The year 1974 was a important one in my life. I certainly remember it well. It was the first year I lived in my own apartment. It was the year in which I turned 21. It was also the year I met the woman I would marry, and it was the year in which we did marry, on October 12.
1974 may not be so memorable to you. Here are a few events that occurred that year that might help you recall it. The first issue of “People” magazine, with Mia Farrow in the cover, was published. The 2200 year old “Terracotta Army” of Emperor Qin Shi Huang was discovered. The 1973-74 Oil Embargo came to end after 5 months of gas lines. Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s all-time home run record. The SLA shoot-out occurred in LA. The last Japanese World War II soldier surrendered on an Indonesian island. And my personal favorite, Richard Nixon resigned as President of the United States. I’m sure that some of you remember these things.
I had left the USAF in late 1973, one of many active duty members encouraged to transfer to the reserves after the end of America’s military involvement in the Vietnam War. I joined the Air National Guard, where I would remain for nearly eight years.
For a few months, I stayed in my parents’ apartment. During that period, my car died and I bought a motorcycle, a medium-sized Japanese bike, which during the months that followed was my sole means of transportation. I clearly wasn’t thinking about passengers, let alone their comfort.
By April I had to move. I couldn’t stand living with my parents any longer, so I got my own apartment. This apartment was tiny, perhaps 300 square feet, but it was furnished and neat-looking. It had beamed ceilings and the tiniest kitchenette I ever saw. I was the youngest tenant by two or three decades.
This apartment was in a secluded four-unit building on a side street in North Hollywood. The apartment units were at the back of the property, connected to the front by a narrow driveway. At the front of the property were two other buildings separated by the driveway. On one side was a small house where the owners lived. They were an elderly couple, both real estate brokers who were now mostly retired. On the other side was their office where they still did a little bit of business. All of this on a quarter-acre lot. No more than 150 feet away was perhaps the busiest boulevard in North Hollywood. The odd thing was, as close as that boulevard was, it was always quiet on that little lot. One virtually never heard the sound of traffic. It was an altogether enchanting place to live. And it was cheap.
My first couple of months there were very quiet and somewhat lonesome. I spent most of my evenings reading or listening to music or watching TV (a small, ancient black & white which caught fire a year or so later.)
One evening around nine, a friend of mine came by to visit. I’ll call him Fred. With him was a pale young woman with intelligent eyes. They stayed perhaps an hour or so, but that night I was caught. It was Sunday, June 23rd, the night my life changed.
When they came in and sat down on the couch I saw little but her. Fred introduced her. I’ll call her Agita, the name by which she is known here. I had already seen that she was beautiful. She had light brown hair which framed her face wonderfully. It was a pretty face. Now I noticed that she did not look well. There were dark circles under her eyes. She was very thin, and she was obviously tired. (Later I found out that she was recovering from a near-fatal case of pneumonia.) She had an air of being very sure of herself, very self-possessed. I was instantly attracted to her in a big way.
No one said a lot at first. She and Fred were sitting side by side, but they weren’t touching at all. She was wearing jeans and a white t-shirt with a large feminist power symbol printed in red on it – the one with a clenched fist inside the circle. I asked, “How do you justify the violence inherent in that symbol.” Yes, I really said that. I sounded like a pompous ass. There was a brief pause. No one moved. Then Agita said, “I don’t have to justify anything to you.” There was the slightest emphasis on the words “anything” and “you.” She had a nice voice, sweet and melodic. There was a longer pause. I was not put off by her response, not in the least. Quit the contrary, I was delighted. She was great. I think I fell in love in that moment.
A long time later, Agita told me that she gotten that t-shirt at a beer-and-wine fund-raiser at her NOW chapter. She didn’t remember actually buying it, though, or much of anything else about that evening. The chapter president, a good friend of hers, had insisted she have some white wine. So did a few of the other women there. Agita was not used to alcohol. All she knew for sure was that she woke up at home the next morning in a bean bag chair in her apartment, hung over, wearing the shirt and her underwear. She had obtained a second similar shirt and some feminist jewelry as well. Her boyfriend was still sleeping in the bedroom. I’ll call this boyfriend Elton. We will meet him again. He had not awakened when Agita had been brought home. Later that day she called the chapter president who assured her that she had in fact paid for the items.
