Chapter 2 (8-14-21)
Engaged to the Army Officer
I had completely forgot about him, maybe felt he was ‘top secret’ but now I reconsider because, one, I will not give his name, rank, or identity, or say anything that you could tell who he is, even if you knew him. I try to retain the privacy of people if I feel it is warranted, like criticism could be vented on them. I’m not even sure he’s alive, as if he is, he’d be in his 90’s.
The year I met him was the same year I met my future husband Richard, so it had to be 1989. This was when a psychic – a good one – told me I was to be married, & open my mind up somewhat, as I wasn’t amenable to it. So I opened my psyche to the idea & told eligible bachelors that I was looking for a husband. I had four proposals – One an engineer in Connecticut, who I visited in his house, the second, a 34-year old Jewish doctor from Manhattan, there was Richard, the man I chose {but the event did not happen for 11 years}, & the fourth was this officer in the military, who convinced me to get engaged over the phone. There was a fifth man who did not propose marriage, but became my best friend for 10 years – I call him Saint Esquire. {This last man never in ten years did the slightest thing wrong, except one thing at the end. I shall explain it when I get to his segment.}
Below, don’t hit the middle ‘play’ – hit the bar on the bottom
The Officer – I shall call him Joe – was my fan for a couple years. He ordered custom-made photos of me, I recall, doing the positions or stands a military person would do – They were traditional positions like when you march. This I fulfilled & what did it cost him? Around 60 bucks or so. When you’re in my business you have many fans, you don’t take most of them seriously. They’re all interested in sex – you aren’t. So they send letters or pictures with wanting to visit. This man I respected as he’d been through a lot, & I took him more seriously than the average Joe Blow. He asked me if I thought his picture was good, he was an average middle aged guy, but I said he was handsome & he reminded me of that later.
He kept me posted on his activities, & I sympathized because the life of a military person in the line of duty is arduous, especially if you’re a Green Beret, – you’re called upon to do the hardest things no one else can or will do. He told me he’d graduated West Point – I believed him but my future husband did not. Rich jealous of my budding relationship with Joe, actually went to West Point & looked into their archives for graduates – said he wasn’t there. When I asked Joe about it he said they gave him a different name, as he was ‘undercover’ or ‘secret’ in his work. Again, I believed him but Richard did not.
Then, after a while, Joe disappeared. He resurfaced telling me he’d spent time in the jungle on a special, dangerous mission, & also, he’d had a serious injury & had spent months at the VA hospital. The accounts he gave me were touching & sorrowful.
First, he said he had to reconnoiter in some God-forsaken wild jungle – all alone. They left him there by helicopter, he had to do something – was it spying? I guess he was casing an area. Where was it? I can’t remember, even if he told me. I know he was in Viet Nam, but that was way before me. Was this Nicaragua?
In the jungle he said he made an altar to me, with my image, with hibiscus flowers ornamenting it. He prayed there every day for me to protect him – & I did. He never had any trouble on any of his scouting missions. But it as not easy, as he frequently ran out of food, a helicopter would arrive occasionally with supplies. I imagine he lived in some sort of tent or shelter.
Finally, that mission was over, but then something horrible happened. He had to do a helicopter stint over enemy territory & needed volunteers. One of the sprightly young men who admired Joe sprang up, said great, he’d do it, they set off in the copter. {His enthusiastic, willing to fight-take risks, attitude, will make what happened even more painful.}
So they fly out, & the copter gets shot down – a huge explosion from the bottom, the seat Joe is sitting in is blown through, his read end & genital organs are injured, & then – the horror – the innocent 19 year old gets his head blown off, & the head falls right into the Officer’s lap.
He writes me from the hospital of his condition & heartbreak. He was unable to face battles again, even life; he was mentally as well as physically demoralized. He also isn’t sure if he will ever be able to have sex again, he asks me to send him an audio tape of prayer.
I send him an audio tape encouraging him, that God would heal him, everything would be alright.
He says that prayer took him out of his depression; he was healed, & was back, ready to go into action. He looked around the hospital & said ‘What am I doing here?’
That was when he asked that we exchange phone numbers & have some chats.
At this juncture I must say that some of my affairs with men have been at cross purposes. Only one out of many thousand can accept a woman without having sex – Richard Von Werder was one of them, especially chosen by God for me. There have been countless others who were driven, even crazed by their desire to have me as their sex partner, & if they could snag me into a house where I belonged to them, all the better. I will not give accounts of the large number that wanted this – whom I did not want.
