This is a work
of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons living or dead
is entirely coincidental.
Chapter Five
∞
Martha never did get comfortable with Johanna’s non-conformist view of the world, and Johanna never did outgrow it. When it came time to apply to colleges, Johanna’s first choice was the University of California—the Berkeley campus, home of the free speech movement, Mario Savio, and Black Panthers. They offered Johanna a full-ride scholarship.
“But, Honey, Berkeley is so far away.” Martha clucked and fussed about her baby, her helpless Johanna. How could she ever manage without Martha taking care of things, soothing appearances, giving her the guidance, the common sense, the foundation of propriety that Johanna so desperately needed? Mostly Martha worried about the crazy things Johanna might say or do if Martha were not there to stop her.
Still, the more Johanna read about the University of California, the more she wanted—no—the more she knew she had to go there.
“It’s quiet now, but, Sweetheart, the riots, the sex. For Heaven’s sakes, they used teargas! Teargas! How many colleges anywhere have had to use teargas to control their students? Why don’t you enroll in the University of Leopoldville, or Addis a Baba University, or Tel Aviv Technical Institute and completely destroy your mother’s will to live.”
“I have to, Mother, I simply have to.”
Martha didn’t relinquish control easily. She forbade Johanna, tried to distract her, tried to interest her in other colleges. But it was like trying to hold back a waterfall with your hands. And finally Martha gave in. “At least she won’t be the craziest one on campus,” thought Martha, ever practical.
Fall semester, two weeks before classes were scheduled to start, Johanna got her first experience of Berkeley. She was driving a baby blue and white comet four-door with her window rolled down. A warming sun, a gentle breeze, and a cloudless sky welcomed her to California. She smiled at the sight of rolling straw-colored hills with scrubby oaks rippling down the sides—so different from the flat marshes and slate green pines of Mississippi.
Johanna pulled into the parking lot of Malcolm Hall, her new home and the beginning of the next part of her life. The elevator was stuck on hold on the fourth floor, and Johanna had to trudge her suitcases up three flights of stairs to her dorm room. She didn’t know if she was breathless from excitement or from shoving suitcases up the stairs. 316 was the number carved on the key that a hall monitor had pressed into her hand. She swallowed. “Okay, God, this is it,” she said, fitting the key into the door.
A willowy stick of a girl was hanging clothes in one of the closets. She wore an orange and yellow tie-died dress that hung about her in a large circle reminding Johanna of a tent. A thick curtain of straw-blond hair all but hid her face. “Are you my roommate?” she asked.
“I...Yes. I’m Johanna.”
“Temple McGreggor.”
“What…an unusual name.”
“My parents were Zen Buddhists at the time I was born. On a commune in Montana. So I got the name Temple.”
“You lived in a commune?”
“For eleven years of my life—four years in Montana, three in New Mexico, and four in seven different communes in California, mostly in the Santa Cruz Mountains.” Then we moved to Berkeley and protested the war.”
“Did you ever get arrested?”
“My parents did, and I had to stay with a neighbor while a friend posted their bail. What about you?” Maybe Temple was bragging, or maybe she was apologizing. Johanna wasn’t sure.
“I lived in Pascagoula Mississippi all my life. It’s just a small town with petroleum, hot summers, and a bunch of chemical plants. And I never got arrested and I never protested anything, at least not out loud.”
“It’s overrated,” said Temple.
They had orientation one week before classes started. Johanna found out where the buildings were and learned about the history of the college. Temple showed her the student bookstore, and Johanna found out that even the used books were expensive. But the important things she learned on her own.
On a day hike behind the college, Johanna found Strawberry Canyon. It wound around the back of the campus through the hills and wandered up to the Lawrence Hall of Science and the Lawrence Berkeley Lab. She rambled alongside of Strawberry Creek and whistled at the birds while sunshine warmed her skin all the way through to her heart.
In a secluded part of the canyon, a copse of oak trees stood in a small circle. Inside the circle, the air was cooler, and the green branches rose majestically above Johanna maybe thirty feet into the air, coming together in a dappled green and sky-blue ceiling. Like a cathedral, she thought, only better.
“Thank you, Father. Can this be our place? You know, a place where I can come to you and be with you and talk to you. Somewhere more special, more, well, just somewhere I can go. Johanna choked on the word, “sacred.” She rejected the word “spiritual.” It wasn’t the way she talked to Him.