We spent the next hour talking, mostly Agita and me. Fred, still sitting on the couch next to Agita, wasn’t participating much. He seemed to be closely studying my rather spartan furnishings, all of which he had seen before. He had the rather off-putting habit of wearing sunglasses indoors. His seeming disinterest was all the better for me. I felt that Agita and I were getting along quite well. Fred must have sensed this too. As the time passed he showed signs of becoming distinctly uncomfortable. It was also apparent that Agita was clearly angry with him over something. From time to time he would put an arm around her shoulders and she would shrug him off. Or he would take her hand in his and she would immediately pull hers free. Each time she rejected him I felt a little thrill of optimism. There was no connection between them. He clearly thought there was, but there wasn’t.
Fred mentioned that he was going to spend a month or so of his summer with some relatives who lived in the mid-west. He said they owned a screw company. (He wasn’t kidding – a month or so later, I got a letter from him on their stationery – Galactic Screw Company or something like that.) He told me that I was too take care of Agita while he was out of town. He said this in a very proprietary manner, like I was being asked to take care of something he owned, like his car. Inside I was rejoicing. I took it as an opportunity to spend some alone time with Agita, which in fact is what I did. But don’t worry – there are some unexpected twists coming.
Shortly before they left, Agita was rummaging in her purse. She pulled a book out. I asked her what it was. She offered it to me to read. I took it. I had two thoughts that I can recall. If she liked it perhaps I would too. If I borrowed it, I would have to return it – another one of those opportunities. Then they left. Over the next few days I read the book. I wanted to be able to discuss it with her if she asked me what I thought about it. The book was “All My Friends Are Going To Be Strangers” by Larry McMurtry. I didn’t like it much.
The next time I saw Agita was on July 4th. This was a Thursday. I had spent the afternoon with a co-worker. I left his house a little intoxicated. I made it home a little wobbly, a significant issue on a motorcycle. When I was nearly home, a passing Highway Patrolman pulled me over. He checked me out closely but didn’t quite ascertain my condition. He let me go with a stern look and a warning. That was a close one. I got home without further incident and felt that I had been very lucky.
I decided to test my luck further. By early evening I was feeling better. I showered and changed and left my apartment again. My destination was Agita’s house. It was her parents’ house, actually, and her childhood home. She was staying there at that time. I had gotten the address from Fred. (He had to give it to me; if I was going to “take care” of Agita, I needed to know where to find her. He couldn’t argue with this logic and provided the address and the phone number as well.) I did not call first. I knew this was risky and also bad manners, but I didn’t want be told, no, don’t come. And so, I showed up without any advance warning. My luck held. Agita was glad to see me. She was smiling. It was a beautiful sight.
I met her parents. They seemed nice, though they were older than I expected. Agita was six years older than me, and she had been the youngest child. Agita and I quickly excused ourselves and went into the front yard to sit on the grass, enjoy the mild evening, and talk. It was about eight when we went out, around sunset, and the sounds of distant fireworks slowly began to build up. The city (L.A.) was putting on a show at the little league field about half mile away – for an hour or so, we could certainly hear it. In those days, the city put on a free fireworks show at most of the local parks, so the more distant sounds came from every direction. Writing this now it sounds to me like such an obvious cliche – boy and girl look at each other; cut to sky where huge skyrockets are bursting. But there, in that cool evening, they seemed perfect. Inside me, deep down, I could feel them. This beautiful girl with the sweet voice and the lively eyes, was sitting here, with me, smiling, talking, enjoying my company. I was in Heaven.
By about ten the fireworks slowed and stopped. Agita went in and got a sweater, then returned. It was fully night now. We were illumined by a street light directly across from the yard, but its light was filtered by the leaves of the small ash tree under which we sat. Now and then a light breeze would rustle the leaves a little bit, but aside from that the night was quiet. It was as if we were in a small bubble, alone together, the rest of the universe out there somewhere, beyond perception. At about midnight, we went in and sat at the kitchen table. The talking went on. We were quiet, though. Agita’s parents had been in bed for a couple of hours by this time. They got up early, and her dad had to work tomorrow.
I learned a lot about Agita that night. She had ended the relationship with Elton a few months earlier. They had been together about a year before that. She had had other relationships of varying lengths before Elton, which are not pertinent to this story. I quailed a bit at all this information. I felt very callow and insecure of myself with a woman whose experience with life and people was so much greater than mine. Nevertheless, I also felt very comfortable with her. She was easy to talk to and exceptionally intelligent. I didn’t want the evening to end.
