So, I returned from Norway and started looking for a job. My first job was at King’s Department Store. I don’t remember how many years ago they went under but it was a really long time ago. I became friends with a few of my coworkers. Disco was huge in 1977 and one of my co-workers, Rich, was a great dancer. He was good looking and sweet and had a great laugh. We were just friends, although I would have loved to date him, but I sometimes used to go out to a couple of the disco places with him and other coworkers. They were over 18 but I never got carded. I’d always looked older than I was. I spent time alternately wishing guys would ask me to dance and hoping they wouldn’t because I was so unsure of myself. Because of my acne and some incidents that happened when I was younger and still living with my mother, I felt very unattractive and hopelessly uncool and undateable.
After a few months…I can’t remember why now….I left Kings and went to work for the Farm Shop. People on the east coast will be familiar with Friendly’s and the Farm Shop was like Friendly’s. We served things like sandwiches and burgers and several different ice cream desserts. I started working there and within the first day I was taking my own orders because they were so busy they couldn’t spare someone to really train me. Although I had access to all kinds of fattening foods I didn’t really gain a lot of weight because I was doing so much running around. The young guys that came in to Farm Shop never gave me a second glance, but several of the older guys were always flirting with me. I was never sure whether to be complimented or terrified.
Several nights a week a couple of the waitresses would go to the bar across the street, Valentino’s. I got in there just as easily as I had at any other bar. I was seventeen and the drinking age was 18, but I was never questioned. Maybe it was because I was with several of the older girls. I’ve heard that Valentino’s became a strip club after that, but when I was going in there it was just a small neighborhood bar.
So, it was one night at Valentino’s that I met my first love, Keith. I call him that because we ended up engaged within a few months, but looking back I realize it wasn’t love. It was partly infatuation, and partly the fact that he was my first real boyfriend. When we first started dating I was so excited. He was a few years older and had been in the army and he was interested in me…wow. He was a great dancer. He had been taught by his mom and he actually made me feel like I could dance as well. He loved Elvis and had tickets to the concert that fall, but Elvis had died that summer. He could sing somewhat like him and I just thought he was so cool. He would pick me up in his Chevy Malibu that he worked on himself. I spent lots of time with him. Eventually he asked me to marry him and he gave me a diamond ring.
Although a part of me was thrilled that he wanted to marry me, another part of me knew that he was not the man for me. I kept ignoring the other part because I really liked being a part of a couple and I’d given him my virginity. At that point in my life I didn’t see how I could possibly break up with him once I’d slept with him. I mean what kind of girl would that make me? But there were many things about him that bothered me. One of them was that he referred to his mom by some pretty horrible names, even though he loved her a lot. I know that his parent’s divorce was a bad one and that there were allegations of cheating, but I took it as a bad sign that he could love his mom and yet still use such horrible language about her. There were so many conflicting thoughts running through my head, but then a couple of incidents made up my mind for me.
One was that one of the guys that used to work at Kings with me came in and visited me a few times at Farm Shop and a group of us ended up going out together. He and I ended up in a room back at my house where he did his best to try to seduce me. I never did anything other than kiss him, but I realized that I had really wanted to do more and although I told him that I was engaged and kissing him was wrong, I realized that I had wished I wasn’t engaged. The other incident was when a friend of mine from high school, who was white, visited me while Keith was over and her boyfriend, who was black, came along. Keith stood there and told them that he thought it was wrong for whites and blacks to date or get married. I contradicted him in front of them and he was furious with me. He pulled me into another room and told me I was never to contradict him in front of other people. I could somewhat understand his point about feeling humiliated by his girlfriend arguing with him about one of his opinions in front of others, but there was no way I was going to leave either of my friends with the impression that I agreed with racist views. I think it was at that point that I realized that our relationship was doomed, I just didn’t know how to go about ending it.
I don’t remember how long after our argument it was, but he came to visit me one night when I was at home waiting to go babysit next door. We started talking and it devolved into an argument. There was a huge thunderstorm and we lost electricity and the power went out. But we kept talking as it got darker and darker outside. I told him that I wanted to break up and handed him back his ring, but he wouldn’t take it. Eventually it was time to go next door to babysit and I kept telling him I had to leave. He kept trying to change my mind. The neighbors called and asked where I was and I said I’d be right there. But Keith kept on arguing with me. I kept trying to get him to leave because I didn’t want to leave him in the house. The neighbors called again and I told them again that I was on my way and apologized for the delay. I finally told him that he had to leave or I’d have to call the cops. He left and I ran down to the neighbor’s house. When they heard I had just ended my engagement they offered to let me cancel the babysitting, but I refused. I didn’t want to be alone in the house with no electricity after my argument with Keith. My parents were out of town and I was the only one in the house.
When the neighbors came home later that night the dad offered to walk me home, but I told him I was fine and I was sure that Keith was gone. I was completely spooked walking home. We lived up a long driveway in the woods. When I got home the power was still out, but the neighbor had loaned me a flashlight. I was lying in bed trying to go to sleep when I remembered that there was a hide-a-key outside and Keith knew where it was, but I was too scared to go outside to get it. I kept moving from bed to bed to bed in the house. I finally fell asleep in my bedroom on the top bunk holding on to the flashlight like a weapon.
When I woke up the next morning Keith was standing in my bedroom looking at me. At that point, however, it was daylight out and I was more perturbed than anything that he was going to argue with me some more. It had taken everything I had to bring myself to actually tell him I wanted to break up. I am one of those people who can’t stand to hurt someone. I knew that there was no way I could marry him and if I gave in I would just have to go through this all again. He told me that he had driven around all night, and he was so upset that he had thrown up. I just kept telling him that my mind was made up and there wasn’t anything else to say. He still wouldn’t take the ring back. Eventually he left, but he didn’t stop trying to get me to change my mind. He talked to all of my friends and asked them to intervene. One day he pretty much ran me off the road when I wouldn’t stop the car to talk to him. And once my parents came home he paid a visit to my dad and told him things about me he thought would get me in trouble. I think at that point he was at the anger stage and just wanted me to suffer. But eventually he left me alone. Interestingly enough the guy who had been trying to seduce me when I was engaged, was no longer interested in me once I was single..go figure.
So I was a free woman, and about to head off to college. I figured I was a woman of the world at this point and ready for anything. But college was when my weight troubles really got going.