Squirrel Cage (14 page)

Check in at the hotel slowed our mood slightly as the manager found a filing error and made things right by giving us this beautiful place for free. It was so difficult to stand there for the
ten
minutes or so while things were sorted out.
He smiled with understanding, knowing we had just been married.

It must have been very clear to the entire world that we were indeed virgins.
It was a sign we wore.
A sign of innocence with blazing green and blue lights.
How we had made it to this point in the decade of free love was a testament to the iron clad society which reared us. We lived in the same towns; we went to the same schools, lived in the same neighborhoods.
W
e were the innocent, tightly protected by our families and our faith.

Charlene prepared for bed first.
She asked me to close my eyes as she slipped in between the sheets.
I went into the bathroom, brushed my teeth, cleaned up a bit and disrobed.
I walked from the bedroom to the bed.
Squirrel popped alive “Cover yourself!” And so I slipped into bed quickly.

Love restrained, feelings suppressed, dreams and schemes were now perfectly appropriate.
One day it was a sin. The next day it was okay. The net result was a cacophony of confusion for me.
Neither one of us could wait to consummate the marriage. Penned up love for so many years strained for release. Little did we know that breaking that dam would release a wall of pain for her and desperate anguish for me.

I lay beside her.
I had hurt her. Why had it been necessary to do this the very first quiet moment we had together?
Who had failed to warn us in our pre marital counseling?
I had failed miserably and I had hurt my love.
Was she crying?
She told me that she could not bear to try again.

My life’s pain had not failed to disappoint me. It had hurt the one who I most loved and most cherished. It would be a serious physical problem for her to deal with over the next week. She would come to terms with the situation in a physical sense.
I would learn to be more careful.
And I would also learn to hide. I hated to be seen.

We drove up to Snowbird to watch the skiers and ride a tram.
I kept thinking…. “You lousy Dork!
You should be on the slopes with her skiing!” But neither of us could ski.
She was perfectly content being with me. I was delighted to be with her.

We stayed in the honeymoon suite only one night.
The following night we settled in to a less expensive motel.
The coin operated bed belied the true class of the place.
None.
Charlene was fine with it.

We roamed the city, saw all the tourist sites we grew up with, ate out and enjoyed each others company.
When I look back, I realize that was what was important. It didn’t matter where we went.

Saturday night,
our
band played a gig in the Hotel Utah next to the Mormon temple.
We were musicians. We could read music. We played whatever people wanted. That’s why we had work. We did well. Charlene enjoyed the performance.

We returned home on Sunday to start our lives together.

We settled in to a small basement apartment.
Bigger would have been better.
It was hard to get around the bed since it filled the room.
The closet door would not open all the way. We heard everything the family upstairs did.
How we lived there for over a month, I’ll never know.
But the one really good thing about the small place was there was absolutely no hiding place.

We found a bigger place for a reasonable price. It was up on the
foothills
bench in the home of an older
executive
.
He enjoyed having someone in the spacious apartment developed on the first floor of his home.
He needed help from time to time and I was happy to help. Our furniture chosen for the previous space looked tiny in the vastness of each room.
But there was room to turn around, a second bedroom for some storage, and a great hiding place between the hall and the bathroom.
Here,
the furnace and water heater for the building
sat in an unfinished space
.
Sheet rock did not quite complete the ceiling and there was ample space there between the floor boards for a lot of stuff.

I
tried to concentrate
on school; Charlene suspended her education to provide most of the income. Sunday nights we would settle in together in the small couch to enjoy watching Mash.
For some reason, the show had been taboo
by the church
at first but we quickly warmed up to it.

The band did well playing on weekends.
As we lost our guitarist and drummer, we started charging more.
Dick and I, as owners of the band and equipment realized that we could deduct more of the “take” for ourselves and hire a drummer and a guitar player.
This almost doubled the amount we made for each performance.
For some reason, the schools continued to hire us.
The teachers liked us because we didn’t play too loud and the kids loved us because we played the perfect “clutch” music.
You know, dancing where you don’t dance.
You just stand there and “clutch” your partner.

Squirrel started up again
full blast
and it didn’t take long before my mind wandered easily drifting in and out of daydreams at any moment. I quickly became anxious and uncomfortable.
I continued to get undressed in the dark.

“What is that?” Charlene asked one night. She quickly turned on the lights and threw down the covers.
“Are you shaving your legs?”

Great. How was I going to get out of this one?

“Are you weird or something? You’d better let me know right now before we have kids,” she stated sternly.

“I don’t like hairy legs.
” I said.
“
It’s hot. And when I used my Norelco shaver to do a trim, it cuts everything.” She didn’t like it but somehow, she accepted my answer.

“You had better not do that again,” she warned.