Then one of those dreaded “cosmic jokes” struck. (This one was sufficient to elicit, in Agita’s words, a “cosmic snicker.”) At the risk of TMI, I had been suffering from mild constipation for a couple of days. It came to an end at a most inopportune time. I crept quickly and quietly to the bathroom and took care of business. At least I tried to. The toilet had other ideas. It was clogged. I knew how to use a plunger, and did so. Wocketa! Wocketa! Wocketa! Flush. Nope, still clogged. What I did not realize was that the bathroom shared a wall with Agita’s parents’ bedroom.
While I was plunging my heart out, Agita’s mom came out of the bedroom and went into the kitchen. She asked Agita, “Isn’t he ever going home?” She returned to her room. A minute or two later I came out of the bathroom, went to the kitchen, and brightly told Agita that I’d be just a minute longer. I returned to my plunger. Agita’s mom came out or her room again and went to the kitchen. “Has he clogged the toilet?” Agita answered affirmatively. “Oh my God!” her mom answered and went back to her room. It is a wonder that Agita’s mom and I did not encounter each other in the narrow little hallway. It was like a French farce.
A few more woketas and flushes and the clog was cleared. Heaving a sigh of relief, I returned to the kitchen myself. Later on, Agita told me that she could have warned me that the toilet was temperamental, but didn’t, and had been fully aware what was going on. More cosmic snickering. I left shortly thereafter (it was about one) and rode home on the nearly deserted freeways. Unbeknownst to me, I would not see Agita again for some time.
A few days later Agita called me at work and told me that she was going to Sacramento to stay wth Elton for awhile. He was not doing well in her absence. Elton told her that he needed her right then.
Needless to say, I was not happy at this turn of events. I had had a lot of warm, fuzzy ideas of how we would spend time together, doing fun stuff – fun for me, anyway. I didn’t really know what her idea of fun stuff was. It seemed I never would, now. We exchanged addresses and phone numbers and ended the call. I was miserable. At that point I assumed I would never see her again. Letters and phone calls were cold comfort.
A couple of weeks after Agita left, Fred returned from the screw factory. I was happy about this. There was weird comfort in hanging together. Misery loves company, they say. (I disagree with this. What misery loves is for someone who will, by their presence and, hopefully, their love, relieve the misery.) Fred and I were miserable together – no comfort there. We both missed Agita. We drank a lot of beer and talked a lot of nonsense.
Deep in my heart I knew that if she came back she’d end up with me, not Fred. He was, after all, an a-hole who always thought he knew best, and, of course, far more than anyone else. He always wore boots and jeans and blue work shirts. Of course, I imitated him every way I could – except the sunglasses – to me he seemed exotic and far more interesting than I could ever be.
Summer dragged on. Except for the evenings, that is. Agita and I talked on the phone most every night. Things were not going so well between Agita and Elton. The same issues which had driven them apart before still existed. He was pressuring her to marry him, which did not thrill me, but she was resisting this, which did. She always sounded so pleased to hear my voice when I called. Her voice brightened and she sounded happy. These calls were the highlight of my days. We also wrote letters to each other. One time, I laboriously wrote out a passage from an H.P. Lovecraft story on heavy paper using indelible ink. I then treated the paper to make it look old and mailed it to her. Agita also possessed a twisted sense of humor and appreciated the thought. I think we still have that letter somewhere.
As I mentioned, I was in the California Air National Guard. That year, my unit was spending the last week of July in dilapidated Camp San Luis Obispo. For non-Californians, San Luis Obispo is a small town near the coast, about halfway between LA and SF. We would be sleeping in ancient tar-paper shacks, eating delightful mess-hall food, attending classes on military stuff, and marching in formation everywhere we went. It would be a swell week.
At the same time, my parents were vacationing in the California Delta, which is just south of Sacramento. After Camp was over, I had planned to ride up to the Delta, spend a day boating, playing in the water, and basically loafing. My parents owned a tiny little motorboat, useful only for puttering around on small bodies of water. I decided that I would drop in on Agita and Elton first. This time, I did call ahead. I figured that Agita would be glad to seem me with or without advance warning, but I didn’t think that Elton was going to appreciate it much either way. Showing up unannounced would not improve his appreciation. So, at about nine AM, I packed up my bag, strapped it to the rack, and headed north on US 101.