Johanna came to the circle almost every day. Sometimes she brought a Bible. Sometimes she lit a candle. Mostly she just talked or sat in silence. “Thank you, God. I don’t know what to name the gift, but I feel its value.”
Berkeley was an angry place, an opinionated place, a gathering of Nobel laureates. Science reigned above God. Religion was tolerated but ridiculed. With the discovery of quarks and neutrinos and with DNA codes being cracked weekly, it seemed God was an obsolete concept, a charm for superstitious primitives. But He'd be dissected and studied and explained before too long, along the amino acid sequence for insulin. Johanna didn’t talk much about God. Her chemistry teacher was an atheist and laughed at the silly believers. He reminded Johanna of Alex Lidecker, and, just like years ago, she got the urge to punch him out.
“So, will science replace you someday?” she asked God. “Do we know so much that we don’t need you anymore? Are there no miracles? Or maybe everything’s a miracle, and science is just our way to describe what you do and how you do it?” Johanna thought about the days before grocery stores and electric light bulbs. Surely faith came easier to those who had to fill the dark corners of a winter’s cabin with prayers instead of extra wattage, to those who prayed for rain to save their crops, and died if the rains didn’t come.
Temple sat crossed-legged on her bed smoking a cigarette. “My sister used to believe that Jesus was resurrected to save us. She held on to that till her senior year in high school. Is that not weird?”
Johanna laughed in agreement, and felt like she’d betrayed her best friend. And she dropped her gaze to the floor.
“You don’t believe in God, do you?” Temple asked. It was almost a challenge.
Johanna snorted. She shook her head in vehement denial. And then she said quietly, “Yes, I do.” She had tried to be cool and had failed. After that, everyone knew that Johanna was somehow different, even by Berkeley standards. Everyone knew it, but especially Johanna knew it.
But it wasn’t just her faith that made Johanna so different. Johanna had a dark secret, something so embarrassing that she would have truly considered suicide if anyone had guessed it. Johanna was a virgin! As far as Johanna could tell, no one on the entire Berkeley campus was still a virgin. Probably no one beyond puberty in the entire world was still a virgin, except Johanna.
Johanna noticed another disturbing thing. Most of the women were in some stage of relationships. They were going steady, or breaking up, or getting engaged, or starting to date, but the quest for men was very strong in their lives. Johanna didn’t even know how to begin to play the game. What were the rules? Boys just naturally seemed to avoid her, but if she did actually find herself in a conversation with a boy, she usually managed to stutter herself into the most awkward, embarrassing unpleasant exchange. Even the nicest of boys would find a reason to leave after a few minutes. Her life as a loner simply hadn’t prepared her with any social skills. And Johanna wondered, what if some guy ever paid attention to her, or—dare to dream—what if he liked her? Would she go all the way?
As Johanna saw it, most of Berkeley’s young people had wrestled with this question in high school if they wrestled with it at all. The sexual revolution had come and gone. Virgins were as rare as clams in dormitory chowder. You’d have a better chance of finding oil in the ground than a virgin on campus.
She sat pensive among the oaks. The day was warm but the shade and moisture from the branches overhead cooled and refreshed her. She sensed God’s presence in the stillness. “I’m weird about so many other things. Do I have to be weird about sex too? I mean is it really a sin? It’s not like I’d be hurting anybody. Anyway you forgive. That’s what Mom’s said since way back. If I did, you know, if I did… IT…. would you forgive me? What if I did it just once? Just so I wouldn’t be the weirdest person on campus. Okay I’ve been weird for my whole life. I should be used to it by now. But just for once I’d like to know what it’s like to be normal.” Johanna stilled her mind waiting for some sign, some feeling. But there was only the sound of leaves rustling and insects chirping. Omigosh, thought Johanna, here I am asking God for permission to have sex—truly a new level of weirdness.
Chapter Six
∞
Psychology 1A was Johanna’s favorite class. Johanna was fascinated. Maybe here she could learn how to stop being weird. Maybe she could find that elusive formula for what to do to make people like you.
