When love meets the iron fist of Midwestern morality
November 9th, 1989. The Berlin Wall is crumbling, and I’m sitting at LAX with a thirty-minute flight delay, watching CNN replay the same footage of Germans with sledgehammers. United Airlines is flying me from California through Denver and Tulsa to Wichita, Kansas. Four, maybe five hours in the air, plus two hours sliding backward through time zones. I’m supposed to land around 7 p.m. in the middle of goddamn nowhere.
Wichita. Even the name sounds like tractors, church bells, and passive-aggressive smiles over casserole dishes. When I step out of that terminal into the crisp November air, I spot her immediately: Donna. Grinning wide, looking stunning in tight red jeans and a sexy top, lips lightly painted – something she never normally does. A beautiful woman. My woman – well, almost. It had been months since we’d seen each other, months of long-distance phone calls and letters that never said enough.
But there are two older folks standing next to her like bookends. And I already know. No way… Yep. Her parents. She actually brought her mom and dad to pick me up. She’s thirty-three fucking years old.
I mean, seriously?
I swallow my pride, hug her, give her a quick kiss on the mouth – nothing too scandalous for the heartland. She introduces me. I smile, say “Nice to meet you” in my best broken English, the kind that makes me sound harmless and foreign. Her dad – Don White – gives me that stiff, cold stare, the kind reserved for door-to-door salesmen and Democrats. The kind of guy who probably files his nails with a rulebook and thinks jazz music is suspicious. Her mom, Doris, is warmer, kinder, gives off that small-town mom vibe where she’d feed you pot roast and ask about your mother. She’s fine.
On the drive to Pratt – Donna’s hometown – we speak Spanish so her parents won’t understand, our voices low and conspiratorial. She explains the pickup: her mom had a doctor’s appointment in town, so they combined the trip. Okay, sure. It’s not like I expected flowers and champagne, but this? This is some deep Midwest shit, the kind they don’t warn you about in travel brochures.
Welcome to Pratt
Pratt. Population: 6,600 and shrinking. Flatland as far as the eye can see, broken only by grain silos that look like concrete tombstones against the endless sky. Highways, water towers, and the occasional church steeple piercing the horizon. Here, wheat grows tall and conservative values grow even taller. No one comes here unless they absolutely have to, and even then they’re usually just passing through.
The White house sits in a tidy suburban neighborhood that looks like it was designed by a committee of insurance adjusters. Neatly trimmed lawn. Backyard kennel with a German shepherd that probably votes Republican. Everything’s so manicured, so perfect, it’s suspicious. I grab my backpack from the Lincoln’s trunk and follow them inside, past the ceramic ducks and the “Bless This Home” plaques.
Donna leads me upstairs, points to a room with floral wallpaper and a single bed that looks like it belongs in a monastery. I think, Okay, time to reconnect properly, maybe catch up on all those months of separation.
“This is your room,” she says, smiling that apologetic smile I’m starting to recognize.
“My room? Don’t you mean our room?”
She hesitates, shifts her weight. “No. I sleep in the room across the hall. My father doesn’t allow unmarried couples to share a bed under his roof.”
I stare at her, waiting for the punchline. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Nope. That’s just how it is. Sorry.”
“You’re thirty-three years old. We’ve been together for years. And we can’t even sleep in the same room because your dad’s stuck in 1952?”
“Doesn’t matter to him. And sex? Forget it. Absolutely off-limits under his roof. He’d probably call the sheriff if he suspected anything.”
I laugh, a bitter one that echoes off the floral wallpaper. “Welcome to the goddamn Midwest.”
House Rules
I suggest getting a hotel. No chance – we’re both broke, living on dreams and credit card debt. So I suck it up and sleep alone like some horny teenager on a chaperoned field trip, staring at the ceiling and wondering how I ended up in this Norman Rockwell nightmare.
We live a few days under Don White’s roof, following his puritanical commandments like we’re guests in some twisted bed-and-breakfast. He’s a stiff Republican patriarch, the kind who probably ironed his kids’ Bible verses and thinks dancing leads to pregnancy. Donna’s so brainwashed by his rules that she can’t even kiss me when we’re alone in the house. It’s like he’s always watching, even when he’s not there, some omnipresent force of Midwestern morality.
Eventually, we crack. It’s been months since we touched each other properly, and the tension is killing us both. We get into her rusty old Renault 5 – a car that probably offends Don just by existing – and drive out of town to a shady motel she clearly knows well. The kind of place with hourly rates and no questions asked.
She smirks as we pull into the gravel parking lot: “You’re not the first guy my dad wouldn’t let sleep with me.”
Well. At least I’m not alone in my humiliation.
Finally. Skin on skin, no guilt, no fear, no invisible patriarch watching from the shadows. For a few hours, we exist outside his world, in a place where being thirty-three years old actually means something.
The Breaking Point
A few nights later, around 11 p.m., she comes into my room. We talk for hours about everything and nothing – her dreams of getting out, my plans that never quite pan out, the way this place makes us both feel like we’re suffocating. The door stays cracked open – for appearances, for the sake of Midwestern propriety. Around 2 a.m., we both fall asleep on that narrow bed. Fully clothed. Harmless as Sunday school.
Morning comes. She’s gone. I go to her room, expecting to find her getting ready for another day of walking on eggshells. Instead, she’s crying.
“What happened?”
She wipes her eyes, mascara streaking. “My dad woke me up in the middle of the night. Shook me hard like I was twelve years old. Yelled at me like I was a damn schoolgirl who’d been caught smoking behind the gym. ‘That’s not how we do things in this house! You know better! Get back to your room – now!’ He totally lost it, like I’d committed some mortal sin.”
I had slept through the whole thing, dead to the world. Maybe that was for the best. The last thing I needed was to be caught in the middle of some father-daughter morality battle that had been brewing for decades.
Don was already off to work by the time I got downstairs, probably to avoid looking me in the eye. Doris was in the kitchen making breakfast, moving around with the practiced efficiency of someone who’d spent years managing domestic crises. She took it easier, tried to calm Donna down, play mediator between her husband’s iron will and her daughter’s growing rebellion. But it was over. Donna had had enough.
“I can’t stay here,” she said, her voice shaking with years of suppressed frustration. “Not one more night. Not one more minute of this bullshit.”
Escape
She called a friend in Wichita. Told her everything – the medieval house rules, the midnight confrontation, the way this place made grown adults feel like criminals for wanting to be together. Asked if we could crash at her place for a few days. The answer was yes, thank God.
We packed our bags in silence, said goodbye to her mom – no handshake for Don, who’d probably gone to work early to avoid the whole scene – and drove the hell out of that town.
Out of Pratt. Out of Don’s kingdom. Out of a twisted little corner of America where the fifties never ended and probably never will.
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