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I met Melanie in August of ’67. I was married then, but Lloyd and I were hard on the skids. That last night we had another fight. He came home drunk, threw me down on the bed and tried to have his way with me. I beaned him with my purse and ordered him out of our bedroom. He refused and we struggled for a while. He pinned me down, but when I thought it was going to get really ugly, he came to his senses and let me go. He tossed a few insults my way then went to the refrigerator for another beer. I locked the door, packed my bags, and left.As I climbed into my ’59 Biscayne, he yelled “Good riddance” after me as I drove off. I headed west but having nowhere else to go but Mom and Dad’s house in St. Louis. About an hour down the road on Route 18, I realized I was tired and a long, long way from my old bedroom. I was hungry and I needed to think. So I stopped and got a room at a place called the Navajo Motel. The Navajo isn’t there anymore, the land is all developed now, but for the time it was nice, and all I really needed was a bed. I got my room, I put my things away, hungry and bored with TV, but not wanting to be alone. I couldn’t sleep so I went to the motel bar. The place was called Plato’s.Despite the name, I was expecting a honky-tonk in a joint like the Navajo. A place to get a burger and a drink; maybe even a few drinks. And I wasn’t entirely disappointed in what I found. They had a kitchen and a jukebox, but Plato’s wasn’t like the bars I knew from Geauga County. The decor was a bit over the top. Somebody had painted a mural of Greek columns, horses, young men, and seductive women in togas on the wall. They had a jukebox but it wasn’t playing Porter Waggoner or Herb Alpert, they were radical, psychedelic stuff. I heard the Jefferson Airplane and a Whiter Shade of Pale. I heard distorted, spacey guitars with a driving beat. The patrons gave me a long look when I came in, but when I went to the bar and ordered a drink they got back to dancing. Plato’s was nothing like the bars Lloyd frequented. Men there didn’t line up to buy me a drink or try Çankaya Escort to talk me out of my pencil skirt. And the girls seemed queer, half of them ordinary like me in proper makeup with long hair and a bullet bra. Some of the women dressed like men, in flannel shirts and jeans and it seemed like each mannish girl was hooked up with each of the more feminine customers. But I really didn’t care what other people did. I was there to leave my old life and the unfamiliar surroundings helped.Melanie was my bartender. She was wearing a button-down dress and a little makeup, but there wasn’t much girlie about her except for her figure. She had short, boyish auburn hair and lean body, a sharp chin, and smooth pale skin. She had left off her bra, a thing I could not miss and a thing we never did in the sixties. I could see her nipples through the material of her dress, which was daring enough to make me look twice. I’d have never dared risking that myself even if my bras were uncomfortable. Strange as she seemed, Melanie was friendly enough. I didn’t mind when she looked me up and down while asking what I wanted. I ordered a cheeseburger then decided to throw caution to the wind and ordered a martini. Mom and Dad were about ten or twelve hours away. Tomorrow I figured I’d get an early start. Tonight I could let my hair down and let it all out. But I wasn’t going to weep. That could wait until after I got home.”You look like your best friend got run over,” Melanie said.”I left my husband,” I explained. “I got tired of him out drinking and neglecting me. Tired of the constant fighting, tired of his endless demands, particularly when drunk. And the man was drunk a lot.””Most men are like that,” she said. “Act like you’re property. Treat you real nice until they get that pussy. Once they’ve had it you’re their property. And being nice doesn’t matter anymore.””You just spoke God’s own truth. But they aren’t all bad, and right now I’m pretty angry,” I admitted. “Are you supposed to be happy? Most of us have Keçiören Escort been married. The happiest day of my life was the day I left Dave. You got any kids?””No, thank God.” And I thought about it, I was lucky we didn’t have children. I’d have had to stay then. But then maybe Lloyd might have been better with kids. “We tried for a year, but it just wasn’t meant to be. Right now I’m glad, though he was a lot nicer when we were trying.””They always are when a man wants something,” she said washing glasses, then moved to tend to the order of two young men a few seats down. I could see one of them squeezing the other’s bottom. I could see their eyes, locked on each other the same way Lloyd used to lock onto mine when we were courting. I ignored them, raising my glass for Melanie.”He got everything he wanted but a son.””I bet that man blames you too when he might have been the problem.”And then I realized why this bar was strange. In most places, men and women are mixed. At Plato’s, men danced with men and women with women. Especially men dancing with men, that just wasn’t done, not back home in Geauga county. But I had a room and it was on the way to St. Louis and nobody had given me any trouble. I took my martini, took a long sip and smiled at Melanie. She smiled back. She was nice.She really wasn’t right about men, at least all of them. Peggy’s husband Greg was a jewel. Lloyd always cut him down behind his back, maybe because he couldn’t do what Greg could and put his wife first. On further thought, I figured Lloyd didn’t want to put me first. Lloyd was all that mattered to Lloyd. Just like his father. To men like my husband, I was just an appliance with a pussy. Melanie was right about too many husbands I knew, men who cheated on their wives and laughed about it. I wondered if Lloyd had ever cheated on me. Decided it didn’t matter now if he had. Of course, I’d stayed loyal, though I’d had chances. But I’d been a good girl. And what had it gotten me? I stewed a bit thinking about what Etimesgut Escort Mom and Dad would say when I got there. Mom always was all about staying pretty and doing whatever it took to keep a man. Maybe Mom was like that because she loved Dad, only Dad was a lot more like Greg than my Lloyd. They didn’t know my husband, not really. Lloyd had always stayed on his best behavior around others. Unless you really knew us, he acted like the perfect husband. So I didn’t figure I’d get much sympathy for leaving. Leaving made me a big failure as a wife, as I had been as a would-be mother. A divorcee. I knew what men said about divorcees, how we couldn’t get enough. Well, I’d gotten more than enough during my marriage. I finished my martini and ordered another, and tried to contemplate going back home, getting a job, and how almost everyone would tell me I should turn around and beg Lloyd to take me back. I saw face after face, pointing fingers at me, whispering behind my back. That’s when I broke down, right there at the bar. I cried in my drink right in front of everybody, bringing my napkin to my eyes to mop up the tears and the runny mascara—I sat there sobbing.Melanie came around the bar to wrap her arms around me. I found her shoulder and just sobbed. Melanie stayed positive. “That’s okay, girl. It happens to all of us when things don’t work out. You think you’re the only person here who never got divorced. I was married for two years. How long were you married, Frank?” And I realized she was speaking to one of the men who’d been dancing together.The man who had been pressing his bottom into his partner’s hand turned to look at me, a sad look on his face. He had a thin black mustache and he smiled at me, though he had a sad look as recognized me. He was handsome and had kind eyes, but held himself in a very effeminate way and held his body tight to a man whom I now recognized as his lover. “I was married six years,” he told me in a soft voice. “I tried, I really tried. But I just couldn’t.”Melanie mopped up my face, her fingers soft on my cheeks, her body close to me, breath in my ear. I could smell her perfume, Chanel, expensive and not what I would have expected. And I hugged her tight and until I calmed down. Melanie didn’t hurry me. “It’ll be okay, honey. You aren’t the only person to break down in this bar. You won’t be the last. To tell the truth, you’ll be better off without him.”
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