Chapter 12
Laura Strand
Laura married Dwight Littlefield two days before her eighteenth birthday. She had been about to start her college career when he enlisted in the Navy. They had been going steady her last two years in high school, but wound up eloping the week before he was to go to San Diego for Boot Camp.
Following the brief honeymoon, they packed there belongings in a U-Haul and drove to San Diego, found and apartment for Laura and got to spend some weekends together after he had been training for a month. Laura found a part-time job in an attorney's office. Financially we were tight but comfortable if we watched our spending. The only problem was that we knew that in six months or so he was going to be deployed on what the sailors referred to as a West-Pac tour, sending him into the Asian area for six months.
In the two weeks that they had left before Dwight deployed, they made the decision that Laura would stay there and enroll in the local community college with some financial help from her parents. During his absence Laura found the everyday living easy enough. School work kept her busy. She was having a difficult time with one of her math courses and spent a lot of time studying, and even engaged the services of a math tutor. She also began to struggle with an entirely different matter -- sex.
Sex with Dwight was sweet and loving, but never great; and she confided to Marta, a female attorney at the law firm where Laura worked part-time, that she had never reached an orgasm.
"Not even on your honeymoon?"
"Well, we hardly did it on our honeymoon. Dwight was sick a lot and we... just didn't. My friends told me not to worry, that it would come in time... but it hasn't. Maybe I'm one of those women who just can't manage an orgasm."
"Do you masturbate?" Marta inquired.
"Sometimes," Laura replied.
"Do you cum when you do?"
"I guess... I mean, it feels really good."
"I doubt you're orgasming, darling. It sounds like you're merely titillating yourself."
Laura confessed that in Dwight's absence she had been touching herself more and more often. Marta had the good sense not to comment on the revelation.
Things might have continued in this fashion, had Laura not received a telegram from Dwight asking her to supply him with an attorney to represent him at his forthcoming Courts-Martial, but conveniently left out the reason he was being charged.
Of course she presented the telegram to Marta, and asked her for her help in the matter. Marta agreed, and two days later, her telegram to the US Navy requesting she be assigned as Dwight's attorney, and given the pertinent facts, was answered.
With a grim look on her face, she got Laura to accompany her to the ladies room, and there, after determining that they were alone, revealed that Dwight was being court-martialed for being a homosexual. He and another sailor had been caught in the act on board their destroyer. If convicted, he faced several years in the naval prison, followed by a Dishonorable Discharge. Laura was crushed. Her parents and Marta both urged her to have the marriage annulled. She acceded to their wishes, but insisted on providing Dwight with legal counsel, in return for his not protesting her request for an annulment.
The annulment came through several weeks later, and Dwight's counsel, not Marta, by the way, kept him from going to prison, but could not convince the navy to give him a Discharge at the Convenience of the Government. He would have to face life with a Dishonorable Discharge.
Marta invited Laura out a couple times before she accepted an invitation to a party. Marta had intimated that if Laura chose too, she might meet Mr. Right, and get properly laid that night. After thinking it over for a day or so, Laura decided that at the very least, she deserved to get, as Marta put it, "Properly laid."
*** The night of the party, Laura headed to her closet, shucking her boring work clothing as she walked. What to wear, what to wear, she wondered. Linda decided she didn't have the right dress, which would have been more in the gown category, but wanted to make a good impression. Good enough so as to get laid, she told herself, and giggled like a little girl. Ultimately, she decided on a long black skirt, which swirled around her ankles, and slipped into a chartreuse colored blouse. Almost, but not quite formal, she thought, and after several long glances at her reflection in the mirror, she nodded with some satisfaction, spritzed some Opium on her wrists, rubbing them together to dissipate the scent. She searched through three different handbags until she found the lipstick she was looking for: a dark, matte plum shade that made her look more exotic than she felt.
As she arrived at the party, Laura tried to quell the thoughts -- more like fantasies -- that raced through her mind. She hadn't engaged in any flirtation since first meeting Dwight. Not that that brought her any reassurances that she'd been flirting correctly even then. She sighed, and wondered if she'd come across as totally obvious, or worse, desperate.
A woman, perhaps in her mid-fifties opened the door and asked her in. She left her coat on top of a pile of coats and furs in the bedroom just off the front hallway. In the living room there were several groups of people talking. Some stood; others were sprawled on the available furniture.
The uncertainty she'd felt in the car on the way over was now full-blown anxiety. Laura liked parties well enough, but had always gone with someone or a group of someone's. It felt strange to be there all alone. She decided that if someone asked who she was, she'd tell them that she was just leaving, and make her escape.
She spotted the bar on the far side of the room, and feeling as if everyone in the room was watching her with a critical eye, made her way over to it.