Darren Connors, the psychology teacher, spent most of the semester discussing the segment on marriage and family. Johanna felt so grown up going to class and discussing the ingredients of a good marriage. “Living the Open Marriage” was the textbook for this segment, and it was written by Darren Connors. They talked about communication, respect, and freedom. Neither partner should feel confined, hemmed in. Each partner represented a half of the commitment, and if the relationship was wrong for half of the partnership, then it was wrong, period.
“So, is anyone in this class still a virgin?” A lot of general giggling followed. Darren had a way of making class interesting. Johanna looked around to see if anyone was raising a hand, but of course no one was, and Johanna for certain wasn’t going to volunteer such information. Johanna wondered if somewhere in the room someone else was looking around scared to admit to being the only virgin. Probably not.
They discussed open communication about sex, being free to examine their bodies and their feelings, being free to communicate their desires, free to explore the possibilities of the oldest and finest of pleasures. According to Darren, sex was the most important aspect of marriage, and, although he didn’t exactly come out and say it, he implied that sex was the act that validated a person. A healthy sex life was the mark of a psychologically healthy being. It felt so, well, so liberating to say words like orgasm, and clitoris, and penis in the middle of a room full of strangers. Imagine Martha’s reaction if she could see what her daughter was doing now!
Darren was a fascinating, charismatic lecturer. It didn’t hurt that he was six two and had a boyishly charming and slightly crooked grin. He’d look out at his adoring students, and yes, at least the women in his class adored him. With sky-blue eyes full of mischief, he’d give a wink and a funny smirk any time he alluded to sex. When the room got hot, he’d take of his jacket, and Johanna couldn’t help but notice the well-defined muscles that showed through his shirt. Johanna found herself running to class, trying to be there early enough to get a front row lecture seat.
“We’ve talked about the shackles and restraints of traditional marriages,” said Darren rustling his papers, “and the resentment and damage they can foster, but so far we haven’t addressed the most confining of the marriage myths, thou shalt always have a monogamous relationship.” Here, while the rest of the class giggled knowingly, Johanna did a double take. He surely wasn’t suggesting….IT! “It’s normal for humans to lust after more than one partner. The excitement of the chase, of learning about a new human being in this most intimate way is the single greatest wonder in the world, and yet so many married people go on year after year bitter, depressed, unsatisfied, clinging to a relationship with the passion sucked dry.”
Johanna suddenly felt like a little girl. But you’re not supposed… thou shalt not… Adultery. She shuddered at the thought of the word. Was she one of those primitive unenlightened boors who plodded through life with outmoded rules—with a lifestyle that no longer worked in the modern world?
Darren suddenly shifted the subject. “I’d like you all to write a paper about your perfect marriage, no less than five thousand words. Due next week. Be sure to include all the issues we’ve been studying—communication, responsibility, partnership, sex. Make it personal. Include those wants and needs that matter most to you.” And with that, class was over.
“You see, God,” Johanna said, while hiking along Strawberry Canyon, “he has this way about him. He’ll kind of shrug and half-smile, and it doesn’t matter what he says—he could be selling nuclear bombs to Quakers—you just can’t argue with the body language.”
Johanna listened to the stillness for a minute. “And he has ‘voice’. It’s a way of talking that gets listened to.”
The wind sighed.
She sat down under the oak branches and pulled out a Steno Pad from her book bag. “My Ideal Marriage”. She wrote it and scratched it out. “Anyway, God, even if I wanted to argue with Darren’s logic, which I don’t, I wouldn’t know how to say it without sounding like a baby. Okay, here goes.”
My Ideal Marriage
She wanted quirky socks for a Halloween costume. So she cut up Great Grand Marm’s quilt. (A gift from Grandma, by the way.) A double wedding ring pattern, it was.
So it lay on the floor, minus the sock pieces, till Jacques the poodle peed on it. Yuck, what a mess! Oh well, no big deal.
She didn’t get it.
“I’ll be at the library studying,” she told him. She kissed his cheek, stepping over newspapers to reach him. Married housing was so cramped! “Don’t wait up. If it gets too late, I’ll just stay over at Beth’s dorm.”
Somehow the flash had died a month after her wedding to Charlie. Now Jack—there’s a different story. Sizzling hot—always ready to play. Except that he’d sulk and swear when she couldn’t see him. Yuck what a mess! But damn he was gorgeous!
She still didn’t get it.