It was a long, hot, dusty ride. It took about six hours. When I pulled in at Agita’s apartment I was tired and had a numb butt. I was very glad to get off the bike and go up to the apartment. As I had expected, Agita was glad to see me. Elton decidedly was not. At least the couch was soft and the room was cooler than it was outside. Unfortunately, not all the coolness came from the little air conditioner in the window. Elton was definitely unfriendly. After about an hour or so, I began to think that I should say my goodbyes and leave.
I went downstairs and began lashing my bag to the rack again. I remember thinking that this routine was getting a little old. Before I could finish, Elton was down on the street with me. Frankly, I was a little nervous. But Elton wasn’t there to throw a punch or even to hurry me on my way. He seemed a little nervous. He sounded friendly, but it seemed forced, not real. He looked at my motorcycle, as if it interested him in some abstract way. (I guarantee he wasn’t) Overall, I got the impression that he wasn’t really there. He certainly didn’t want to be. Eventually he got to the point. He semi-apologized for being less than friendly at first and invited me back upstairs.
Later on, Agita told me that she had sent Elton downstairs to stop me from leaving. She had told him that if I left, she would leave with me. At the time I didn’t know this, so I took Elton at his word and followed him back up to the apartment. At least Agita was glad to see me. Shortly after I reentered the apartment, Agita asked Elton to go to the local store to get a six-pack of beer, which he did, with perhaps just a hint of reluctance. The evening was perfectly ordinary. We talked, drank the beer, ate some pizza, and played Scrabble. Agita won, I came in second, and Elton was a distant 3rd, which seemed to irritate him. He pronounced us “Plastic children.” By now I was feeling completely exhausted. Elton offered me the use of the second bedroom. It had a sofa in it on which I could sleep.
I went in there. Agita came in right after me with blankets and pillows. We sat down and talked for a long time – I don’t remember how long. I never wanted the night to end. I had ideas about how I’d like things to proceed, but with Elton awake in the next room, those ideas remained unspoken. Eventually I ran out of gas altogether and went to sleep. Agita went to their bedroom.
When I woke up early the next morning, Elton was already up, but Agita wasn’t. I had some coffee and got my things together. Agita and I had already said our goodbyes the night before, but just before I left, Agita came out, sleepy and tousled, and we said goodbye one more time. Then I left. As I was riding south, out of Sacramento into the farm country, I thought that I had seen Agita for the last time. I located where my parents were camping, but didn’t stay long. I was in no mood for a pretend-vacation day spent on the water. I wanted to get home now, so I left them a little before noon. From here, the ride back home was about 400 miles. It would be a very long day. And it was. It was just getting dark by the time I got home. I was weary, but also deeply sad. I couldn’t have slept, so I stayed up for awhile in silence, in the dark apartment, watching through the window as the night deepened and the lights on the nearby hill twinkled.
Summer moved on. July became August. Fred came by occasionally. One night we made tacos in the tiny kitchenette – his recipe. They were awful. Agita and I continued to talk on the phone. We generally did this a little later in the evening, around ten. A couple of weeks after I left, Agita and Elton broke up for good. She moved in with a friend, another woman, who lived in the apartment downstairs.
On Saturday, August 24th, I was at the Guard Base for drill weekend. Being in the National Guard meant they owned me one weekend a month. I was in my office working when a call came in. It was Agita. She was in town to stay. I could hardly believe what I was hearing. She was back home! I was overjoyed. She was at the airport and needed a ride. Regretfully, I told her I couldn’t get away – they were rather strict about things like that on drill weekend. She told me she would call her parents for the ride. We made plans to see each other that night. I felt like I was floating the rest of the day.
After work that day, I raced over to Agita’s house. It was about a ten minute ride. It was wonderful to see her. We decided to go to my apartment. On my way to her, I stopped in a Big-5 Sporting Goods store and bought a helmet for Agita. I got there, picked her up, and then we came back to the apartment. We got some food on the way – chicken, I think. Once we got there, I noticed that Agita was quiet and depressed. I had an idea to cheer her up. I had a record (a vinyl LP for those of you too young to remember such things) by a British comedy group called Monty Python’s Flying Circus. It was about 45 minutes of some of the funniest stuff I had ever heard. I played if for Agita. At the end, she was definitely smiling and a little happier. She later told me that this had been exactly the right thing to do. I asked her later which of the routines had she liked the best. There were several famous ones on the record. The penguin on the television set. The Piranha Brothers. And, of course, the Spanish Inquisition. The Spanish Inquisition was far and away her favorite.
