LJ Idol: Week 16 - Fool's Errand
Nov. 26th, 2024 05:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
littlebitofearthWhen June got knocked up the third time it was practically an immaculate conception. After years of picking the wrong men and making babies with them, she had made herself a pact that the next one would be good - even if SHE wasn't - but she was going to do her best to do better.
She met Dale at a blood drive. He was the Red Cross manager keeping an eye on the phlebotomists in the Corinth Baptist social hall. When June walked in, he shooed away a volunteer to greet her. Apparently there was a lot of meaningful eye contact as he gently held her arm and tied her veins off with an elastic strap. When he told her to roll this ball in the palm of her hand to keep the blood flowing she raised her eyebrows like it was a double entendre and he blushed. Dale got hard and June got a date for Saturday night.
She was your standard Asheville hippy bartender dream girl with wild, curly hair and a curvy body wrapped in tie dye and flowing skirts. The daddy of her first two kids had been an atheist cook at a local pizza place who drank too much microbrew beer, got fired every other week and forgot to pay their electricity bill.
Dale couldn't have been more different. A Red Cross Manager with a master's degree, he was a devout Baptist and a leader in his church. June was shocked to learn, as they shared a chaste kiss at the end of their first date, that at 39 he was still a virgin.
I think he saw in her the opportunity to taste something spicy and sweet, grab some unabashed acceptance his upbringing never afforded and she loved the simple goodness of this hardworking, family-loving, Bible-quoting man. I think she was also intrigued by the challenge of stealing the innocence of the last living virgin in Asheville.
He was a God-fearing man but a man no less and after they dated for about a month things were getting hot and heavy. June respected his Christian views on chastity - aka insertion - but they were in the throes of an impassioned make out session on his couch when she suggested they take off their shirts and he agreed. To hear her tell it, watching his face light up when he cupped her breasts in his eager palms was like the Little Drummer Boy getting to hold the baby Jesus, pa ruppa pum pum indeed.
This mammary revelation led to weeks of grinding together in their jeans like horny teenagers until June suggested they go just one step further and take their pants off too. And so they did and y'all know pants off is just some slippery panties and a thin cotton layer of boxer shorts away from nekkid. Before long they were humping around bare-assed, although still NOT putting it in because friends, that's just a base too far.
Maybe June's mama never gave her the talk about how if you let his thing any where near YOUR thing, even with underwear ON, you are courting the possibility of an unwanted biological souvenir, in particular, a baby. And that was how, after dating for just three months, June the hippie and Dale the virgin managed to conceive a child without ever having S-E-X.
True story, y'all. Which June told me after we met at a YMCA Zumba class and became fast friends for a long time, well, until we weren't. She told me her story in hushed tones in the little cafe at the Y over smoothies while our kids played in the childcare center.
April was shocked about the pregnancy but ambivalent about Dale. She liked him well enough but, three months in, she wasn't sure she wanted to stay with him FOREVER. He had barely met her first two kids and now they were having one together? Abortion was never an option for her. While she didn't judge other women for making that choice, she believed the old Seuss adage that a person was a person no matter how small.
Dale was aghast. His squeaky clean Baptist Elder image took a serious pop in the kisser when he was suddenly planning a shotgun wedding at his own church. When they took his parents to dinner to tell them the "happy" news, his mother cried and said that June had ruined her spotless boy. She actually used the word harlot.
While I say it takes two to tango, as is the often the case throughout history, in Biblical stories and in tales old and new, Dale and everyone else blamed the woman for this pregnancy and the resulting shame. He said if it weren't for her relentless horniness he would still have an unimpeachable character but her wantonness was too difficult for any man to resist. But she was having his child and he had to "do the right thing" and marry her.
Shame, blame and regret. This was the climate of their relationship when they got married after knowing each other for just six months. They walked down the aisle to judgement and whispers "She has the nerve to wear WHITE?" So, when Dale officially lost his virginity to June on their wedding night, his bride was already three months pregnant.
How do you make a marriage work when you walk in the door from your honeymoon carrying this kind of baggage? I think the answer is you don't. They moved in together, into a house where June felt she had no agency because she needed to constantly be catering to Dale to make up for her "transgressions." He expected her to give up her old life - she was a Baptist mother now - and he expected her body to be available to him at his beck and call. If she tried to beg off sex, he would allude to her pre-wedding passions and guilt her into submitting.