The devil tells you, “take it all—everything you can put your hands on.” That devil, he’s sly—it’s only ‘swingin’, and he’ll say you’re cool to do it. He won’t call it adultery, and he won’t say you’re desecrating God’s gift—or hurting someone terribly in the bargain.
So much for my opening premise, she thought, and struggled for the words to support her argument. Finding the courage to write her convictions was harder than finding the right words, but finally Johanna had her paper finished. Well, thought Johanna, I hope Darren likes it. (He‘d told his students to call him Darren.) Back at the dorm, she typed it up on the portable Underwood that her mother had given her the day that Johanna had left for college. It was well after two in the morning when she took the crisp finished sheets, put them into a folder, and refused to think any more about the topic.
When the papers came back, Johanna expected a D- on hers. After all, it was only the exact opposite of everything she had learned, the opposite of what Darren had been teaching her, and most of it was a literary exercise rather than a psychology paper. After the rest of the class had left, she stuffed it in between her books refusing to look at the grade. No, better to get it over with. She peeked at the top, right-hand corner. “A+ Provocative and insightful. See me after class, Darren.”
Johanna quivered. This was new territory. Usually teachers wanted to talk to her because she was in some kind of trouble. But now she was being sought out for her talents and abilities and encouraged to pursue her beliefs even if they differed from those of the one in authority. Heady stuff! So she waited by the doorway to see what Darren was going to say to her.
“I was intrigued by a couple of the points you made, and I’d like to discuss them with you further.” He casually checked a black appointment book lying next to his lecture notes. “Damn it, I’m going to be tied up for most of the afternoon, but, say, could you meet me for dinner?”
Johanna was numb. Finally she nodded.
“Great! Meet me here, about five-thirty, and I’ll figure out some place where we can grab a bite.”
Standing outside of the psych classroom, Johanna could hardly believe it—she’d soon be having dinner with Darren Connors, easily the most popular professor on campus. And when Darren pulled up in a dark green MG convertible, she had the sensation of floating.
The ride to dinner took about an hour, but Johanna never noticed the time going by. Darren was a fascinating companion, mainly because he was so interested in Johanna and everything about her. His attention and approval, like warm arms wrapping around her, was the banquet after the famine.
They parked in front of a restaurant resembling a Swiss Chalet, nestled against the shoreline hills. Inside, candles burned, and the walls were cheery with vibrant folk art—children playing in the snow, a team of oxen pulling a plow, a family sitting around a wooden table. All the vignettes were framed by generous loops of vines and hearts and flowers. A huge picture window looked out over the Pacific Ocean, displaying waves endlessly pounding over the rocks in mesmerizing, frothy perfection.
“One glass of wine for each of us,” Darren told the waiter, slipping him a twenty-dollar bill. “Chateau Neuf de Pape.” The waiter eyed Johanna, then pocketed the bill and nodded. Darren looked deep into Johanna’s eyes and smiled.
Johanna couldn’t remember what she ate that evening, but she remembered Darren’s cologne, a sweet, heady odor, sort of like incense. She could remember the way he smiled into her face, the way his eyes crinkled at the corners when she told him about her father and how they used to read stories, and the way he looked at her, sort of penetrating, as if he could reach into her soul. There was only this sensation of stepping out of the world, outside of time and space, as if the universe and eternity had stopped in honor of the two of them.
Walking out to the car, Johanna marveled that these sorts of feelings really existed. Dr. Zhivago and Lara, Heathcliffe and Cathy—she’d read the stories, seen the movies but she’d never understood until this night.
“But God is Love,” said Darren. “The Bible says, ‘Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also must love one another.’ If God is love, how can sex, such a pure expression of love be, wrong?”
“You read the Bible?” Johanna was surprised. No one from Berkeley ever quoted the Bible.
“It’s the most poetic description there is of the human soul,” said Darren. “Johanna, you’ve shared with me those feeling and beliefs which are most genuine and precious to you. Now let me share mine.”
He’d parked the car at an outcropping of rock, one of those spots that seemed made for lovers. The moon was almost full. The stars were brilliant, and far below, the ocean crashed on the rocks.