Who could have expected that?
We were together the next night as well. We talked, we laughed, we told each other our stories. The late summer afternoon became the evening then became the night. The lights on the hills to the south sparkled like some fairyland almost within reach. It was so good to be with her. But then, as it so often does, something happened.
When Agita came home, all she could bring with her was a single single small suitcase. She had left quite a lot of her stuff up there, much of it still in Elton’s apartment. She wanted to go get it, but she didn’t want to be alone. Her dad had a van, so he and her mom agreed to take her to Sacramento. The plan was that, once there, the three of them would pack her stuff and then her parents would return home with it. Agita would then visit a couple of friends she had, one or two in Sacramento and another one in Davis, about twenty miles west of Sacramento. After this, she would fly home. She would be gone a few days.
She called me at work on Monday to tell me about all this. They would go the next day. Needless to say, I was hurt and very disappointed. I had already fallen for her. I had not said a word about this to her, however. She was in considerable emotional turmoil. She had lived with Elton for about a year. They had had a painful breakup. She had gone back to him, then left him a second time. To her, at that point, I was a friend, but she didn’t yet see me as more than that. Not yet.
They left as planned early the next day. Agita was gone several days. They were tough days for me. When she got back home, I was very happy that she was back, but I was feeling a bit sulky. This didn’t last too long – Agita declined to deal with my sulkiness, and being with her was lot more important to me than feeling sorry for myself. That was as close as we ever got to any sort of disagreement that summer. And Agita had another surprise for me.
When Agita came home from Sacramento for good, she brought with her a small Manx kitten. He was tabby-striped, orange and off-white, and he had the soul of a lion. I always thought that he had some bobcat blood in him. I’m not kidding. When he got mad – not an infrequent occurrence – he emitted a scream unlike any I’ve ever heard from any other domestic cat. Agita named him Beast (actually, “Midget Beast.”) Beast and I got along famously. I had been raised with cats, so I knew what to do with this ferocious kitten. Beast liked to climb my pants leg like a tree, snarling and growling as he went. If my hand went any near him, he’d bite it. Remember, this was a tiny kitten, probably less than eight weeks old, probably had been removed from his mother too young.
A few days later, Agita told me that Fred had visited briefly that afternoon. Beast had climbed his leg like a tree too. He had been quite nervous (Fred, not Beast) and had no idea what to to with the tiny, furious buzzsaw. The fact that this grown man could be afraid of this little creature amused me a lot. It’s nice when the competition looks ridiculous. (I saw Fred as competition. I did not yet know that Agita had no affection for him whatever, although I had guessed it.)
Later, after Agita and I got married, we lived in an apartment which adamantly did not allow pets. Beast continued to live with Agita’s parents. They already had another cat, a sedate, older Manx named David. He was an orange and white calico. Agita’s mom referred to them once in a written note as “Little Fauss and Big Halsey,” the name of a movie in theaters then. David remained David, but Beast was referred to as Fauss (Faussie to his friends) from then on. He also grew. A lot. When he achieved his full size, he was about half again David’s length – about two feet from nose to stubby tail. He was also very long-legged. David was middle-aged and fat, but Faussie was all muscle. He still got mad – when he did so he was scary. He only got mad at strangers he thought were acting badly to his people, particularly Agita, whom he adored unreservedly. He was a highly effective watch-cat.
At that time I worked at the Air National Guard base as a civilian. Civilian employees of the Guard were required to wear their military uniforms at work. The building in which I worked had no air conditioning. By the end of the day I was more than ready to skedaddle. This had been true before I met Agita, it was doubly true now. The next few weeks were wonderful. Agita and I spent a lot of time together. We saw each other every evening after I left work. We established a pattern, Agita and I. It was like this for awhile. I would leave work and get to Agita’s house a little before five.
When I got there, sometimes Agita and I would leave immediately. Sometimes I would sit in the living room for a little while with Agita and her dad, who had also just arrived home from his work. Agita’s mom was there too, but she was up and down a lot making dinner. I got along well with both Agita’s parents, and I liked them a lot. Agita told me that they liked me too. She also told me that, for her dad, this was a rare occurrence. When she had been young, he had scared the hell out of her dates. He didn’t like Fred either. Fred had long hair and a vaguely insolent, mocking manner. He also had no job – he was living with his parents and sponging from them. Plus, as I mentioned, he wore his sunglasses inside. The first time he was there, Agita’s dad looked at him for awhile, then snarled, “You got eyes?” Fred said that he did.