When June and I met, she had given birth to two of his children in addition to her first two. She said Dale felt called to be a foster parent and soon those four became six. The longer I knew her, her frustration in her funeral pyre of a marriage became clear. She put up with it all until she couldn't.
Looking for a social outlet, she took up contra dancing in a small town just north of us, a folk dance style similar to square dancing - apparently it's a big hit among the ankle-length denim skirt set. And there she met her Romeo, when their hands met as they switched partners while dancing a reel. She said this man, a construction worker who lived in an apartment over his Mother's garage and said he wished he could take her away from Dale, her and her SIX kids, saw her for who she was, no shame and she was going to leave her husband for him.
They had sex in his truck. They met up in a park after contra dancing and fucked in a swing. He took her out to a cabin in the woods he was building for a rich, retired couple and screwed her on the stone wall being installed around their pool. And once, she invited me to go to an overnight dance out of town because she needed a cover so she could spend the night with him. I declined, as did our friendship.
And did Dale know? She insisted not, until he went out of town for work and, while the kids were at school, she invited her lover over to get it on in her marital bed. Dale was just faking - he had no work trip - and he showed up in the middle of their roll in his conjugal hay.
When her boyfriend got up to go to the bathroom, he saw Dale walking around the house, a Bible raised above his head. June, thinking she was caught and glad she could finally be free went out to talk to her husband. He told her he wouldn't accept a divorce and manically told her he was walking their property to pray the evil out of their home. He wouldn't stop until her company left. Back in the house, June told her boyfriend she could pack up the kids and come to him within the week. He nodded and kissed her goodbye and the next day when she tried to call him, he had changed his number. Suddenly, her dancing man didn't come to the Contra meetups any more.
June and Dale stayed together. He told her he shouldn't have expected more from her because he knew what kind of slut she was from the beginning. He said he forgave her. June stayed because she knew damn well she couldn't raise six kids alone. It's been years and the youngest two are in middle school. I think of her sometimes and wonder if her smiles on social media are all for show. She always was a good actor.
Dale moved her four hours away to Tennessee, so they could reset, and that is where they live to this day, although I don't see how you start fresh when the rotten mess between two people was never cleaned up in the first place.
She met Dale at a blood drive. He was the Red Cross manager keeping an eye on the phlebotomists in the Corinth Baptist social hall. When June walked in, he shooed away a volunteer to greet her. Apparently there was a lot of meaningful eye contact as he gently held her arm and tied her veins off with an elastic strap. When he told her to roll this ball in the palm of her hand to keep the blood flowing she raised her eyebrows like it was a double entendre and he blushed. Dale got hard and June got a date for Saturday night.
She was your standard Asheville hippy bartender dream girl with wild, curly hair and a curvy body wrapped in tie dye and flowing skirts. The daddy of her first two kids had been an atheist cook at a local pizza place who drank too much microbrew beer, got fired every other week and forgot to pay their electricity bill.
Dale couldn't have been more different. A Red Cross Manager with a master's degree, he was a devout Baptist and a leader in his church. June was shocked to learn, as they shared a chaste kiss at the end of their first date, that at 39 he was still a virgin.
I think he saw in her the opportunity to taste something spicy and sweet, grab some unabashed acceptance his upbringing never afforded and she loved the simple goodness of this hardworking, family-loving, Bible-quoting man. I think she was also intrigued by the challenge of stealing the innocence of the last living virgin in Asheville.
He was a God-fearing man but a man no less and after they dated for about a month things were getting hot and heavy. June respected his Christian views on chastity - aka insertion - but they were in the throes of an impassioned make out session on his couch when she suggested they take off their shirts and he agreed. To hear her tell it, watching his face light up when he cupped her breasts in his eager palms was like the Little Drummer Boy getting to hold the baby Jesus, pa ruppa pum pum indeed.
This mammary revelation led to weeks of grinding together in their jeans like horny teenagers until June suggested they go just one step further and take their pants off too. And so they did and y'all know pants off is just some slippery panties and a thin cotton layer of boxer shorts away from nekkid. Before long they were humping around bare-assed, although still NOT putting it in because friends, that's just a base too far.