Darren cupped Johanna’s face in his hands and looked into her eyes thoughtfully. Then he kissed her, oh so gently at first, then harder, and more passionately. So this was what it was all about! Wilder than the ocean below them, a rushing excitement suddenly came alive within her. The feeling was more than anything else on earth. The pearl of great price. No wonder people sold their souls for this!
He reached into her blouse and touched her breast. I can’t resist this, she thought. No one could resist this. It’s just too wonderful to say ‘no’ to.
Now he was reaching down her back, and touching her panties. She was drowning in a sea of rapture, and she didn’t care, didn’t want this to end—ever.
The windows had steamed over with their heavy breathing. Johanna was now completely naked, body and soul, as Darren kept finding new ways to stroke Johanna. His tongue brushed her neck and her ear, and then he kissed her stomach. It tickled her, and momentarily she surfaced out of the overwhelming waves of her feelings. This was it, she thought. Sex. Tomorrow she wouldn’t be the odd one anymore. Curious, she watched Darren, a master at this game. Next he should be putting on a condom. Johanna wondered what a condom looked like. He was going to use a condom, wasn’t he? How do you ask a guy to put on a condom?
Johanna tried to sound casual. “What kind of condom do you use?” she asked. Her voice was squeaking with passion and embarrassment.
“I don’t use condoms,” said Darren with a disapproving tone in his voice. “They’re too restrictive.”
Omigosh, pregnant—I could get pregnant, she thought. The sea of passion turned into a splash of cold water. “Oh, wait, I just remembered… I forgot my birth control.” She stammered.
He drove her home, and neither one of them said a word.
The following day, she went back to her grove of trees. Would it really be so wrong? “It’s not like he’s married or anything. There’s no ring. I looked. And he’s never mentioned a wife in his class. And if she existed, he’d have said something about her by now. It’s that kind of a class—very frank and honest. Darren says if a relationship’s not honest, it’s nothing. So he couldn’t be married. Maybe that’s why he says those things about marriages being sucked dry of passion. Maybe if he were married, he’d know better. Anyway, please understand, God. Please forgive me but I can’t stop thinking about Darren and the way I felt when he touched me.” Johanna shivered and hugged herself, savoring the memory of Darren’s fingers on her body. Feeling dissatisfied, she walked back out into the bright sunlight.
For the next few days, Johanna slept terribly, remembering the sensations and Darren’s impatience. Each morning, she bolted her prayers like a cup of coffee.
Four days later, Johanna made an appointment with Doctor Berman at the student health center. Johanna could barely lie still as he examined her. Finally the ordeal was over, and Johanna was trying to get her clothes on as quickly and modestly as she could.
“You’re fine, just fine,” he said. With his left hand he gestured absent-mindedly towards the door, not understanding, or choosing not to understand why she had come to his office.
“Wait.” She all but shouted the words from the doorway of his office. An awkward silence followed. “Wait. I…need birth control.” There she said it, and with those words, she proved her love for Darren. Dr. Berman was old, maybe in his sixties. His eyebrows were shaggy and his hair was balding, and Johanna had told him that she needed birth control. It was the single most embarrassing experience of her life.
Dr Berman looked up and stared. Johanna blushed. “Birth control! What do you want it for?” he asked.
“I…please.”
He shook his head in disapproval but reached for a pad and wrote out the prescription.
Darren had finished lecturing, and the class was filing out of his room except for four girls milling around his desk with questions about the day’s lesson. Johanna hung back, wishing they’d hurry up and get on to their next class. Finally she and Darren were the only ones left. How was she going to tell him she’d gotten birth control? She should have practiced her speech, she thought.
“I, uh, I found some of your points interesting and, and, um, I was wondering if we could discuss them, maybe sometime tonight.” And she smiled with what she thought was a provocative, sexy grin. None of those other girls would do this, she thought.
Darren stared at her for a minute. “Come by my office about six thirty,” he said.
The psych. building was all but deserted as Johanna knocked on Professor Connors’s door that evening. His office was small and crammed with books and papers. A black and white photograph of Carl Jung hung on the back wall, and he had an assortment of personal odds and ends—a troll doll, some photos, a “World’s Sexiest Man” plaque, and a half-filled brandy decanter with two matching snifters lined up along the back of his desk. From a closet, Darren pulled out a pale green futon mattress, patterned by a random spray of bamboo leaves. Unfolded, it spanned the width of a double bed. He locked the door, and settled Johanna down on the mattress, and he stroked her and kissed her till Johanna’s breathing came in gasps and starts. Then he stopped, backed off, and looked at her. “You’re not going to change your mind—tease me and leave me—are you?”