I should have known that the affair with Joe would be ill fated, that he ‘just’ wanted sex, or that sex would be a requirement, when I didn’t see him that way at all.
In fact, after we chatted & he convinced me to get ‘engaged’ by phone {no big deal, years later Mr. Von Werder proposed marriage by phone & I accepted.} And when Rich heard me say I got engaged to the officer, he was downcast, as by now, he was, or always had been in love with me. {He’d been a fan for years.}
Now, on the phone with a man is one thing, in person can be a whole ‘nother color. I should have remembered what all women know – that men want to be near you, with you, in person so they can touch you, persuade you to have sex. It’s not all they want, but it’s paramount, number 1 out of many things.
***So put this under your hat, young woman. If a man wants to go to your residence, alone, or you to his, he only has one thing on his mind. It could also be his office, or a motel or hotel, or any private place – their primary purpose is sex. Just assume that & you will be right every time. And when they don’t get it, there will be repercussions. Some of them will attack you, criticize you, lay out your faults – call you names like frigid, lesbian, man-hater, neurotic or crazy. And if you do give it to them, they might tell their friends you are a SLUT. Some will even strike you or rape you – there could even be murder. Beware of going some place alone with men – EVER – especially if you don’t know them. Just don’t go anywhere alone with them without knowing THEY WILL WANT SEX.***
I TOLD the officer I WAS CELIBATE as I told all the men I potentially dated. But they don’t seem to listen, or believe. Or they think they are THE ONE EXCEPTION that you will break your celibacy for. They ALL think they’re exceptional, different, better than the other guys.
OK, so we talk for hours on the phone every day – he tells me the story of his life, I cry. I tell him the story of mine, he cries. We have both suffered, we have something in common. I respected him more than any man I had known because of his self sacrifice in serving his country. He really believed in our wars, {I had not yet heard the Kay Griggs accounts} as I did then, & he had allowed the military to brainwash him that DEATH DIDN’T MATTER, if someone dies it is NO BIG THING {it bothered me when I heard him say that.} And some of the tortures they put him through, as a Green Beret, were disgusting. I shall get to the ‘chow time’ story after.
So this was, I guess, 1989 & my vow had taken place May 27, 1978, & I kept it religiously & intended to do so for the rest of my life. I emphasized this to him again & again. Then he persuaded me to allow him for a visit.
OK, I respected him for his intelligence & his accomplishments, but when he showed up, he was repulsive. He’d been average in the photo he sent me where he looked 45, but in person he looked 65, his teeth chattered & he was slightly hunched. Physically his rating would have been a 4.
He brought gifts – don’t laugh. They were army rations. He gave me enough of those to last a year – & I ate them on & off for that long. I learned how men in the army are fed when cooked food is not available. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good – I’m not fussy about food. It was super high in calories, super concentrated dried food in bags, everything from soup to nuts to cakes. Some people would have given it away or thrown it away, but I respect food & the gift of it, so I ate it all over time.
Which brings me to the ‘chow time’ anecdote. When they were training him & the other Green Berets, they had a really hard day, & the guys were getting hungry. The officers kept saying that ‘chow time’ was coming up soon. Hours of exertion went by. Then a truck pulled up, they opened the back gates, & out of them came trotting PIGS. They had to catch them, butcher them, cook them before ‘chow time’ happened. It made my stomach turn to imagine it.
What was the purpose of this exercise? To harden the men, to desensitize them to brutality & killing, so they’d be ready for war. You can’t be sensitive & go out & kill people – especially innocent people & kids, you can’t have a heart. In the process of all this, men lose their ‘souls’, or access to them, but they are still there, unconscious, & if it is allowed to surface they suffer with guilt, shame, regret & grief, they cry, & when the officer told me his stories he cried & I felt grief. He told me one of the things that bothered him most was that he had to kill men FOR THEIR RATION – when he was in the jungle, & ran out of food. What did he mean, I asked? What made you think they had food? And he said,
“They always carried rice on them.”
Now can you imagine killing a man for the rice he carried? His life for food for you? And officer declared he had KILLED 300 MEN. I began to get uncomfortable. If he had killed that many men, was I safe in the event he felt rejected?
The entire affair ended due to his wanting sex, me not wanting him except for friends, & he couldn’t deal with it.
