Leopard & Lady

non-subject: saved
aww ~ 1/16/13
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I really, really do not want to write.

I feel as if I loathe myself.
My energy is almost nil.
I want to fall into a deep, long hibernation.

Sometimes I wish I were a large wild cat.
Cougar or Tiger or Leopard.
Sleek. Fast.
Exercise only when I desire play or food.
Stretch my elegant body to bask in sunlight.

But I'm not a large wild cat.

I am a middle-age, middle-class American woman.
I play Sudoku.
I watch sunsets.
I open my refrigerator for food.
I take pills.
I am overweight.
I drive a 1999 Ford Explorer.
I drink Starbucks frappuccinos.
I have a Facebook account.
I spend too much time on the computer.
I am a wife and a mother.

I got saved when I was around 10 years old. At least that is when I went to an altar at a Baptist Church and accepted Jesus into my heart, or something like that.

When I was around 12 I read the four gospels in the Bible and decided Jesus was the biggest egomaniac I'd read about in my 12 years. He always spoke about following him; it was all about him. What made him so special? And why in three gospels did it state that two of the men crucified with him rejected him, while the fourth gospel stated that one of the two men accepted him? How could I believe this stuff?

I couldn't...at least for the next five years.

After five years, when I was 17, I met and fell in love with Frank - the 22-year-old guitar-playing hippie that went to church, and was a truck driver, and smoked dope, and drove a panel wagon with gears on the column and with a mattress in the back, and raised chows, and lived in a cabin below Rocky Face Mountain in the woods in Vashti, North Carolina.

Frank and I met on the pier at the McGahaes who lived on the north side of the Highway-127 bridge in Hickory as one drives toward Bethlehem.

In my bikini, I sat alone on the end of the wooden pier on a sunny day in May, 1976, my feet dangling in the water. Music must have blasting from the house; there was always music.

Frank saw me as he stood in the gravel parking area. He walked the pier and introduced himself. Frank was tall and handsome, blonde hair, blue eyes, with a goatee.

Frank liked that I didn't shave my legs or underarms or wear make-up. He liked that I didn't smoke dope or drink or do drugs, though I had in the past.

We started dating and a few months later I moved in with Frank in the cabin in the woods. I liked that Frank would introduce me to his friends as his "lady." I was 17. Frank was 22. His friends were in their 20s and 30s.

And I was Frank's lady.

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