From the Roots by Marsha Therese Danzig

Author:Marsha Therese Danzig
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2016-11-28T16:00:00+00:00

B, my first real love, found me absolutely gorgeous, which meant, of course, that he loved me.

P thought I was captivating. He held my hand and mauled me with his French/Swiss kisses. That was LA.

Then there was M, the adopted Mexican; and S, the Texan getting his masters at the Kennedy School of Government; the weird British guy from a store in Cambridge; and ST, a French chef—they got me through my year at Harvard. My boobs were finally touched. The Brit thought I was the most sexually experienced woman he had ever met. Ha! I was still a virgin. ST wanted to marry me for his green card. Couldn’t he at least take me out dancing first?

Still wanting to be “equally yoked with a Christian man” (until I got to New York and actually met some of them), it never dawned on me that dangerous dressing might send off a certain vibe. I just wanted to be desirable, in spite of …

In spite of …

In spite of the visible wounds so conspicuously hidden … or something like that.

I’m guessing prepubescence was still in effect.

AR met me on the steps of the Metropolitan in Manhattan. I wore a tightly fitted, Lycra, above-the-knee, flower-print dress—the same killer outfit I wore the day I obtained my French student visa. AR, my Latvian Gregory Peck, opened his thick, muscular, working-class arms, and his smile, as I walked up the stairs toward him, then ignored him completely. He turned his head to look at me as I shyly entered the museum, where I prowled the corridors, hoping that I’d be noticed for my bod, not my artificial leg, which was being debuted that day. I took the elevator to the top deck to view the Henry Miller sculptures. I was so nervous, then angry with myself for not at least acknowledging him—but that was all part of my adolescent game. When I left the museum, he was still on the steps, waiting. I ignored him again. Geez! He followed me down Fifth Avenue. His first awkward words to me were, “It is hard?” We went to Bergdorf’s for coffee. “Ahh, an angel from heaven has come to me,” he anxiously uttered. No more virginity! My father wanted to buy him a flower shop.

“Congratulations. It is finished.” Didn’t Jesus say that somewhere?

Before I left for Paris, he kissed me at the corner of two avenues in downtown Manhattan. A dreamy scene in my eyes, until I moved to Paris, saw Taxi Driver, and worried that my Latvian friend could have been a replica.

He sent me a card. “When man is not ready he cannot be lover, but woman’s emptiness is always waiting.”

I told people—Penny at the English institute, an Italian stranger on the train to Toulon, Sophie’s friends—I was “in love.” But it felt strange in my throat when I said it.

ST’s mother took me to his apartment in the 18th in Paris. We faxed him in the Caribbean, where he worked. She kept pursuing me all year, taking me on meat tours and out to drab cafés with sticky cups.

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