John Wayne (26 page)

The summer before my junior year, on the Southwestern set of
The Undefeated
, I stood on the side with my dad watching Rock Hudson perform a scene.

“Look at that face,” my father said admiringly, without turning to look at me. “What a waste of a face on a queer. You know what I coulda done with that face?”

I was staggered, for two reasons. First, that Rock Hudson, who I thought gorgeous, was homosexual. Back then, it never occurred to me that a good-looking man could be gay. Secondly, that my father had spoken to me, his daughter, in a manner he always reserved for men. Crude or not, this was Boy Talk, a party I'd never been privy to. Since my father did
not seem to want any reply, I merely stood there, dumbfounded and mute.

That was about as close as we ever came to discussing sex. Not surprisingly back then, both my parents found it difficult to talk about sexual behavior with their children. My mother was very good at explaining my period, but that was as far as she went, and since my high school had no sex education, I learned the facts of life from other young girls. This naturally led to distortions.

When I was twelve, a girl three years older spent the weekend with her parents on our boat. One night as we curled up in our sleeping bags, the Turtles' “Hello, I Love You” came over the radio. My sage older friend turned up the music so no one could eavesdrop, and began explaining to me the mechanics of sex, what part of the husband's anatomy went where on the wife. But what she said and what I perceived were not at all the same thing. I thought she said the man peed inside the woman, and that's how people made babies.

“What?” I said. “That's awful. It's the grossest thing I've ever heard.”

“I knew it,” she replied. “You're too young, I never should have told you. Promise me you won't tell your parents.”

I gave her my word, and for one year I went nowhere with my confusion. When I turned thirteen, my understanding of sex was still sketchy at best, but that year I got my first real kiss. Only a freshman, I somehow revealed my crush to the sophomore boy who'd been stirring all these new feelings inside me all year. By then my girlfriends and I had read parts of that book—
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask
—but it all became a blur when my lips met the sophomore boy's on the dance floor. I was in love and felt that we should get married.

By the end of the following school week, the boy's critique got back to me. He told all his friends I was a terrible kisser, the worst he'd ever met.

I was humiliated to tears, and after this I had even more than the normal teenage girl's fear of discovering sex: fear
of kissing badly, fear of being called slut, fear of pregnancy, fear of boys getting fresh not because they liked me, or even because they thought I was pretty, but so they could run lying and boasting to other boys that they just had their way with John Wayne's daughter. I was so embarrassed by my sexuality, I even felt timid the first week I wore my training bra, certain my father would notice and disapprove. I was intensely relieved when he didn't.

My fear of sex was reinforced by all the talk around our house about the new eroticism in Hollywood movies: that it was “repulsive” and “bad.” To back up his code of sexual beliefs, my dad did not allow me to date until my senior year. Even then he seemed uncomfortable, tossing out mild but skeptical comments about my potential suitors, especially those with long hair. One day some young local Marines awarded my father a plaque at our house. When they left my dad told me, “That's the kind of boy I can see you with, Aissa.” They seemed like nice boys, but they all had crew cuts, and I didn't care for the look. My supreme fear my senior year was that some long-haired boy I really liked would come to pick me up and my law-laying father would grill and bombard him. So even after my father said I could date, I usually lied, meeting the boys in town and telling my dad I was out for a night with my girlfriends.

One night I will never forget, my father nearly shot a boy I knew. Around ten
P.M
., I drove home from Pat Kelly's, my first real boyfriend, with Pat's roommate, Rick. My father collected 16 millimeter versions of his old movies, and we wanted to watch one on Rick's and Pat's projector. Thinking it was late and my father was sound asleep, I took Rick straight through our garage to the room behind our bookcase, where my father stored his reels. My dad must have heard us and feared that he had intruders. For what he called “security reasons,” he always kept several guns stashed around our house. Reaching inside his nightstand for his revolver, my father stole back to the bookcase.

“Aissa?” he yelled.

Not knowing my father was holding a gun, I didn't reply.
He had this rule about people taking his movies without his permission.

“Aissa,” he yelled again.

My father also had a monumental pet peeve: he went berzerk when his children did not respond the instant he called out their name.

“Answer him!” Rick whispered. “Answer him!

Too late. Pushing through the door, my father stuck his cocked gun in Rick's face.

“Look at this!” he screamed at Rick. “Do you see this gun? I almost blew your goddamn head off!” Rick shook and shivered and couldn't speak.

Trembling with outrage, my father started on me. “Don't you
ever
come into this house without coming straight to my room and telling me you're here!”

“But I thought you were asleep!”

“I don't give a damn! I almost shot his head off!”

After that ghastly night I practically shouted whenever I walked in the door. Rick never came back to the Wayne's.

I fell for Patrick Kelly at my senior prom. Tall and solidly built, at twenty years old Patrick was an official “older guy.” He was also another girl's date that night. I'd come to prom with Johnny, a friend living at Bayshores, but Johnny had one critical failing: he wasn't Patrick Kelly. It was tradition after Newport Harbor's Senior Prom to stay out all night and bounce from party to party. Through some monumental miscommunication, I believed my father said I could sleep that night at a girlfriend's.

