Left: photo by Gerhard Litz – Right: Dar, age 16
My Real Memoir
My new love and I had let go the safe shores of our previous lives–Darlene (“Dar”) her childhood religion, and I my small-town fame. We were flotsam and jetsam who’d met amid the rapids and now clung to each other as we rushed downstream. We both wanted more from life. But did more want us? I believed it did. But Dar was wary, as if she’d already met more and it had betrayed her.
Our final college term would begin soon. We spent a weekend with Dar’s cowgirl sister, her handlebar-mustached boyfriend, and their pet racoon Whisky. Whisky had been on the bad boy list ever since he’d stolen an entire roast off the kitchen counter at a family gathering, drug it down the hallway, and devoured it with his back against the bathroom door.
I was the new Whisky. Darlene’s parents included me in family gatherings, honoring her choice—but not necessarily liking it (me). And for good reason: I was as undomesticate-able as a raccoon. At Thanksgiving, I got a booze-induced case of the munchies and ate an entire pecan pie, and then made up for it by bear-hugging Dar’s deeply introverted mother.
My apartment was our sanctuary, the one place I could coax out the real Dar, not the cool campus sophisticate or the egg-walking child of a marriage-in-purgatory, but the gleeful girl I’d fallen for with while pushing her around in a shopping cart. The one whose smile beamed through the grainy blur of a high school choir photo (above). What had changed?
The fall term was about to start, and the class I was most excited about, following my writing-directing debut, was Fundamentals of Directing taught by long-haired, charismatic Dr. Wright.
The weekend before, Dar and I double-dated with my old buddy Rick and his soft-spoken girlfriend Carly, and somehow, we got onto the topic of abortion, which California had recently legalized. I was surprised to learn that Carly had had an abortion. And then, after a long silence, Dar said, “Me too.” Stunned, I asked, “When?”
“At the start of my freshman year,” she replied. “A man half the girls here (at our college) have been with, and the other half wish they had, invited me over…” Flattered, the pretty eighteen-year-old Dar, who only months before had feared getting pregnant from a French-kiss, said yes. That night, the man graciously introduced her to drugs (“he had a whole refrigerator-full”) and sex.
And she got pregnant. “So, I had an abortion,” she said expressionlessly, “and it was no big deal. Heck, it was my rite-of-passage,” she added with an acerbic smirk. And suddenly I knew where the hole in her heart had come from. To be sure, I had a one too, but mine was an as-of-yet unfilled space. Hers was a space that something had been ripped out of.
“Who was he?” I asked. Before answering, Dar made me swear never to say a word to the man about it, and I begrudgingly agreed.
“It was Dr. Wright.”
My Real Memoir is a series. To read the next one, click here.
some men should be hung by their organs not the other way around. Evil, people, destroying a child.
Dr. Wright appears to have been dishonorable to his profession coercing students who may have admired him as a professor.
Oh, yes.
Whoa. Some of my twenties were uphill, as well. I did not know the Lord until I was 40. Long wait…
Mitch, I gasped. But sadly, not surprised, too. My heart broke reading this.
<3
My husband and I worked with a volleyball coach in a parochial school. This guy was in his 30s, and he impregnated at least 3 of the girls on his volleyball team. It was a Catholic school, so no abortion. The first girl gave her baby up for adoption, then a year later, he impregnated her again! The 2nd girl had a miscarriage, and the 3rd kept the child and her mother raised her baby. I couldn’t even face that guy without contempt. I think the guy promised to marry the 1st girl, but snuck out. What was inconceivable was that he wasn’t fired on the spot! He did quit 2 years later.
The other problem we had was that another girl was impregnated by one of the priests who was on the faculty as well. Now Father R was in his early 20s so the age difference wasn’t as large. He gave up the priesthood and married her.
Wow. Sounds like a number of people needed to be held morally and, in at least one case, legally accountable there, Rebecca!
If only there was some sort of accountibility for one’s actions back then, instead of just sweeping it all under the carpet.
School management have arguably tarnished the schools reputation by doing effectively nothing, also they never protected the children.
Good recount, Mitch. Best to write these now before we forget them.
That must have been such a shock for you.
It certainly was, Liz.
SNAP! OMG.
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Oh crap!, carnage everywhere.
Oh no!!!😮
what a weasel he was
I didn’t expect that.
😢😢
Wow! Not sure how you were able to continue in that directing class after that revelation. I hope the guy was some held accountable for his predation. Heartbroken for Dar.
He wasn’t held accountable (that I know of) during my time, Russell. Later? Maybe. I hope. His was a good example of the kind of predation (perfect word, btw) that hid behind the smoke screen of “free love” in that era, and continues to this day.
Sadly, there are a lot of Dr. Wrights out there.
Heartbreaking, sadly evil sometimes exists under the guise of “love.”
Such a terrible betrayal of trust for a young woman. I hope that college has policies in place today that protect their students better.
I certainly hope so, Shirley.
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