PENELOPE WAS ASKED TO BE MARRIED A DOZEN TIMES BEFORE SHE WAS 18!
I'll Never Forget The Day I Realized She Was "Boy Crazy!"
We were fourteen, maybe fifteen years old, too young to drive, so Penelope and me were depending on a ride from her parents. We sat in the back seat, her parents in the front, her dad driving as all dad's did even when their wives also knew how to, and when we passed some boys walking on the city sidewalk, Penelope went nuts. Her mom went nuts too, trying to shut her up and shut her down as she went on and on. "Look at that one! Isn't he cute!" she shouted loud enough for that boy to hear. She let her tongue hang out of her mouth and mock panted. "Stop it, Penelope!" her mom yelled, embarrassed by her. Her dad looked into the rear view mirror and shook his head.
Penelope was openly "boy crazy" and her parents, especially her mom, were totally uncomfortable with her display of lusty admiration for young men. She was laughing and enjoying herself. Probably enjoying getting her parents a little upset with her too.
Little did they know. Penelope was testing her tantalizing power with boys as she eased into womanhood at a time and place when few parents would have advised their daughters to have sex before marriage. Sex before marriage was called "pre-marital" as if there were an expectation of marriage. When a girl was simply too young to be married or even engaged, but dating one boy steadily, who had asked her to be his alone, she would wear a "pre-engagement" ring.
The local jewelry stores were buzzing. Only girls who went with football players actually wore their big rings.
Penelope was told she should wait until she was married to have sex like everyone. So when a boy wanted to have sex with her, she would say that she had to be at least engaged. So Penelope got asked to be married a dozen times before she was 18. It was, perhaps, an easy game. She said what she expected, they said what she wanted to hear. Maybe some of these boys even had some romantic hope or dream themselves but mostly they wanted to have sex with an easy, and increasingly experienced girl. Because each one of her boys found the money - allowance - working for minimum wage somewhere - maybe even borrowing money from their parents - to buy her a ring.
Penelope's rings were not glittering diamonds, sapphires, rubies, or emeralds, but small, semiprecious gems, the birthstone kind, the kind that had been polished in a tumbler, in silver, sometimes gold plate. I'm sure she never gave any of these rings back when the pre-engagement or engagement turned out to be brief. I wondered what she might think as she looked into her jewelry box and saw them there. She couldn't wear them once the fling was over. That would have given the wrong signal to other boys.
Did she break with them or they with her? It hardly seemed to matter.
My friend Penelope was always congenial, light-hearted, even happy, surely never too upset or depressed over what was not meant to be. Romance and sex was an adventure to her.
She was one of the first women, for though we were girls we were also that, I ever met who was open and comfortable about negotiating a bit for what she wanted and expected, even if it was a game. Most girls were too innocent, inexperienced, shy, or overwhelmed to know who they were, what they wanted, what they stood for, or how they were different than their parents, incapable of being self possessed enough to even say what they thought, to have opinions. (In the next year or so that would begin to change.)
Penelope managed to not become pregnant. So many ignorant girls did and that was enough to scare a person celibate if parental warnings didn't. She knew enough to tell her lovers they needed to bring something with them. There was compliance. No accidents.
She was incredibly wise about the world compared to me, compared to most girls. I attributed this to that she went to what was called "an inner city school." Her parents were devoutly married. Her mother was spinsterish. Certainly Penelope wasn't raised to be anything other than a "lady." Growing up in the city was faster, the parents less able to control or protect you.
Penelope became a collector of men. What she began in high school continued into her years of young womanhood. I would call her and she would tell me about the various boyfriends she had describing them as "A blond Norwegian," or "A Japanese." Men somehow knew that she was available sexually, warm and friendly, dressed in flowing but modest clothing, for one thing Penelope never did was show off her figure or a lot of skin, and she seemed to have attracted an International Set.
I lost touch with Penelope. Years later I learned that she had married someone that she had lived with for many years, someone from another race, ethnicity, and country, and I had to smile.
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