The Rules of Virginity

Now here is a topic few like to think about. What’s happened to the Virgins? How many women, girls, teens, have lost their virginity long before they hook up with a spouse that may not be aware he’s got a secondhand wife?

When I grew up, back in the 1940-50s and even the 1960s, the one thing my mother pounded in my head was that a bride, whenever that was, must be a virgin. Hmm. Young as I was, I went to Sunday School and learned about the Virgin Mary, but I never attached being a Virgin to real life requirements, particularly because back in those days, girls had to be straight and unused, so to speak, when the right guy came along. Mother always assured me there was a man who would come along, and I had to be clean and healthy and whatever was the requirement to give him fresh delight after saying vows.

I grew up in the early 1940s when we lived in fear of bombs of war, and the actual atom bomb, and the effort to wipe out the Japanese, and meanwhile we were hearing the horrific rumors of what Hitler’s German buddies were doing in an effort to eliminate anyone who was a Jew, no matter how important, brilliant, religious, elegant, honest, faithful and powerful he had or she had been in an oftentimes tough situation being run in and out of the sands of Israel where, we must all know, Jesus had been born and created what is called the Christian faith, that blossomed out of faithful Jews who decided to follow this Son of God, which was hard for so many to believe. There was little reference to Jesus had any kind of relationship with a woman, but the closest was Mary Magdalene who had followed Jesus and his group as they wandered up and down the dusty towns of Israel. He was our Savior, once and for all, and no matter what one’s faith had become. And somewhere in his teachings, he set up systems of behavior that would please God, and thus open the doors of heaven to us no matter what century or day, depending on our devotion to helping and loving people of all kinds of humanity.

As I hit teenagerhood, and had been a debutante, a princess (twice) in the Cotton Carnival, and had gone to boarding school, and even to junior college in New York - where I had my first boyfriend from a prominent Palm Beach family - who  promised we would get married, but - him being in the military -  it ended up marrying some girl he met in those ranks and said Ciao to me. It was the first time I thought what guys said to you was honest. But that was a farce, and I was ready to leap out of the window of that monster junior college building where I went to my first two years of college. That was the one and only time in my life I thought about ending it all. I realized no man was worth losing my life. I was only 19 years old.

I had been on a European tour with a group of “young ladies” or i.e., girls, and learned so much about Europe from Italy up to England with lots of stops in between. I was fascinated by the Italian crew on the Christopher Columbo Ship, and one respected my virginity, which was a blessing. I was sticking to my promise to myself and my mom. After that month trip all over Europe, I was ready to settle down at Hollins College (yes, for girls), and that’s when I gave my first sermon (against racism) and developed my life as a journalist, spending summertime working on the Commercial Appeal in Memphis. It was my call from the start and I didn’t have to work on the “society” page (party and celebrity stuff), but I worked in the streets and loved to interview people  - even Elvis Presley - and after I graduated from Hollins College. I worked full time and that’s when I convinced my father I wanted to go travel around Africa and to write columns for the Commercial Appeal. My father was not afraid to let me loose, my mother thought I’d be in boiling pots of water as someone’s meal. Really. She was terrified.

It was a splendid time to go to Africa because all the countries were grabbing hold of their nations themselves, the British and French and Germans were moving out. And I was going to as many countries as possible - pre-arranged of course for someone met me at each airport and made sure I was okay and could meet those I needed to meet to interview and sent my articles by some strange tube system back to the newspaper. Smith Hempstone and his wife were my mentors in Kenya, where the Mau Mau snuck around in the dark - but thank heavens for their dachshunds who barked at every move someone made outside. In the mornings, I sat on the grass with my little typewriter and recorded all that was happening or had happened, like meeting Ghana’s Kwame Nkruma, the first president of an African country.

Primarily in Ghana, I had been asked to be the wife of the top African journalist who was Ghanaian. I would be part of his “harem?” of wives and they would teach me what I needed to know. But to be honest, I could not tolerate the heat. The hotel had air condition, but once one stepped out of the door, the whole body got wet from the heat. I decided I was not giving up my adventure yet, and to keep on keeping on with the extraordinary visits to so many African nations before it was too late to see them in their new robes.

Well, that was for a while. But in Tanganyika (it was called then), I and a girl friend were visiting in Ngorongoro Crater, packed with wild animals in those days with very few tourists. We were bouncing around and across anything and everything in our true low-key Land rover, lions, giraffes, elephants, and animals of all types close, until the driver hit a giant hole in a gully, and we were stuck. There was no such thing as walkie-talkies or I-phones or telephones. Just the wide crater and no traffic anywhere, and the African driver had a walkie-talkie that wasn’t working. After a long wait, we heard the roar of a Land rover filled with guys who were observing Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim holiday, even though they were British farmers taking a break on the holiday. They leaped out and dug the sinking Land rover out of the hole.

And “yes”, we would buy them a drink of thanks when we got back up to the top of the crater where my girlfriend and I were staying that night in the trip’s schedule. No, I didn’t “go all the way,” as we used to say, nor did we get close. But the next day we met again and thus began a relationship.  I finished the trip and that was the beginning of my life, right on the edge of Ngorongoro Crater. After returning home to Memphis, and a bout with hepatitis and malaria and things like that, I ended my safari around Africa and finally was given the okay to return to Tanganyika where my first husband managed a large coffee plantation, his parents, South African, had birthed him there. And I learned how to make butter from scratch.

Our wedding was in the Anglican Church in Arusha, which was ironic. Soon I birthed two daughters in the USA, the marriage was a failure. He wanted to be a member of the Klu Klux Klan, and immediately, I shut the door on him forever. My heart was fighting for the rights of the African Americans who made my life so fascinating. They helped me raise my two daughters. Oddly, decades later, living in Uruguay, I was the first woman priest in the Anglican Church in South America - first as a deacon in 1995 and then as a priest in 2015, after which I married Roberto.  Such is God’s way of putting us where He wants us to be to make a difference in the lives of others who suffer and have little hope. Thank you, Jesus. 

~ Rev

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audrey@audreytaylorgonzalez.com
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