Johanna shook her head.
He stroked her belly thoughtfully. “You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
He teased her neck with his tongue, all the while his left hand feeling her racing heart. “Maybe we shouldn’t.” he said.
“Please.” Johanna begged.
Darren lay down beside her and began the lesson that he taught best of all.
Chapter Seven
∞
Well, she thought, I’m not a virgin any more. Alone in her dorm room, she stared at her naked body in the mirror. Horns hadn’t grown out of her head. No warts were sprouting on her face. Nothing had changed. She was the same person she’d always been, except that she was outrageously happy, happier than she’d ever been in her whole entire life. She examined her feelings, probed her insides. Nothing felt different. No miraculous transformation. No sudden insights. No pain of eternal damnation. She just felt normal, very happy and very normal. I guess I can’t pet unicorns anymore, she thought.
After three days had passed Johanna went back to her grove of trees. “I’m sorry if I sinned.” The word “sin” caught in her mind—such a, well, such an icky word. “I didn’t mean to—well, yes I did. I meant to have sex. It didn’t just happen. But I didn’t mean to hurt you. I just really wanted to be normal.” She remembered the caress of Darren’s fingers and her body was jolted by the memory. She tried to still her mind to talk to God, but her mind and body kept buzzing with thoughts of the evening with Darren until she finally gave up and went back to her dorm room.
Johanna and Darren dated when they could, but they had to be somewhat circumspect. Even in Berkeley in the seventies, it was frowned upon for a teacher and his student to be an item. They dated throughout the rest of Johanna’s first semester at Berkeley, and, by May, Johanna knew that Darren was the man she was destined to marry.
It was one of the last psychology classes of the year, and Johanna’s mind kept wandering to memories of a previous evening with Darren. As he lectured about Piaget’s theories of cognitive learning, Johanna struggled to get everything important written down in her notebook, and tried not to daydream about being married to Darren Connors, psychology professor. She’d probably have to give fancy faculty parties. And she’d do all the cooking herself—much better than hiring a caterer. No, Johanna, pay attention. How would it look if she didn’t get an A in her future husband’s class!
The squeaking sound of a door opening startled Johanna. She looked up as a woman walked into the room. High heels clink-check-clinked as she walked up to Darren’s podium. She was maybe thirty and smartly dressed in a maroon suit and a cream colored blouse. On the right lapel, a pin of a family crest accented the ensemble. Her blond hair was expensively coifed into a sleek bob and she walked across the floor with a confident stride. She looked up at Darren and kissed him as if he belonged to her. “Sorry, Luv,” She muttered with a quick wave towards the class, “but I couldn’t risk missing you. You got the date wrong. We’re meeting Professor Conrad and his wife tonight—not next week. Six thirty, their address is taped to the fridge. I’ll have to meet you there; I’ll be rushing around the rest of the afternoon, and won’t have time to come home before then.”
“Six thirty. Address taped to fridge. Got it.” Darren smiled at her in that incredibly sexy way. “You’re a true champ.” And he gave her what looked like a special hug and kiss, and scooted her toward the door with a playful spank on the bottom.
Johanna looked for a wedding ring on the woman’s finger, but she was too far away to tell.
“Who was that lady?” she asked Darren after the class was over.
“That was no lady. That was my wife,” he answered with a Groucho Marks accent, flicking imaginary ashes off of an imaginary cigar.
‘”Oh.”
“You did know that I was married, didn’t you? After all, what have we talked about all semester—marriage and the family.”
“Oh, sure.” Johanna’s breath came in fits. “Um, it’s just that…” Could it be that, in spite of everything she’d experienced, Johanna was still just a little girl. She had to leave before she broke down and sobbed. “I have to go to the bathroom.”
She walked/trotted out of the room through the doorway, then ran past the bathroom, bumped into a few students who happened to be in her way, then ran to the grove of trees.
Adultery, adultery, her brain squeaked and shouted. She just wasn’t this modern. She wasn’t this much with it. Johanna was still trying to wash away the guilt pangs of sex with any man and now he turned out to be married!