Maybe June's mama never gave her the talk about how if you let his thing any where near YOUR thing, even with underwear ON, you are courting the possibility of an unwanted biological souvenir, in particular, a baby. And that was how, after dating for just three months, June the hippie and Dale the virgin managed to conceive a child without ever having S-E-X.
True story, y'all. Which June told me after we met at a YMCA Zumba class and became fast friends for a long time, well, until we weren't. She told me her story in hushed tones in the little cafe at the Y over smoothies while our kids played in the childcare center.
April was shocked about the pregnancy but ambivalent about Dale. She liked him well enough but, three months in, she wasn't sure she wanted to stay with him FOREVER. He had barely met her first two kids and now they were having one together? Abortion was never an option for her. While she didn't judge other women for making that choice, she believed the old Seuss adage that a person was a person no matter how small.
Dale was aghast. His squeaky clean Baptist Elder image took a serious pop in the kisser when he was suddenly planning a shotgun wedding at his own church. When they took his parents to dinner to tell them the "happy" news, his mother cried and said that June had ruined her spotless boy. She actually used the word harlot.
While I say it takes two to tango, as is the often the case throughout history, in Biblical stories and in tales old and new, Dale and everyone else blamed the woman for this pregnancy and the resulting shame. He said if it weren't for her relentless horniness he would still have an unimpeachable character but her wantonness was too difficult for any man to resist. But she was having his child and he had to "do the right thing" and marry her.
Shame, blame and regret. This was the climate of their relationship when they got married after knowing each other for just six months. They walked down the aisle to judgement and whispers "She has the nerve to wear WHITE?" So, when Dale officially lost his virginity to June on their wedding night, his bride was already three months pregnant.
How do you make a marriage work when you walk in the door from your honeymoon carrying this kind of baggage? I think the answer is you don't. They moved in together, into a house where June felt she had no agency because she needed to constantly be catering to Dale to make up for her "transgressions." He expected her to give up her old life - she was a Baptist mother now - and he expected her body to be available to him at his beck and call. If she tried to beg off sex, he would allude to her pre-wedding passions and guilt her into submitting.
When June and I met, she had given birth to two of his children in addition to her first two. She said Dale felt called to be a foster parent and soon those four became six. The longer I knew her, her frustration in her funeral pyre of a marriage became clear. She put up with it all until she couldn't.
Looking for a social outlet, she took up contra dancing in a small town just north of us, a folk dance style similar to square dancing - apparently it's a big hit among the ankle-length denim skirt set. And there she met her Romeo, when their hands met as they switched partners while dancing a reel. She said this man, a construction worker who lived in an apartment over his Mother's garage and said he wished he could take her away from Dale, her and her SIX kids, saw her for who she was, no shame and she was going to leave her husband for him.
They had sex in his truck. They met up in a park after contra dancing and fucked in a swing. He took her out to a cabin in the woods he was building for a rich, retired couple and screwed her on the stone wall being installed around their pool. And once, she invited me to go to an overnight dance out of town because she needed a cover so she could spend the night with him. I declined, as did our friendship.
And did Dale know? She insisted not, until he went out of town for work and, while the kids were at school, she invited her lover over to get it on in her marital bed. Dale was just faking - he had no work trip - and he showed up in the middle of their roll in his conjugal hay.
When her boyfriend got up to go to the bathroom, he saw Dale walking around the house, a Bible raised above his head. June, thinking she was caught and glad she could finally be free went out to talk to her husband. He told her he wouldn't accept a divorce and manically told her he was walking their property to pray the evil out of their home. He wouldn't stop until her company left. Back in the house, June told her boyfriend she could pack up the kids and come to him within the week. He nodded and kissed her goodbye and the next day when she tried to call him, he had changed his number. Suddenly, her dancing man didn't come to the Contra meetups any more.
June and Dale stayed together. He told her he shouldn't have expected more from her because he knew what kind of slut she was from the beginning. He said he forgave her. June stayed because she knew damn well she couldn't raise six kids alone. It's been years and the youngest two are in middle school. I think of her sometimes and wonder if her smiles on social media are all for show. She always was a good actor.
Dale moved her four hours away to Tennessee, so they could reset, and that is where they live to this day, although I don't see how you start fresh when the rotten mess between two people was never cleaned up in the first place.