“Then take off the damn glasses.”
Fred jerked the sunglasses off like they were red-hot and never wore them in that house again. (Not that he was there all that much. He noticed that I was there every afternoon after work and gave up on Agita.)
As soon as we got to my apartment, the first thing I always did was to take a quick shower. Neither of us had much money, so we had to improvise quite a bit. We caught a movie a couple of times. We went to the Hollywood Bowl once. Our seats were two of the cheap ones way up in the back, two or three hundred yards from the stage. My mother treated us to a play at a tiny theatre in West LA starring a friend of hers. She went with us, though. That night turned out to be a very important one. We also spend quite a few evenings just hanging out in my apartment and talking, while Agita crocheted.
Agita liked to crochet and was very good at it. During the first couple of weeks while we hung out on the sofa and talked she was steadily crocheting. She was working on a cover for a standard size pillow. This consisted of about 40 or 50 little rectangles made from magenta and gray yarn. As soon as she finished one she started another. She did three or four a night. I very much wanted to put my arms around her and pull her to me and kiss her. But I felt constrained by those crocheted rectangles and her continuously moving hands. I felt it would be ill-mannered to pounce. (Also I was shy.) It took her two weeks to finish the cover. (We still have it. When it still had a pillow in it, we called it “The Courtship Pillow.”)
During those first weeks, our evenings ended the same way. At about nine or ten, we’d leave my apartment and head toward her home, about a dozen miles away. Generally, we stopped at a particular coffee shop, one we both had frequented for years before we ever met. They made, among other things, the best hot-fudge sundaes. We’d each have one. It seemed like a good idea to me. I still thought Agita was too thin. When we finally got to her house we had to keep very quiet. Her parents would be asleep. The bedrooms were in the front half of the house, so we’d go to the back door, say our good-nights, and share a quick kiss.
The night we attended the play in West LA was very important to me, not for the play, but for what happened later. After we dropped my mother and her car off, we rode back to Agita’s house. While we were stopped at an intersection, I turned toward Agita and told her, “I love you.” Her immediate response was, “No you don’t.” Within a few minutes we were in her front yard having a little discussion about it. This consisted of me telling her all the various reasons why I loved her while she simultaneously told me all the reasons why I didn’t. It was a surreal conversation. There is no “why” or “why not” to love. Eventually we stopped and looked at each other. Nothing had been decided yet, but things had definitely changed. The evening ended with a lingering kiss, arms tight around each other, bodies pressed together. I went home smiling. I noticed that when Agita went in she had been smiling too.
One evening at the apartment, in mid-September, it began to rain, and it kept at it for several hours. Real rain, too; not just drizzle. If you know Los Angeles, then you’ll know that rain in September is very rare. After awhile, we decided that Agita should spend the night. She called her folks to warn them so they wouldn’t worry, then we each settled in – me in the bed and her on the couch. Her medicines were at her home so her night consisted of very little sleep. She read one of my books (a collection of James Thurber humor) while I slept. Next morning I took her home on my way to work. Within a week or so, she was spending the night with me, every night, and not on the couch. For all intents she was living with me now. She still spent the days with her mom at home on weekdays when I was at work two miles away. The rest of the time was ours. September continued, almost idyllically. (The only flaw – those weekdays at work.) Then on Saturday night, September 21st, things changed again.
We were having a quiet conversation about nothing particularly special. There was a pause, which went on for a little while. I was looking into her eyes, then I turned my head and looked up at the ceiling. I heard myself ask her to marry me. “No!” she said, in a strong voice – not quite a yell, but forceful – then jumped up and ran into the bathroom, locking the door behind her.
We began another conversation through the door. I was sitting on the floor on my side. I could tell by the angle of her voice that she was sitting on the floor on her side. I don’t remember what we said to one another too well, except for two things. At first, Agita told me that I really didn’t want to get married. I just thought I did. This got nowhere because I really did want to. Then Agita suggested that we just live together for awhile, to get used to that kind of relationship. I was used to it already and I loved it. I didn’t want just to live together. I wanted something with more stability, more permanence. We went back and forth for maybe half an hour, then there was a long pause. I heard the click of the lock being unlocked. I stood up. The door opened and Agita came out. We looked at each other for a long moment. This time she said “Yes” and then we hugged again, standing there in the near dark, the fairyland of lights seemingly just beyond the window. “Yes. I will marry you.”