The frustration I felt in the following weeks was bringing down my performance at school.
I needed a release.
So I made a dress. No kidding. I went to the fabric shop, bought a pattern, and I used Charlene’s sewing machine.
I had to be very careful that not one piece of thread or fiber of fabric were left as evidence.
Charlene was an expert seamstress.
I had watched her intently to learn how to run the machine.
She made it all look so effortless.
My creation was a disaster. But it was mine. And it went into my hiding place in the bigger apartment.

I was finishing up my degree.
Corporate representatives were on campus interviewing.
I talked to a few.
I received offers from all of them. I soon was whisked away to Houston, Seattle, and the Bay Area to visit potential job sites. And the yellow dress always went with me. I would spend my evenings not out enjoying the town and dining, but sitting in my room wearing a sloppily made dress and avoiding the mirrors. The
Squirrel
had seized control of my soul. And he was squeezing hard.

Out of all the offers I received, the one I chose was not in some exotic place like Seattle or the Bay Area.
It was in Salt. I accepted an engineering position for a company that made large engineering mainframe computers.
The PC era was still
a few years
away. Mainframes had the real horsepower and I was to be a part of some very innovative technology.

For Charlene, it meant that she would be close to her family. And I must admit, I enjoyed being close to my family as well. So, off to work I went in nearby Salt Lake City, for a big company.

All of a sudden, our band quit doing gigs.
I mean suddenly. One month, we did a job every weekend. And the next, there was nothing. There was nothing after. I always wondered if Dick had received calls to play and had been turning them down.
He was getting along with his life. The band to him was just for fun since he had been working professionally for some time. It was the end of an era for the band.
It had survived
eight
years.
We had some good times.
It was time to move on.

*****

We purchased a home and with
it
came a new need for
a
secret
storage space.
My
desires
were growing and dressing up no
longer held
satisfaction for me.
At the time, Rene Richards was making a splash in the tennis world.
I remember seeing some footage of her on TV. She was a transsexual.

“What is that?” said
Squirrel
.

“I don’t know, but I could never look like that. She looks like a man in a tennis dress,” I pondered. But it sent my mind and my psyche spinning in expanded directions.
I started taking pictures of myself.
I was quite ugly. I was quite depressed.
I went to the library and found the book by Harry Benjamin about transsexualism.
All the pictures had been torn out.
But that didn’t stop me from reading the volume that very visit
standing between the bookshelves
.
There was no way I was going to check out the book.
I couldn’t be seen with it.
Many things rang true, many did not.

For example, I didn’t “know” that I was a woman trapped in a man’s body.
I never felt that way.
I “knew” that I wanted to be a girl.
I “knew” that I was a male.
So, things didn’t quite jive.
There wasn’t a good fit. I didn’t seem to fit in the delineated category. The differences may have been splitting fine hairs in semantics to most, but to me, I felt they were important.

I learned later about
cross-dressing
. I saw reference to the Rocky Horror Picture Show in a Newsweek article.
I spent more time in the library researching
cross-dressing
.
I didn’t seem to fit there either.
Although dressing usually resulted in sexual climax, it was not the reason I did it. If I only wanted sexual release, I could
have had the real thing with Charlene
.
I wanted no one else.

Still, the topics and terms were worthy of more study and investigation.

We moved on to a bigger house and I moved on to a better job. I
designed
more storage space.

*****

Charlene wanted a baby and
she couldn’t get pregnant
. She got a check up and was diagnosed with endometriosis. I got a check up and had a very low sperm count. It was a strange thing producing a sample for my test. I had to force it. When I was consumed in my secret, it was produced almost instantaneously.
Nevertheless, it was a great revelation to find out I was shooting blanks. I didn’t tell her.

Charlene started taking fertility drugs.
W
e had to time our intimate sessions according to her schedule.
At the time, that was
all right
. I think that I could be with her
six or seven
times a day. That would have been swell for me.
If I could do that, there would be no energy left for other thoughts, other desires, and disgusting deeds.

Five years sped by.
At the most difficult time financially, Charlene announced that she was pregnant. Isn’t that when life’s little treasures hit you? Right when you don’t expect it?
We had been trying for years.
I had almost given up hope. Charlene worked to the very day she delivered.
O
ur small son was adorable. His birth opened a new foun
d passion of life; the love for
offspring.
My chest burst with pride at the very thought of the little guy. I had a real connection with my son and loved to hold him
intensely
, to teach him, and watch him grow.

The night she spent in the hospital
was also the very first night that I dressed up and went somewhere. I went to an all night grocery store while my family was in the hospital. I walked up and down the isles very briefly and quickly escaped with my life as a couple of strong armed young men came running after me pointing and calling me a fag. Long gone were the days when I could pass myself
as
a girl. I had a five o’clock shadow, a lousy wig, and terrible taste in clothing. For what it’s worth, I still have a terrible taste in clothes.