Patrick Kelly was having a party and said I could bring along Johnny, and Johnny at first was happy to go. But the more time I spent around Patrick, Johnny kept suggesting we check out some other parties. I finally told Johnny to take my car and pick me up later.

That was my first mistake. Rather than buy me a car that March when I turned sixteen—customary parental behavior in Newport Beach—my father had waited nine months, until Christmas 1972. That December morning he gave me two
modest presents. I tried seeming grateful but actually felt slighted, since this was so unlike him. Around five that afternoon he handed me a cigar box containing a pair of keys. With no emotion, he told me follow him out to our garage. Parked there was a glistening new yellow Porsche 914! After crying with happiness, I thought about what my less-privileged classmates might say. For a girl intent on fitting in, the sports car did not follow the plan. But who cared? I was human. After all those years of driving around in my father's green station wagon, I fell in love with my sleek new wheels.

My Porsche still smelled new the night I gave it to Johnny to take to the other party. By the time the sun rose on Patrick's rented beach house, our group had drained many beers, blasted the Rolling Stones, and already returned from a bleary-eyed five
A.M
. breakfast. I was hungover and exhausted, but oh, was I happy. Patrick and I hadn't kissed, but I told him I'd liked him for months, and Patrick said he liked me too, he just hadn't known how to say so.

Patrick had a message on his machine, left there by Johnny while we'd been out eating breakfast. Johnny said he wrecked my Porsche. It wasn't
driveable
, so he left it there on the side of the road. I was terrified,
terrified
at the fit I knew my father would throw.

“I have to get home,” I said to Patrick. “My father is going to kill me.”

The sun that June morning was already hot. When Patrick climbed hastily into his car without his shirt on, I gave it no thought, my mind locked on the rampage I knew I was heading into. As we turned into my complex the full implication came over me: I am not in my own car, I'm not with my original date, and the boy I'm with has no shirt on.

“That can't be my father!” I said.

It could. It was. As I later found out, my father stayed up all night in his silk pajamas, knocking on doors of gossipy neighbors and angrily pacing our driveway, because
he
thought I'd be home by two
A.M
.

Now he was still in his pajamas, and nearly out to the street. Restraining his self and his temper, my father spoke
in a tightly clipped voice. “We've been looking for you all night. Get in the house.”

Knowing better than even to glance at Patrick Kelly, I said “bye” over my shoulder and hurried past my dad with eyes trained straight ahead. I waited, and waited, and waited, but my father never came into my room. For the next twenty-four hours he was cold and distant, barely speaking my name. When he finally came to my bedroom I told my father the story without any lies.

“If I gave you what you deserved,” my father said, “I'd have to ground you forever. So let's just forget it.” Except for growling once about the repair bill, my father never mentioned it again.

That story shows my dad in all his formidable unpredictability. Like the time I was caught smoking pot, I was sure I'd be crucified for the Porsche, and each time my father took no punitive action. Each instance, the relief I felt was only surpassed by my shock and confusion. Today, I'm sure my father suppressed his rage for fear of driving his teenager daughter further away. Today, I can see that it all made textbook Wayne family sense. When the Wayne children did nothing wrong, that's often when we were yelled at, and when we deserved real reproof we got off the hook. No wonder we were all such nervous kids. For children, erratic fathers are scary.

How funny people can be. Because for all of my father's flaws, for many years I was drawn to boys and men in his image. Boys and men with big voices, big bodies, big gestures, boys and men who wanted to make all my choices and regulate my life. That's how I related to males, because that's the way I related to my dad. When I realized this unflattering truth about myself, at first I was deeply ashamed. Since I thought no other father on earth could influence another woman the way my father did me, I believed that I was uniquely, emotionally, defective. I eventually learned that many, many other women have similar feelings about their fathers. Even today, I am still not entirely free of my father's control. But I know I'm not alone.

By the end of 1973—the year my parents split up—my main emotion was relief. Seventeen, I'd long given up the fantasy of the perfect home life. Their marriage, in fact, was a wreck, and at least for the moment beyond working out. Though they rarely fought, the tension between them was making everyone skittish.

Thanksgiving was near, and my father and I had still not discussed his problems with my mom. In addition, I had still never seen him cry about the prospect of losing my mother. Like so many American men of his generation, my father believed if a man was to call himself a man, he must wear a kind of armor, male and indestructible, that concealed his fears and deepest feelings from his family. Particularly to
John Wayne, showing fear and pain was for women and children.

With time and circumstance people can change, even patriarchal fathers born in 1907. And something changed that winter between my father and me. One night after an awful fight with my mother, he entered my bedroom and sat on my sister's bed. Marisa was not around, or he never would have come in there. As my father sat down I could see tears inching down his stubbled face. When first he saw me looking he turned away. Then with the side of one thick finger, my father wiped his cheeks, turning his wet and unashamed eyes back to me.