“But I didn’t know, God. Honest, I didn’t know. So I guess I should stop sleeping with him?” She asked the question, knew the answer and pretended she hadn’t thought of it. Not sleep with Darren. Not sleep with Darren? Just thinking about him brought back intense feelings of pleasure.
His touch was a part of who she was. As Darren’s mistress, Johanna was exciting, vibrant, confident, important. She was a woman. She understood the world. But without him—without him she was just a boring little girl who couldn’t admit to being the only virgin in a psychology lecture room.
“God, you can’t ask me to stop seeing him. You just can’t.” But of course she knew that He could and would ask, and was indeed asking. “I’ll break it off the next time I see him,” she told God with such a heavy, sad heart.
She met Darren in his office at the very end of his scheduled office hours. “I can’t see you anymore,” she said. “Maybe there’s nothing wrong with an open marriage, but I just can’t do it.”
“You can’t?”
There was a silence and Johanna felt herself blushing. “I guess I’m just not ready…” It sounded like a better way to say ‘no’.
“You’re only eighteen. That’s still quite immature,” he said. The word “immature” stung. “Of course I understand.”
“We can still be friends, can’t we?” Johanna asked, her voice squeaking like a six-year-old’s. Was that the corniest line in existence! Just be friends.
“So, in spite of Jung, Freud, and seventy years of psychological research, interactions between men and women still remain as they were in the dark ages.” Darren snorted a tiny laugh and shook his head, but he smiled. Surely Johanna was only imagining that he was being condescending.
“Just friends, huh. Didn’t you learn anything in my class? Well, come here and give an old friend a hug.”
His arm bent around her waist and he leaned his head against her shoulders. Oh, so gently he kissed her cheek, then her ear, then her neck. Johanna wanted to back away. No she didn’t. She hung on tightly. His hand reached up brushing her breast. She tingled and the pleasure took over. Right now, she thought to herself. Stop it right now and walk or run out of the room before you get in any deeper, while you still have a shred of will power. But she didn’t. She just stood there, unable to move. Electricity, chemistry whatever it was she couldn’t resist him. She kissed his mouth as he began fumbling on the buttons of her blouse.
So, with a heavy heart, Johanna trudged up to her special place. Nothing stirred. Crickets chirped a monotonous mantra “Crick-crack, crick-crack, crick-crack.” The green hills had turned a straw color, and, from all of spring’s blossoms, only a few scraggly flowers remained.
“I tried to break it off. You know I tried. But I just couldn’t do it. As she sat quietly, composing herself, two mosquitoes flew about her, eyeing their prospective lunch. She waited for magic to touch her heart. She wanted to talk to God about—well—about everything. To explain to God what needed explaining. “I couldn’t help it. This is so much more than, than anything I’ve ever known. And, yes, God, I’m in love. I’m deeply in love.”
Johanna imagined herself on her wedding day—after he’d divorced the other wife, whoever she was. She imagined Darren in a tuxedo, handsome, charming, and hers. Her husband! She tried to find the words to tell God about him but there were no words for such a marvelous thing. She fidgeted and crossed her legs, dissatisfied with being unable to find words to make God understand her feelings. One of the mosquitoes buzzed her ear and she squirmed in reaction. She tried to turn her attention back to God, but there just wasn’t anything to say.
And Johanna was suddenly struck by the absurdity of it all. Here she was sitting on a tree stump talking to herself about doing something that all of Berkeley was doing without any regrets. Look around you, Johanna. Do you see fire and brimstone, or pillars of salt, or anyone struck down by lightning bolts?
She fidgeted some more, and finally admitted to herself that she was very bored.
I guess I’ve finally grown up, she thought to herself chuckling at the mystical significance she’d assigned to the trees. They were trees, living wood, beautiful, stately. But they were just trees—no more, no less—just trees. And the copse was a charming place to while away a few hours. And now that Johanna realized it, she wouldn’t obsess about coming back.
In an old pine by the creek, a mocking bird staked out his territory, climbing the air currents then swooping down into the top of the tree, over and over again. Johanna watched for awhile, then got bored and walked back to her dorm, grateful that her room had air conditioning.
That summer was the summer of Darren. They spent long afternoons reading poetry and feeling each other’s bodies. Johanna had finally outgrown God.
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