or less her old loving self. And yet, she was not herself. Gone was the special look in the eyes that love brings. Gone was the softness of her embrace, gone her appetite for chaste teenage lust. As before, I didn’t want much but I needed authentic and reciprocal love. That was gone.
As the fall turned into winter the behavioral episodes continued. After yet another dance, I drove to an alley, and we sat with the snow falling around us on the car windows. I broke-up with her.
I have thought of her a great deal over the last 60 years. We have learned a large amount about the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) during this time. While I don’t know explicitly what happened between her and Father Tom, from my few seconds with him, it is my opinion that she was emotionally abused and perhaps physically traumatized.
When she returned to me that fall I think that she manifested many of the hallmarks of PTSD. She displayed severe emotional distress and physical reactions when circumstances reminded her of that summer evening, i.e., being close to me. She avoided talking about what happened after I left and what he did to her, i.e., the traumatic event. She seemed to have become negative in her thinking and mood. She seemed unable to experience the positive emotions that had once been her, and in a relative way she seemed emotionally numb. She was always on guard for danger and was easily startled. In aggregate, these behaviors now suggest to me that she suffered from PTSD.
Nudging my memories, trying to honestly review our story, has widened my scope of reflections of PTSD. As stories are told, it is clear that PTSD does not always mean a shell-shocked soldier; it may affect a naïve teenage girl. The trauma may not come from shells and mortars of battle, but from a sanctimonious brother-priest.
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