Nixon in Love

CHAPTER SIX

Sex and the single Dick

Arlene and I continued our discussion the next day, beginning after our usual five hugging and kissing and wrestling match.

“Were they virgins?” Arlene asked, once she caught her breath.

“Who knows?” I asked in reply rather than tell her how beautiful she was when asking if Dick and Pat were virgins in 1938.

“What do you mean ‘who knows’? Are you writing a novel or not?” Arlene asked, her voice rising.

“A novel,” I conceded, keeping my tone matter-of-fact. I was having trouble understanding Arlene’s seeming urgency.

“Not a history, not a biography, a novel. You’re giving people a look behind the scenes, into the minds and feelings of human beings.”

“I’d only be guessing. And I’d guess yes, they were both virgins.”

“Then say so. And how they feel about being virgins.”

“I guess.”

“I guess? Ya think, honey? You’re an author writing after Freud, right? I mean, you’ve read Freud?” Arlene asked.

“Everything’s sex, yes. Freud. What does Freud have to do with Dick Nixon in 1938? This is a church basement, an audition, not an orgy. In the Sunday School room, Arlene,” I said. “You’re badgering me. Don’t badger me.”

“That’s where your unconscious comes in. They can be talking about the weather but it isn’t the weather. It’s sex. It’s animal magnetism. It’s in hesitations and whispers, hints and winks, a quick upward curve of the lips and movement of the hips. The beast dwells within. They’re virgins, sure, but they are in their mid-twenties and frustration city is where they live. And this is 1938 so they know it. They know Freud. They know others are already married. They know others have been pumping and humping.”

“Gross. These are nice people.”

“They are but they are sexual human beings. They managed so far but isn’t Pat attractive? Don’t people say that Dick was handsome enough for Hollywood?”

“Yes, true, yes. But this is not a sex story, Arlene,” I said, attempting to sound conclusive.

“Then you aren’t writing a piece of fiction that will ring true. It will be as hollow as a chocolate bunny.”

“Then what do I do? Whittier as Peyton Place? The town was named after John Greenleaf Whittier, the Quaker poet. The sun rose that brief December day/ All cheerless over hills of gray. Snow-bound.”

“It’s still California, not New Hampshire. Or Clover Corner.”

“You’re thinking of Grover’s Corners and Our Town. A different 1938 play.”

“They grew up during the Roaring Twenties, flappers, speakeasies, gangsters.”

“Yeah, I know, as kids, in grade school. Paper pilgrim hats and eating wax crayons.”

“Didn’t Pat smoke?”

“Yes.”

“Drink?”

“Socially, yes.”

“Dance?”

“Yes.”

“Slow dances, too, cheek to cheek?”

“Well, I think, sure.”

“Kiss boys?”

“I suppose. So she’s a smoking, drinking, slow-dancing, kissing woman?” I asked.

“And petting, heavy petting. With the lights out and her eyes closed,” Arlene said, closing her eyes, tilting her head back, her arms out for an embrace.

“You’re disgusting.”

“And you’re Richard Nixon, Gabe,” Arlene said, coming to attention and pointing her finger at her author friend in his hospital bed. “And I don’t mean that as a compliment. Prude. Look, Pat is a warm, loving human being confident, comfortable with her gender and not unwilling to explore the world or reach out to live. Uninhibited.”

“Uninhibited? Pat Nixon?”

“Don’t think First Lady. Don’t think faithful wife and mother of two daughters. That’s later, much later. The senior boys of the high school came looking for Pat at her bungalow. They thought she was exciting and potential.”

“She turned heads, for sure.”

“Pat told Gloria Steinem in 1968 that she ‘never had time to dream about being someone else because she had to work.’ And yet – not a dreamer, now -- why was she attracted to Dick? She said it was ‘because he was going places, he was always doing things.’ Voilà,” Arlene said, certain that I had skipped over the Steinem interview that she had studied most carefully. True, I had missed the Steinem piece. Not that that made me a bad person.

“Voilà, what?”

“Dick was Pat’s male counterpart with a twist. The big difference was that Dick took the time to dream that Pat denied herself. Don’t forget that Pat’s degree from USC was in Merchandising, which is the evaluation and selling of goods and services. Dick was a young man with a dream. That captured Pat’s heart. It’s all in that interview with Steinem, in a few sentences, what attracted her to Dick.”

“Dick knew this? He saw her receptivity to his kind of man?” I asked.

“If not that night – he was a good intuitive judge of people, always willing to bet on a hunch that way, to take risks, to gamble – soon, or he’d have just cut line and let go. He dated Ola Welch for years, then dumped her. Right? He went for a time with other girls before he decided nah, not this one. Right? I’m waiting for you to answer.”

“You’re right, except that Ola dumped Dick,” I said. “But go on.”

“Pat came through, a loud and clear signal. We ask only how soon, not if Dick was aware that he had a good horse to bet on. How quickly? In the church basement – or before the church basement – he knew to pursue Pat no matter how long, no matter how discouraging, no matter what conditions were imposed or present. Dick knew this at some point and I’d bet sooner rather than later.”

Absorbing this all as fast as I could, I finally said, “Regardless of how she described it to Gloria Steinem later, okay, sure, Pat knew it, her attraction to the dreaming he was doing, his ambition, and him being a going-places guy. Moth to a flame, and she was not displeased about the attraction, their growing connection. Never. For all the surface tension, his irritating clinginess, his octopus-like suffocating presence, Pat never refused to go out with handsome Dick Nixon but she absolutely made him promise something.”

“She did. A gag rule. Not to say he loved her or talk about marriage,” Arlene said, adding, “You see? She wanted fun.”

“But good, clean, innocent fun,” I said, spoiling it.

“What cave do you live in? Just so I know.”

“Some people have morals,” I said. “This is before the Sexual Revolution.”

“You are so Dick Nixon. And, again, I mean no compliment.”

“Oho, you don’t know the half of it, Arlene,” I said, suddenly thinking of something that convinced me that Arlene might be right, though not about Pat – about Dick. It happened after Dick had his hooks in deep. “He invited Pat away for a weekend of good, clean fun.”

“So?”

“So -- only Dick said ‘fun,’ not ‘good’ and ‘clean.’ Pat refused in disgust.”

“Now you’re cooking, Babe. Pat knew or thought she knew that Dick had something ucky in mind,” Arlene said.

“Fun. Like he said. That kind of fun. Just plain, um, fun. Begins with F, second letter U. You know, he almost admitted it. Skimming past confessing, Dick wrote back a new note to Pat saying how Pat was the most moral, best, most saintly woman he ever knew.”

“He did. Wow.”

“That’s documented. The note still exists in Whittier, at the Nixon Library.”

“Rest my case,” Arlene said.

“What case?” I asked.

“As soon as he could, Nixon-like, not whispering in her ear but on paper, signed, delivered by the United States post office, as if it must be innocent, it was a letter, Tricky Dick prodded a virginal white sheet of paper with his pen to invite Pat to a rendezvous.”