SURVIVOR’S GUILT

How do we ever survive “childhood guilt?”  I do not know; it is still with me.    Good grief I have not been a child in eons.      I had one secret from the adults in my life. My best friend new it, but no one else.    Ellen too had the same stirrings; she also did not know what they were. I am going to say it for all the world to know. I was madly in lust with Elvis Presley.    Yes, that’s right. I said it. Being the callow youth, extremely protected, and quite naïve, I thought I was in love.    It became obvious when I think back to those days; it was lust.    Pure, (and it was as the driven snow) unadulterated, remarkable, and heart pounding lust.    I would watch him with my family performing on the Ed Sullivan Show.     As soon as the show was over I called Ellen, or she called me.    We spent another hour on the phone moaning and reiterating every look, sneer, leg and hip shake, grin, and polite “thank you very much,” he would utter.

My parents thought it was quite humorous how quiet I was watching the television. You could hear a pin drop, and we had carpeting.    This was all I asked, pleaded for, and expected from my family. One hour of complete silence when my “love” was performing.    They all acquiesced. This group of compliant members usually consisted of my parents, older brother, at times Aunt and Grandmother. Was this too much to ask? As I was rushing to the phone, my mother noticed how my neat elasticized white, almost to the knee socks, were outstretched, standing on their own away from my leg, and all the elastic had been pulled out.    It was unknown to me then, but this was my pre-teen, pubescent, naïve version of a cold shower.    I was literally shaken for each of his performances, and had a strange physical reaction, which manifested itself in some very odd postures.     My face and neck where iron hot, I had reddish purplish streaks across my skin in a horizontal fashion, I was strangely nauseated, (in a good way) and had a throbbing which can only be described as jungle drums.    The whereabouts of this mighty occurrence could not be discussed in polite company.    Let us just say, I had “tenderloins” that evening, even though no meat was on the menu.

Another friend and I had a serious discussion on whether or not we would go to bed with him we could not find a definitive answer. We were both raised to believe it was sinful, quite wrong in fact to have such a dalliance, even almost in our own heads. Frankly, I cannot remember our conclusions, but it was thrilling to just imagine.    Of course, to my friend Joanie, and me no boy stood a chance of ever achieving this heightened sense of sexuality with us.    This is why Elvis was such a safe outlet.    If only he had known, what he was missing. If he had only asked, would we have bloomed right on the spot? I will never know for sure, but knowing me as I do I have a fair idea what my answer would have been.    This was quite a few years later, and now we were sixteen.

I felt guilty about wanting to know him in the “biblical way.”    My first awareness of my own sexuality and I didn’t even know it was so banal.    It sounds immature, inexperienced, sophomoric, but then that is what I was.    I had no clue that the physical sensations I experienced where telling me I was growing up. How could one live to the ripe old age of sixteen, and not realize I was becoming a woman?    Simple really, I did not want to grown up.    My virtue, high moral standards, and ignorance stayed in tact for years more.    When I realized that had Elvis come to my door, and asked for my body and soul, it was quite possible I would have served it up on a silver platter, and my morals and high standards, would have gone the way most fruit does at picking time.    Oh yes I was ripe, I just didn’t know it.     Was I a “good girl,” an honest one, was I a hypocrite?    What and who in the world was I?     I didn’t have a clue.

Oh yes, I know. I was guilty, and had survived my loins. They cried out to no avail, and I didn’t really have an inkling.    To me it was only about Elvis, not my body, or mind.    That is correct, I survived my Elvis Mania, and only shared my guilt with my best girl friends who could and would understand.

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