Conversation with My Wife (85)
No no, talk amongst yourselves, pay me no attention!
I like to eat out with my wife occasionally so we can try new places. Somehow at dinner our conversation drifted to how I got along in my first permanent assignment after I had been medically disqualified from submarines. I was a Navy lieutenant working in the data processing department (in 1985, that’s what they called the I.T. department) at Navy Recruiting HQ in Arlington, Virginia.
ME: So I was the only guy in the office with three women, one of them my lieutenant commander boss (Val), one an ensign (Susan), and one a civilian (Joan). This was after being in an all-male work environment for years.
DEB: So it was different?
ME: Not as much as I thought it would be. Turns out guys spend all their time talking about sex and sports; women talk amongst themselves about sex and fashion.
DEB: So…
ME: So with either gender, I had no background to contribute to the discussion.
DEB: Did you learn much?
ME: Uhhh… okay, several times the discussion drifted to lingerie. Val talked about how she liked to wear frilly, sexy stuff. But not in uniform, obviously, I said. No no, especially in uniform, she said. Which she was wearing at that moment, of course.
DEB: Well, of course, honey! This was a male environment — not that office, I know, but in the Navy in general — so having a sense of femininity would be important. But poor honey! You must have thought that was too much information!
ME: Oh, that was nothing! Joan found I was prone to blushing, so she had no hesitation providing me with too much information. This was the mid-1980s, so “conversation suitable for the work environment” hadn’t caught up yet. So, for example, she mentioned the kinds of contraception she and her boyfriend were trying, and mentioned the then-new contraceptive sponges, but said they didn’t like them. I, being an idiot, asked why not. She said the taste was terrible. “The taste?” I said with a puzzled expression. So she proceeded to explain to me. In detail. And I proceeded to blush.
DEB: (mock concern) Poor Jackster!
ME: Then another time Joan came in to proclaim that her AIDS test was clean. Since she didn’t fall into any of the at-risk groups, I was curious as to why she had tested, but I kept my mouth shut. Didn’t matter. She proceeded to fill us in. Seems she had engaged in three-way sex with two guys, and —
DEB: Y’know, honey, sometimes there’s too much information for me. We’ll just leave the story there, shall we?
I also learned things from Susan, but she has already figured into another story from that era:
