What To Do ’Til The Minister Comes—Piper Laurie

Between the time you grow out of childhood and. the day you get married—what do you do? Sit and pine? Mix around and force the issue? Swim in a sea of romantic hoping? Plunge into the forgetfulness of work, art or whatever, and let love come when it may? Play safe? Play with fire? Oh, it’s a problem to be a girl . . .

Should you be frightened about yourself when someone you know gets married? Should you be frightened and say, “Look at them! It’s so wonderful. And here I am, 19 (or 18, or 21 or 25,) and not married yet!” Or is this too dangerous a feeling? Will it make. you over-eager and unable to use good judgment so that you had best talk yourself out of any such enthusiasm quickly? Or should you be frightened because another girl has married and it becomes known that things aren’t going well with her, and now the whole proposition of marriage seems risky? Should you be bold and seek out or should you be bashful and be sought out? What to do during that anxious in-between?

There are words I heard somewhere that say, in effect, that these years of young womanhood are the most trying of all. I think i this is so. I think a girl often feels she isn’t actually living, but just suspended in life. Of course she sometimes has the power to alter the situation. But how . . . and should she? With me the trouble is that I don’t know whether to use my heart or my head as guide . . . or the exact proportion of each. (I think the right mixture is the important thing.) I often realize that I had better use my head, but on the other hand, it’s my heart that I want to take care of.

I think I started to worry about all this before it was time to worry. Was that just me, or is it common with girls? I can remember my first big project was to get concrete proof of my femininity. This was when I was 11 and I just had to know what my girl-power was. I talked my family into letting a boy we knew take me to a movie matinee. He was to have dinner with us afterwards but when we got back into the lobby of our apartment house I wasn’t in a hurry to go upstairs. We talked and I don’t remember how it happened, or even if I maneuvered it, but suddenly he was trying to kiss me. Of course, I refused. What I was after right then was information, not experience. And I had it. He wanted to . . . and that’s all I wanted to know. But he asked why I wouldn’t and my answer was that we were too young. He acted as if he thought this was quite reasonable.

“Then when can we?” he wanted to know.

I can still remember how intriguing I found this question. I took it seriously. In the next few seconds of silence I was doing some quick estimating on the when and how of my future and when I finally answered, I said, “Well . . . in a couple of years I think.”

This was the sort of romantic schedule I had for myself at 11. Figuring all that was then in my mind, I think I am running a bit slow. But, as I still tell myself (although I really know better) I had some unusual obstacles. For instance, at 14, I was convinced that my mother was conspiring to keep me from looking glamorous. I woke up to this awful realization when I developed a mad crush on a handsome boy in junior high who never even looked at me. The only way I could account for this was to blame my freckles, which my mother wouldn’t let me cure with “miracle” drug store lotions, and my red hair which she insisted I wear in pigtails down to my waist. I accused her of wanting me to look like a freak.

It was not until school was almost over for the season that mother gave in to my “campaign” and let me cut my hair and have it fall naturally. Don’t think this didn’t do wonders for me, and don’t think the boy didn’t ask for a date. He did. But if I felt good about this, I knew from nothing otherwise. I squeeked out a tiny, “Hello,” when he called for me and an even fainter, “Goodbye,” when he brought me home. In between we didn’t speak or even look at each other. What a failure!

For the first time in my life I seriously sought advice . . . and of all things from my fellow ’teen-agers. They said I should have been more animated. They said he probably wanted to kiss me. They said he might try the next time, if he dated me again, and I should let him.

We went out once more. He tried. I let him. And he never asked me out again!

Maybe it sounds funny, but I think I have been years building up what this tore down in me! Everything that happens to you is supposed to have some character effect, so though I am still a romantic at 19, I’m a romantic with her guard up. I console myself by thinking that I’m not the only girl who will go to her grave, probably, with a question mark in her heart like this one. And, of course, I don’t hate all men any more, as I did for weeks and weeks after this monster left me flat. But it shows you what a girl is up against. Seriously, you can’t always figure a man out. I mean even in a rough way. And this is what makes everything so much more confusing.

There is a man in Hollywood who I once thought was the most terrible specimen on two feet. I formed this opinion after I met him away from town on a personal appearance tour, and he acted in a way I considered horrible. He was in one group of people, and I in another, when we all came together at a party and got introduced around. People were drifting in and out of the room, and there came a few minutes when he and I were alone. Suddenly he stepped completely out of the character and became rude and sarcastic. In seconds, it seemed to me; we had gone from mutual politeness to sharp words. I had never had to express myself in this way before in my life, and that such a thing could happen so quickly between two supposedly cultured persons sickened me more, I think, then the personal insult involved.

If ever I was sure of anything, after this, it was that he was a worthless fellow. That sort of demonstration was a safe thing to go by, I felt. Then, much later and back in Hollywood, a surprising thing happened. I saw this same man do a fine thing . . . give up something valuable which he could have had for the asking to someone who needed it more than he. And I came to know about it quite accidentally, there was no talk or word from him. I decided, nevertheless, not to let it affect me, but the next time we met I found that it had. Somehow I was able to talk to him long enough to let him get in a few words of apology. They were ordinary words, but I found myself liking the way he said them. I liked it well enough so that on the next occasion when we met we talked longer. Since then we have met a number of times—they were dates—and I eventually got the answer to the puzzle of his original behavior. My Dr. Jekyll had acted like Mr. Hyde at our first meeting for the same reason I have done things that were not really like me. He, too, was unsure of himself!

