Installment 6

Larry and I left the chapel in a flurry of rice and a garishly decorated ‘63 Ford Fairlane, successor to the VW Bug that had died a few months before on a Farm to Market Road by an irrigation ditch. We drove all the way to a motel on the outskirts of Lubbock, Donny Anderson’s Red Raider Inn. It was owned by and named for a then-famous former football player at Texas Tech. The bridal suite was called “Helmet House.” The first thing we did was order chicken-fried steaks and mashed potatoes from room service, sit in bed, and watch television. Alone at last! And we were scared spit-less.

This is not a book about my coming of age or discovering the wonders of being a woman. Dear Reader, are you disappointed? Well, we were. Disappointed, that is. It wasn’t magic. It wasn’t roses, trumpets, and fireworks then. It definitely got better, but for something that was supposed to be such a big deal, it seemed like a lot of hard work at first. And when at last the deed was done, I was still just Susan. Same old Susan and same old Larry. What has really mattered over these forty years or so is the day to day life living with the same old Larry. That’s been transformational. It still is. But now, looking back, I have a few thoughts about that whole virgin thing.

Being a virgin had always seemed such a negative to me, like I was living in the land of something that hadn’t happened yet. It was a state to be ridiculed by classmates and speculated on by the formidable groups of football players that hung out in the corridors of Coronado High School. I went to great lengths to avoid passing those groups, hugging my books to a very flat chest, my eyes glued to the linoleum in front of me.
Virgin. From the lips of mid-’60s teenagers, the word was an epithet. Untouched, inexperienced, never had sex. Even the more positive dictionary definitions of the word weren’t particularly helpful: modest, chaste, pure. It was as if virgin were something not fully formed, a state of suspended being. Waiting. Passive. Admittedly, in high school I wasn’t analyzing my virginity in any deeper way then wondering how I was going to lose it. Now on the cusp of my wedding, it was as if those around me were surprised that it could possibly happen.

“You? Getting married?” My former high school English teacher shrieked with astonishment. She’d called to see if I could house sit or something. I told her about my other plans for that particular August weekend. After her initial outburst, she began laughing. “Well,” she chuckled, “I guess anything is possible!” I had never really liked her.

After all, she didn’t know me. No one did. Not really. I was a secret even to myself.

But I wanted to be known—known, yes, in the Biblical sense, like, “And Adam knew Eve, and she conceived.” That was a start. But even more, I had a hunger for deeper intimacy—to be known like in the Psalm, “O Lord, you’ve searched me and known me.” And, “Behold, you want truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.” In The Message Bible, Eugene Peterson translates this last as, “What you’re after is truth from the inside out. Enter me, then; conceive a new, true life.” Being entered physically is one thing, but being entered down to your heart’s core is a whole different kind of knowledge. It would be like becoming one with what conceived me in the first place—and there’s space enough in that knowledge to explore a world, a universe.

Conception unconfined. Openness to new things. Hunger for something more than a life lived in carefully prescribed channels. I didn’t recognize my virginity for what it was—authority to go forward. Esther Harding’s Woman’s Mysteries: Ancient and Modern points out that in ancient times the word virgin had a different meaning than it does now. It didn’t mean being chaste or physically untouched. Rather, being a virgin meant “belonging to oneself.” A virgin was someone who had authority, who was the author of her own experience, not defined by any human relationship. Virginity was power. Being a virgin, she says, refers to “a quality, a subjective state, a psychological attitude, not to be a physiological or external fact.” It means being uncaptured or, as Harding puts it, a virgin is “one-in-herself.”

I didn’t know any of that then, but there was one thing I did know. I no longer “belonged” to my parents. But I didn’t “belong” to Larry Cobb either. The authority I exerted in saying “yes” came from a place more in the heart than the hormones. Larry was a place where I knew I’d be safe. I knew he thought I was smart, and that he’d always support that, encourage it. He himself was smart, but he wasn’t book smart. Plagued with dyslexia, reading was never a joy for him. However, I knew that if he and I were stranded on a desert island, he’d put me under a tree, give me a book, and go kill lunch. Or build a tree house. Or construct some sort of flying or sailing machine that would get us off the stupid island. Whatever he did, I wanted to be there with him while he did it. And amazingly, he wanted me there with him. Learning to receive his love, I was beginning to open up to all life’s possibilities. So I moved toward marriage with a determination that I have since rarely shown in moving toward anything—until we moved to Mexico.

My decision to marry was about being me, getting out, getting away, and fulfilling my own particular destiny and purpose. I felt the same strong impetus about our move south of the border. Once again I was cutting family ties and taking on the mantle of becoming something more than I’d been before. Maybe the mark of a real virgin is she says “Yes!”

© 2010 by Susan J. Cobb. All rights reserved.

Editors Note: We plan to publish an instalment of Virgin Territory periodically for the next year and a half. If you cannot wait that long you can always buy the book from the publisher’s web site here. For even more information visit Susan’s web site.