Murphy Beds & Other Silly Notions

I was twenty-two when I went to "live in sin" with a man I wasn't married to (at the time) and so shocked and appalled my parents that they immediately disowned me.  It was the first time I'd left the questionable shelter of the old family home to make my own way and their shame was unbearable.  Appearances mattered greatly in 1970, much more so than now, but I was - so I determinedly imagined - in love, caught up in the the remnants of the prior decade, and very defiant.  Come hell or high water, I would break the rules and be liberated, I decided. The two room apartment with its Murphy bed held a peculiar charm for me, much like poverty and free spirited-ness, and I was completely certain that we could live as one and be happy forever.

The reality, of course, was not quite so romantic.  We scavenged the $125 monthly rent and lived on white bread and beans most of the time.  When down, the Murphy bed took up the entire room and when up, there was no other place to sit.  The heat and hot water were temperamental, at best, and the whole place was dirt farm filthy despite our best efforts but we persevered because we were young and foolish and had mostly burned our bridges and were too proud to backtrack.  After all, it wasn't that far from the 60's - we were about peace and love and fondue, thought we were the generation that could and would make a difference.  Like every generation before and since, we had a great many silly notions.

The Murphy bed creaked and groaned like an arthritic old woman night after night back then - I now suspect that all lovers take credit for discovering sex - as if we got here from pixie dust.  But then it was awe inspiring even with a gray tiger cat watching from a respectful distance and the horn player across the alley running his endless scales.  This, I soon realized, was the real crux of my parents' and grandmother's disapproval despite how loudly they proclaimed more superficial concerns - my mother caring only for what the gossip mill would make of it all, my daddy worrying that I'd be hurt or abandoned, go hungry or get pregnant, my grandmother being simply disappointed in my judgement - but what it really came down to was the time spent in that sad old Murphy bed.  The images it conjured up for my shaken family were more than they could handle.  They might rant and rave about rumors and unwed mothers and failure to respect tradition, but it was the sex that did them in.

A year and a half later when a minister read the magic words and made it all legitimate, we were redeemed and all was instantly forgiven.  An odd turn of events, I thought, since nothing at all had changed except that the sex was now sanctioned.  We had caved to convention and while my family - and his - went back to their happy dreams, I was less generous, couldn't shake that faraway feeling that my days of being a free spirit were over, that the marriage would somehow or another backfire and that sex, whether in a Murphy bed or a four poster, wouldn't save us.  

It wasn't so much being "made an honest woman of" that troubled me.  Lord knows, you can adjust to near anything if you set your mind to it, even respectability.

I just missed the sense of sin.