Chapter 33

It took us quite a while, sitting holding hands in the noodle kitchen parking lot as customers came and went, to thrash out the exact story we were going to tell Mom, weaving it around the theme of a fundamental disagreement over a girl wanting a college education and a career, rather than a husband and three babies before her twenty-first birthday. Mom would immediately get that.

We decided to also highlight the fact Mel hadn’t actually ever met her last three ‘stepmothers’, and express doubt that the one we invited would still be the current one when the wedding day arrived. I knew for sure Mom would be totally under-impressed to hear that – not with Mel, but with her father.

Mel chuckled as I explained the back story.

(One of my uncles had brought his then girlfriend to Mom and Dad’s wedding. You can see her at his side in every single one of the photographs of the family. They split acrimoniously a few weeks after, but she can’t be expunged from Mom’s wedding album. Heck, she even appears in the framed photo hung prominently on the wall at the turn of the stairs. Mom’s had a thing about wedding photos ever since, which is why I attended Katelyn and James’s marriage stag – even then I was realizing that Marsha and I didn’t have a future together. Oh, I had a great time dancing with all of Katelyn’s friends and a couple of James’s single cousins, but there is no interloper on my arm in Katelyn’s album.)

“You’ll have to show me which one she is. I saw the two wedding pictures briefly when I went upstairs, but didn’t examine them. Yeah, I know exactly what she means. It’s harder to treasure your wedding photo when there’s someone in there who shouldn’t be, you always get distracted. It’s like my high school yearbook with my scuzz-bucket ex having his photo on the same page as mine. God, I still have no idea what I ever saw in the jerk; I guess it was peer pressure to have some kind of relationship, however abusive.”

But we weren’t quite so sure about two other things: disclosing that her mother was, in Mel’s precise clinical terminology, (which would certainly have met with Dr. Clifford Szymanski’s enthusiastic professional endorsement), ‘batshit crazy’. Or that her siblings were the very last people you’d want in your wedding party; once Mel had left and her influence in how they were raised had ceased, they’d become self-centered almost to the point of uncontrollable. Free alcohol? From what Mel had heard about them, they’d be drunk and obnoxious from the get-go, maybe totally wasted on weed or worse. Not that she had any intention of inviting them.

Which led on to a discussion about whether the two of us should take a trip back to Wisconsin before the wedding.

Mel’s take was less than enthusiastic. “In one way, I’d just love to show you off to them, prove that leaving town was the best thing I ever did; but I’m hesitant about you actually meeting them. Don’t want you ever to think I might turn out like them. That I carry their flaws in my genes.”

I leaned towards her and kissed her again, then locked eyes with her.

“I wouldn’t EVER think that in a million trillion years, honey. They CHOSE to become like that, by making bad decisions and being feckless, always taking the easy road. Unlike them, you had the get up and go to escape, to get yourself a college education against the odds; you have the Mid-Western work ethic in spades, and you’ll never lose that. You spoke earlier about selling your soul, but that was only because you had no choice if you were to stay at college. But you didn’t sell it; you may have temporarily sent it on vacation, but it came back clean and sparkling. I know that for sure; your essence shines through from inside, and I can see it’s not even slightly tarnished.”

There was a break for an exchange of physical affection. Mel showed me she appreciated my support; I used the kisses to express my total devotion to her.

Why wouldn’t I? Mel may have made a career out of porn, but she is a whole lot more than just an ex-porn star. It’s an old-fashioned term, but she’s a lady. I was proud to introduce her to my friends and family; I felt supremely honored she’d agreed to become my wife, and hopefully have my children. I wouldn’t have contemplated asking her if I hadn’t been one hundred percent convinced she was my soul mate and life partner, and that she felt the same about me. I was totally in love with her, and I had no doubts she felt the same about me. Okay, I did have some residual uncertainties about exactly what such a beautiful woman saw in little old me, but I wasn’t complaining.

Life Partner? Yes, I had no doubt. We have so much in common, and we seem to complement and complete each other. She brings out the best in me; she helps my confidence, and she’d already proven an invaluable confidant. Remember I mentioned I wanted the relationship my folks have? With Mel, I can see it working out that way. We make a great team.

It wasn’t a lustful embrace – though naturally we were both having the usual physiological responses to making out with our lover – it was more a melding of our individual identities into one combined being. Just couldn’t get close enough to each other. She’s a very special person. I’m a very lucky guy.

Eventually we had to come up for air. I didn’t want to end the clinch; it had been so emotionally satisfying, so completing. So disappointing to have to end it. Like waking up in the mornings with her head on my chest, hating that we’d have to get up shortly and go to work. Savoring the moment, thinking I must have done some serious good deeds in a past life to get so richly rewarded in this one.

But the clock was ticking.

“We probably better get back to the house before Katelyn reports her car stolen. You okay, honey?”

She took a last look around the parking lot. “Yeah, I’m okay. Seeing the noodle place here instead of the motel takes some of the sting out of the memory. I survived the experience and moved on, the motel didn’t. So, in the end, I won.”

“Uh, you want to come back here late tonight after it closes and take a great big fat dump in their doorway to express your feelings?”

She laughed out loud, pretending to look outraged, with flashing eyes and pouting lips.

“Michael Hulse, you RAT! I’m a girl. Girls do NOT take great big fat dumps, as you so politely call them. It’s BOYS who fart in public and think it’s fricking hilarious; joke loudly about bathroom subjects and boast about how they just dropped a truly massive log. Don’t you go transferring your gross male habits to me!”

A giggle. “However ... in this case, I do like the way you think, but I don’t believe I need to take that extreme a step ... Some poor hourly-paid employee would have to clear it up, and almost certainly none of the male staff could go near it without barfing. When I was waitressing, it was always the girls who got the nasty cleanup jobs. I wouldn’t want to do that to another girl.”

A short silence ending with a sigh. “It feels really weird to say this out loud, but in a way, this place did give me the big kick up the butt I needed, and maybe I should be grateful...”

What? Grateful? How the heck did THAT happen?

“You want to explain that, show me your workings?”

A chuckle. “Relax, honey, I know it sounds so weird, but it does make some sense. Doing the scenes here, I had no choice but to go through with them. I was in big financial trouble. Once I’d amassed enough savings so the immediate need to make some cash was gone, I did some serious thinking. I felt so crap about what had been done to me here, I knew I’d never submit to it again. I was forced to make a choice. Either I quit doing porn before something went bad on me, or I continued, but went upmarket. I calculated I did need the porn income to finish my course, so I did some research. There’s a bulletin board in the Film and Media Studies building where movie makers from all over the country advertise for interns. I secured myself a summer job in Cape Coral, Florida, and not only did I get some great paid crew experience, but I tracked down a decent adult performers’ agent, who got me some much better paid scenes in front of the camera. That was when I called myself ‘Marie’, before I became ‘Atlanta’. Don’t know if you’ve ever viewed any of them – they’re almost ads for ‘Visit Florida’. I watched one of those back home my last winter of high school, one evening I was grounded yet again because of something my baby sister had done; that was the moment I swore to myself I’d never have to endure another Wisconsin winter.”

I chuckled. “Yeah. You told me a dozen times already. Twenty-five degrees and covered in snow – on a GOOD day.”