The next days were a blur. We talked to the Pastor of a little Lutheran Church not far from Agita’s house. She had attended there for awhile in the past. I had gone to a Lutheran church as a child and young teen. The Pastor could accommodate us on October 12th, just about two weeks hence. Agita and her mom went shopping for a dress, and got a lovely one. I had no money to buy any special clothes, so I chose from what I had. The best I could do was a pair of pants, a shirt, and a tie – all in shades of brown that had absolutely no harmony together. The attendees would be just immediate family members, perhaps twenty people in all. There were my parents, my younger brother, and my grandmother. Agita had her parents and her older brother and sister, each with their spouses and children. Agita asked one of her friends (I’ll call her Kathleen) to be maid of honor, and I asked a coworker to be my best man (I’ll call him Steve. He is not the guy with whom I had spent that blurry afternoon on July 4th.) Steve brought his girlfriend, Jen. Big mistake.
On Saturday, October 5th, we got up and went to a coffee shop for breakfast. It was drizzling lightly. One problem we still had to resolve was wedding rings. This was not simple. We had no rings. We had almost no money with which to buy any. After breakfast we went on to Agita’s house to get some of her things. As we headed back to our apartment (yes, I now considered it to be “our” apartment) it began raining harder. We pulled into a strip mall to find a little temporary shelter in some shop. One shop caught our attention – a famous local headshop. We parked in front of it and went in.
For any younger readers, a headshop was a place where one primarily went to buy marijuana paraphernalia. This was 1974 – the 1960s weren’t that far in the past. Some of the items they sold were cleverly packaged to suggest that they really had some other purpose than the obvious one. I clearly remember one item – roach clips with large clear plastic handles, inside of each was embedded a real roach, one of those big nasty ones. They also had a full assortment of psychedelic posters, black lights, 8-track tapes, incense and spiffy holders for it, and assorted gift items for discerning friends. It was a neat place in which to wait out the rain.
The place was nearly deserted. The only other person there was the proprietor. As I recall he did not look like one of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, just a friendly guy with a long hair and a droopy mustache. There was music playing, one of those 8-tracks; specifically King Crimson’s “In The Court Of The Crimson King.” We got to talking with him. We told him we were getting married in a few days, but we had no wedding rings and no money with which to buy them. He asked, “How much money do you have?”
“Ten dollars,” I answered.
“Let me see what I can do for you,” he responded. He took us over to a workbench and proceeded to make two silver rings. They were simple, but they had a nice dimpled appearance. It took him a little over an hour. The 8-track played the album two or three times. To this day I have a fond memory of that album. When he was done, we had our rings. Now everything was all set for our the wedding. And it had stopped raining.
The days of leading up to Saturday crept by. I had a hard time concentrating on my rather dull job. There was a mild Santa Ana condition all week – high, vividly blue clear skies with no trace of cloudiness, very low humidity, and sometimes a light wind from the northeast. Finally the day came. I took Agita to her parents’ home then went to my parents’. I do not remember that morning at all well. I was very jittery. At some point in the early afternoon, I left my parents’ apartment and rode back to Agita’s parent’s house, but I do not remember doing this. The ceremony was scheduled for three. I was there, but Agita was delayed a bit. Everyone in the car she rode in had to use the bathroom one more time.
The church was a small community church. It had room for perhaps 80 people inside. Our party seemed a little sparse even that in small space. We had no music. But one thing we did have was beautiful light. The front of the church, where the Pastor stood, where the altar was, was at the western end. There was a big stained glass window on that wall. As the Pastor led us through the wedding service, multicolored afternoon sunlight streamed in through the window. I don’t really remember the Pastor, or many details about the church interior, or even the service itself, but I do remember that golden light. The Pastor was backlit by it. Agita glowed with it. (Of course, to me she always glowed.) It was like a glorious benediction shining in on us. It is one of my favorite memories.
It wouldn’t have been our wedding without some hitches. We got to the part of the service near the end where Agita was to put my ring on my finger. She was holding my right hand with her left, and was holding the ring with her right. She had a few words to say before she slid the ring onto my finger, but she was trying to get the ring onto it first. I was pulling my hand back while she was pulling it toward her. The Pastor was gently trying to restrain her hand holding the ring. To both of us, this moment seemed to last an eternity, but it wasn’t – just a second or two. After this, things went smoothly.
Afterward, as we walked back down the aisle, Agita turned her head toward me and said quietly, into my ear, the first words either of us said as husband and wife. They were, “That was no worse than being hung with piano wire.” No, it wasn’t.
A more serious hitch occurred when we got back to Agita’s parents’ house. As she was getting out the car, the zipper on the back of her wedding dress failed and gapped open along its entire length. Kathleen (her maid of honor ) took up position directly behind Agita and they walked in close formation into the house and into Agita’s bedroom. To me they looked like some strange four-legged creature as they marched in lockstep. No one else seemed to notice, or at least kept any observations to themselves. That was quick thinking on Kathleen’s part.
We were at the house to relax and to enjoy some wedding cake and Cold Duck (both provided provided by Agita’s parents.) The cake was a yellow quarter-sheet with white butter-cream frosting and yellow lemon-flavored roses. There were two bottles of the wine. This was enough for everyone to have a reasonably sized piece of cake and a glass of wine. Unfortunately, my parents, who had the manners of barbarians, were remarkably greedy. In both cake and wine, Agita was nearly cheated out of each.
My parents each took more than one piece of cake. By the time Agita got to the cake, all that was left were a couple of small center pieces (ones which had no nice butter-cream frosted side.) My mother was gulping wine as if she had just wandered in from the desert. She actually got the very last glass and snuck into the bathroom to drink it secretly. She didn’t want her mother (my grandmother ) to see how much wine she was drinking. Agita, who hadn’t had any wine yet, followed her in there and snatched the glass away from my mom.
When the first glasses had been poured and distributed, Agita’s dad made a short toast. He was very happy that his daughter had married me and that I was a welcome addition to the family. It was very nice to hear and I did feel welcome. Immediately after he finished, my father put in his two cents worth. He had brought his own liquor in a large hip flask – it held somewhere between a half-pint and a pint – and had already drunk all of it. With a big grin splitting a red face, he proclaimed in a loud, slightly slurred voice that I had married into a family of idiots. His implication seemed to be that only idiots would be dumb enough to welcome me. I was shocked and very embarrassed. Agita was furious. Her parents were highly offended. From then on, they avoided my parents like the plague. I can only think of two occasions when they were together under the same roof and once outside at a picnic.
After a little while, as it began to get dark, people departed. My parents, grandmother, and brother all left together. Frankly, I was glad to see them gone. Soon it was just Agita and me, and her family. There was just one thing left to do. Go out and get some pizza.
Agita’s parents declined. They were going on vacation the next day and would be leaving before sunrise. So Agita and I, Agita’s sister and her daughter, and Agita’s brother and his wife and two children – eight of us in total – piled into two cars and went to the place that made the best pizza I ever had, a little joint about a mile away. Later on, Agita and I would go there from time to time for pizza, but it was never again quite as good as it was that night, when we all ate and talked and drank house wine and laughed.
I took the next week off. When I returned to work the following Monday, I encountered a very angry Steve. Jen had been inspired by our wedding to press Steve to marry her. He declined to do so. One thing followed another and they broke up. This was somehow my fault. I didn’t see it. He brought her there, not me. We weren’t particularly friendly after that. No loss. We hadn’t been all that close before.
That was 42 years and two weeks ago. A lot has happened since then. Agita and I never had any children – if we had we’d almost certainly be grandparents by now. The little apartment in North Hollywood is entirely gone, replaced by large buildings. The little church is gone too, in spirit. The building is still there, but it has been unconsecrated and is now the home of some Social Service agency. To me, the big loss there is the stained glass window. The wall where it used to be is solid now. About 15 years ago the pizza joint was sold to a new owner who kept the same name, but who couldn’t make pizza. The people who witnessed our wedding that afternoon are either gone or scattered to the winds. We still keep in touch with the two nieces, one who lives nearby, one who does not. Agita and I now live alone in the same house she lived in when we met. He dad built it, in sections, three quarters of a century ago. The ash tree is still there. It is enormous now – the trunk is four feet in diameter. But the grass is mostly gone, a victim of the drought. What are still clear to me are my memories. The 42 years I have lived with Agita seem to have gone by very quickly, and I love her more today than ever.
A few days ago, I obtained another copy of “All My Friends Are Going To Be Strangers” for one cent plus (plus $4.00 S&H.) I started to reread it last night. I think I will enjoy it a lot more this time.