Chapter 1: Young Marrieds

Meeting Tad Curtis was the most exciting thing that ever happened to me. I was only 18 when we met, and Tad was just over a year older, but it was love at first sight and when I hit 19 and Tad declared me to be a "grown-up," we decided to get married.

Tad was still a college student -- a junior at the University of Kentucky -- and I was barely out of high school and working at my first job, as a receptionist for a group of dentists. Tad worked, too -- part-time -- but we barely had enough money to get by on. The tiny apartment we rented was over someone's two-car garage in their back yard. Humble.

But we were happy. We'd both been virgins when we'd married, but despite our lack of sophistication, we quickly became eager and highly compatible sex partners. I had been worried a little about Sex, marrying Tad when neither of us had any past experience worthy of the word.

Not to worry. The sex was fantastic, almost from the very beginning. Our sexual education may have been a bit delayed, but the home schooling was working just fine.

Our only concern was avoiding a premature pregnancy. Tad had a long ways to go in college and in launching a career. We would be heavily handicapped if we started a family too soon. It was the early 1960s and "the pill" had just come out. It was still controversial and frightening, and there were all sorts of stories about possible dangerous side effects.

But we both hated condoms, and I became one of the first young women in Lexington to find a doctor willing to prescribe contraceptive pills for me.

I had thought sex was wonderful before. But the first time Tad made love to me without having to wear that stupid rubber, I found out that I liked it even better!

Tad's grades in college had always been good, but after we were married and settled in our own little love nest, they got even better -- perfect, in fact. He never got anything but "A's" after our wedding. Well -- except for the "B" in calculus. Mathematics weren't Tad's strongest area.

We had no social life at school. Tad's part-time job ate up all the spare hours that he didn't spend in classes or studying. There was little free time for getting to know his classmates or for participating in activities at the university.

I hadn't grown up in Lexington, so the only people I knew well were my co-workers at the dental office. I had become very friendly with the office manager there, Louise Parker, a woman almost ten years my senior. Louise and I would have lunch together frequently, and especially after my marriage, we developed a very close friendship. Louise had been recently married herself, although she and her husband, Don, being several years older, were somewhat better off economically. Don was in his mid-30s and had owned his own home, even before his marriage to Louise.

"Hey, Cathy," Louise said to me one day while we were having lunch in the park near our office, "do you think Tad would like to come over with you some evening, maybe have dinner with us?"

I knew had busy Tad's schedule always was, so I begged Louise to give me three or four different evenings that we could choose from, so that I could allow Tad the maximum amount of flexibility in setting up our get-together. "I know he'd enjoy it," I told her. "It's just working it in that's a problem. The poor guy works all the time. It's so hard for him!"