This makes things really complicated. For a while you labor under the delusion that certainly men know what they are doing . . . at least, what kind of men they want to be. And then you find out that they are no better off than you are! When I first learned this, I thought it was downright unfair, that there is enough of a horrible indecision in a woman’s life without her having to worry about this as well! Believe me, or maybe you know it already, but that last wolf you were out with may not have wanted to be a wolf at all! He was just trying out the role for size. The next time you see him he may make a perfect big brother!

Of course you know what this means. This means a girl just can’t make snap judgments about men. Or at least this is what it has meant to me. If I like something about a fellow, who otherwise is just not there, I tell myself I must wait and see.

I don’t go out much. Not by Hollywood standards anyway. In the past two years I have gone out less than 50 times, I am sure. Is this a mistake? Oh, yes, say a lot of my friends. A girl is supposed to go out where she can be seen. The more you go out and the more you are seen, why, the more “chances” they point out. What to do? Because I seem to be against this. For me, going out can often get to be unpleasant since it is obvious that if you go out often you are not going out with someone you love to be with constantly. If you had someone like this, you wouldn’t need to go out. So you have to spend a lot of evenings in the company of people you are indifferent about.

Isn’t this practice unfair to them as well as yourself?

I asked my mother. A girl is supposed to ask her mother. But mine doesn’t like to give specific advice, unless she feels I really need it. Instead she asks me to think it out first and then helps me. Mother will go so far sometimes as to tell me what she would do in such and such a situation.

I told her once about being in a car with a boy when he got out of line. Here we were, miles out of town, and he wasn’t fun any longer—he was trouble. Yet I wasn’t really frightened for myself, I told her. I was frightened for both of us . . . hoping fervently that things wouldn’t end up plain ugly. And I asked her what she would have done.

“What did you do?” she wanted to know first.

I told her. What I did was to start laughing. I don’t know why, but I did. And after a few moments of indecision the boy had to laugh too, and somehow the situation lightened right up. Not only that, but he seemed grateful about it.

Another reason I don’t go out too much is that I’d hate to fall into the habit of going out just to go out. There is a girl I know who used to do just that.

It got so that the headwaiter at Ciro’s jokingly made out an employee’s time-card for her so she could punch the clock when she came in every night.

One day, about a year ago, she got a call from a visitor from New York who told her that a mutual friend from Chicago had suggested he phone her for a date. They went out, and six months later the Chicago friend was in town and invited her to a dinner party. Seated across the table from her was a man who spoke to her as if he knew her. Later they got together and he proved to be the New Yorker she had been out with. She could recall where they had been that night, and what they had talked about to some extent. But she couldn’t remember him. It wasn’t because the man was colorless or a nonentity, she told me later. It was simply because she had been going out so often and with so many men that they had all merged into one figure . . . a sort of shadowy phantom who called for her, said the usual things, performed the customary services of an escort, and then vanished from her life.

“What a waste of time!” I had to say.

“Yes, and a waste of men,” she agreed, thoughtfully. “A whole stream of them in my life, and not one who means more than another. There must be a better way”

Now another girl told me that I should go out only with important men. This, I learned, is a complete mistake. One of the worst nights I ever spent was in the company of such a man. He asked me for the date, I was advised to accept, and it was the first time I had ever been to Romanoff’s. We also went to a private party and we wound up at the Mocambo. It was all for nothing. In the first place we couldn’t meet on a conversational level, and in the second place he was too well-known to be allowed to give me any time.

We no sooner got to Romanoff’s than a half dozen other couples who knew him plumped themselves down all around us at the table and from that moment on were permanent attachments. The flow of talk was the cheapest kind of personal prattle . . . the kind that is full of big, extravagant phrases but means nothing. I didn’t speak 20 words to my escort. I felt like an ornament, not his date, and the worst of it was that I didn’t know how to get out of it. Now I know. Don’t go in the first place.

I have enjoyed myself more with a boy I met at dramatic school who couldn’t even afford to buy me a hamburger.

For six months Vic Damone and I dated now and then, and only once went to a night club. We cooked at each other’s homes. We tried to analyze and understand world affairs as well as show affairs. And once I baked him a chocolate cake that he kept eating for weeks—until it began to turn green, in fact. But we knew right from the start we were to be friends only.

A girl I work with says the best plan is to pitch yourself into your career and forget boys. Then, the first thing you know, someone interesting will show up. “What’s to be will be,” she assures me.

I start to think that way, too; then another friend says something that sounds just as wise. “A girl can always concentrate on her work if she wants to,” this one tells me, “but you have only so many golden years and that’s the time to go places, keep your eyes open, and make your bid.

How can two pieces of advice, with such opposite meanings, both sound so right? And which of the following contrasting viewpoints should you pick to guide you?

“Don’t set your standards too high,” I was told once. “After all, men are only human.”

This sounded very good until I heard, “Never waste a second on a man who doesn’t show high character. If he hasn’t got that, he hasn’t anything!”

At this minute, when we are starting my latest picture, Oh, Money! Money! there is a new man in my life. I don’t know his name. Ever since the production began he has been sending flowers but no card. I am flattered. When he does show up, and if he is nice, it might be the beginning of something. And then again . . . who knows better than I that it might be the beginning of nothing? Where does this leave me? You said it. It sure is a problem!

THE END

—BY PIPER LAURIE

 

It is a quote. MODERN SCREEN MAGAZINE JANUARY 1952