Freshman Hickie Course 101

There is a difference between stupidity and naivete. I plead naivete in this case.

Let’s back up to my first fraternity party as an 18-year-old college freshman in 1966. I was a college freshman who had rarely dated in high school; had one chaste relationship with a boyfriend; and a mother who was obsessed with safeguarding my purity, lest I become what she labeled, a TRAMP , a girl who had sex before marriage.

My mother’s method of preserving my chastity until marriage was to keep me as uninformed as possible. Beyond what “menstruation” was, which I obviously needed to know, I was told nothing about female sexuality — not that the female body desired sex, how a woman felt while experiencing sex, or what an orgasm was. I knew nothing but the basic mechanics of “the act”, and had it drilled into my head constantly that those mechanics were to be engaged in only after the marriage vows had been taken.

So here I was, the poster teen for “naivete” getting ready for my first college fraternity party. I was reveling in the exhilaration of experiencing my first taste of the unknown — freedom. We had to abide by dorm curfews, returning before the doors were locked at midnight, but those curfews did not include a mother standing in the living room interrogating me and checking for any clothing misalignments. To me, that was Freedom.

The University of RI was a Dry Campus, meaning that no alcohol was allowed anywhere on its grounds — not the Student Union, campus restaurants, dorms, and certainly not in fraternity and sorority houses.

As 2 of my friends and I stepped into a crowded, dark, noisy frat house living room, 3 of my naïve assumptions about campus life were immediately shattered.

Naïve assumption #1 — URI was a dry campus. Uh, no. Everyone had an alcoholic drink in their hand; the floor was littered with open cases of beer; and if I had known what a stale, overused bar smelled like, I would have recognized the odor.

Naïve assumption #2 — Frat parties were arranged for socialization -to dance and get to know one another. In reality, they were held to get drunk and get laid, usually in that order.

Naïve assumption #3 — Frat boys are friendly, and get to know you before making out with you. No, actually, they have weird kissing behaviors. I had never been kissed on my neck with such a stinging feeling before. Wise readers are shaking their heads in disbelief — she really was stupid. Please, naïve and uninformed, not stupid.

After an entire evening spent drinking and making out, my friends and I returned to our dorm, declaring our first Frat Party a rousing success.

Imagine my surprise when I opened the door to my room to everyone pointing and screaming at me.

Bewildered, I asked what was wrong.

“Look in the mirror”, they screamed.

Horrified, I saw my entire neck covered in multiple dark red bruises. It looked like I had been beaten with a hammer.

Completely shaken and confused, I asked what had happened to me.

“They’re HICKIES!!”, everyone yelled in unison.

It suddenly became crystal clear what those weird, stinging kisses were.

Why had I never been told about this before? Why was I finding out about it the hard way?

There I was — branded for life- or at least the few weeks I was told it would take for my marks to fade. The shame was going to take a bit longer.

Do you think the story ends here? That I learned my lesson, wore turtlenecks for a few weeks, and henceforth was on guard for “weird kissing”?

Of course not. It may be difficult to imagine it was possible, but the situation did worsen.

The next afternoon, I heard my name called on the Intercom in my dorm room. “Joan, you have visitors. Your Mom and Dad are here. “

As anxious as I had been to leave home for the freedom on-campus living afforded me, I did miss my parents a bit and especially my 11-year-old sister. Excited to see them, I hastily threw on a shirtdress, the style at the time, that looked like a long shirt, with an open neck and buttons down the front. Off I went bounding down the stairs.

To my horror and shock, amidst the din of the other milling students and visitors, only my mother’s shrieking voice could be heard. Her long, accusatory index finger pointing directly at me, she screamed, “I know what those are! I know what you’ve been doing. You’re a TRAMP.

There it was. The word I had dreaded since puberty, since she had told me that girls who didn’t remain untouched until marriage bore the most shameful badge there was in those decades — TRAMP.

Time stood still at that moment. My father was dumbfounded and silent. My 11-year-old sister absorbed every bit of the drama to be stored in her brain for later use.

And yes, in a split second while the screaming was going on, the thought crossed my mind — Well, if you KNEW what a Hickie was, maybe if you had TOLD me about them, I wouldn’t have gotten myself into such a mess.

Whatever the case, the damage was done. In my mother’s eyes, I had fallen from grace, never to be redeemed.

Although this was 1966, in the middle of the sexual revolution, the time of the development of the “pill” that allowed women control over their reproductive rights, and the feminist movement, the news hadn’t reached my mother. Her ideas on sexuality were stuck in the previous millennia. I may as well have been forced to wear a Scarlet H on my chest for the world to be reminded of my transgression.

I was so traumatized, not to mention humiliated and embarrassed by the scene, that I have little memory of what transpired the rest of their visit. I know we went out to eat, mostly in silence. I guess, through the years, my brain has felt the shrieking and screaming was enough trauma for its memory bank to deal with.

They went home; I returned to my dorm with two important goals. One short-term — Buy a damn turtleneck sweater to wear for the next few weeks, and one long-term — NEVER, EVER, EVER, let a boy near my neck again.

Epilogue:

Although written with humor, there is an underlying serious theme to this story that has not changed in the 56 years since my unfortunate incident -the importance of sex education. Knowledge IS power, especially for vulnerable young women. Had I known what was happening, maybe I would have stopped it.

At 18, anxious for excitement, maybe I would have plowed ahead, ignoring the lessons I had been taught. But I wasn’t given that choice because I hadn’t been taught anything.

I was lucky I wasn’t date raped, which easily could have occurred, given the amount of alcohol I had consumed and how little I knew about what was going on.

Young women need to be armed with as much factual information as possible, so they can recognize danger signals, as well as make responsible decisions for themselves related to their sexual experiences.

By the end of my freshman year, thanks to a dorm corridor of 23 other girls from all backgrounds in life, I was finally given the thorough sex education I had missed out on. You can read about the finale of that education by reading “Every Girl Needs a Johnny Castle Once in Her Life — My Dirty Dancing Summer.

Note- First published in Medium Publication, Boomers, Bitches, and Babes.