We had two different weekends together, talking endlessly, me making him great steak dinners, trying to be a friend. He talked about me coming to Washington & he introducing me to Barbara Bush, as George Bush senior was then President. {I thought he wanted to impress people with me.}
This anecdote re a female was telling – that he could not be with a woman without sex. He had a lady friend living with him in one of those tropical places – don’t recall where. One day she went out & stumbled into a ‘born again’ Christian meeting. She came back, & told Joe she had turned over a new leaf, she was not going to fornicate with a man not her husband, & refused sex after that. He made it out like she had become a weirdo, & he ended their affair. So obviously, he’s using her for sex, there is no love. If he loved her he would have married her.
Speaking of marriage, like all the other guys, he laid it on the table for me – what his assets were. He said he had saved up 200k from all the times he was overseas & never even cashed his checks. And we could also shop at the army stores, where everything was like HALF PRICE – you could get anything there & the Freemasons would provide {my God, he had us retired together, & he was about 25 years older than me!} – & to think I would live in some sort of Freemasons old folks home – it revolted me.
Oh & here is a good one. He went to the Vet hospital & had his SPERM COUNT measured to be sure he could get me pregnant. How old was I then? In 1989 I was 44 but might have looked 34 – I didn’t tell him my age. So you see his intentions were to get me ‘barefoot & pregnant,’ introduce me to Barbara Bush as his arm candy, live together for sex & boredom forever & retire into a Freemasons old folks home – all planned out – haha – & I had NOT consented to any of this or to marriage.
OK, our last night together. We were sitting watching a movie with Mitzi Gaynor – The dancing was marvelous & he insisted that I could dance like that, if I wanted to & practiced enough. I said I didn’t want to, but he insisted again & again I could dance like that. {The strange thing is Mitzi Gaynor’s teacher, Kathryn Etienne, had choreographed a routine for me to Manuel DeFalla’s ‘Ritual Fire Dance,’ but there my resemblance to Mitzi Gaynor ended – I did not want to be her.}
That was mostly all we did – eat dinner, talk & watch TV both weekends – I recall no other activities. He did not suggest we go out & do the town or anything.
So the last straw was when predictably he made a pass at me – something insignificant like touching my neck behind the ear, & I reminded him for the twelfth time that I was celibate & there’s be none of that. That’s when I knew if would be over very soon.
He went to his suitcase, took out a full bottle of whiskey & proceeded to drink. I mean drink, & drink & drink. Now I knew I was in danger, as when men get stinking drunk, they can do anything & not even remember, & say the whiskey made them do it. Men have killed without remembering they killed, the next day they wake up with blood on their hands asking what happened.
I wanted to escape from him but didn’t know how, I was plotting. If I tried to leave while he’s there he’d know what’s up, & try to stop me, maybe get violent. So my best bet was to go into my bedroom, which had a fire escape {no phone, however} & lock the door {I had just made a secure lock} & wait for him to pass out.
I went to my bedroom & after a while he must have been close to passing out, in he comes into my room {the lock somehow didn’t work – I was stunned}- & plops down next to me & passes out.
I did the wise thing – quickly got dress & hi-tailed it out of there. I even stopped a patrolman on the beat & told him my dilemma. He said not to worry as ‘those guys are really trained well’ & he was not likely to do violence to me.
But I wasn’t sure. There was a wonderful boy named Jose who worked for me – one of the best people I had ever known. He had a car. I went to his apt – he was at work. I asked his Dad if I could wait for him. When he returned I asked him if he would take the officer to the airport. He said OK. I then called Joe at my house, saying it would be convenient for me if he would leave; I had someone who could drive him to the airport. I was glad he picked up the phone – it had been a few hours since he passed out. And so it was, it ended without any harm coming to me.
He did not give up, as the other guys who had proposed also did not. I heard from all of them after breaking up, through letters. Joe wrote me, I can’t recall what he said, but I ignored him, as I did the others, as I had settled on the man that was suitable for me – the one who accepted my celibacy & didn’t push it.
Oh, just remembered one thing. He was so obsessed with me at the time that he went to his uniform place, told them he’d lost his jacket with name tag & all the medals, needed a replacement. There he got the replacement with my name on it with the rank that he had. It also had a replica of all his medals, about fifteen. It was one of those green bomber jackets. This jacket raised some eyebrows. One time I went into a place to wash my car – I had never been in a car wash before, didn’t know how it worked. A lady I asked about the procedure looked at my jacket, with my name & rank, & all the medals, & said,
“I will wash your car for you,”
And she did.
I don’t make these things up. {End Chapter 2}
