Memoir as Mnemonic

Dear God, how things started coming back. Not in a flow, but like a blast of wet wind. Did I really do that? Did I really show up at a party peopled by my husband's department colleagues and toss him my silver flask? I couldn't have. I think I did. I hope I did. They were desert-dry, those Colgate Philsophy & Religion parties. This teetotaler thought bringing along a flask with some scotch in it was a wifely thing to do. Also not very likely to make me popular. As though I cared. I did, I cared. But they had already made clear that I did not fit in. That was only the second time I carried the flask anywhere--such an elegant thing, even if tossing it was not an elegant thing to do. I do hope I did it. The first time was several years earlier. I put the flask in my attache case when I left for a presentation in D.C. to the board of the Washington Gas Company. Washington, I'd been warned, was really a southern town and the board was all-male. They might well be put off by a woman making the presentation, let alone being in charge of the account. To complicate matters a teeny bit more, I had a fierce cough. I prepared. I studied my materials as though for a major test--because this was, I suppose. I wore a stunning red dress and mad sure my make-up was not a tinge overdone nor underdone. And, when we had gathered around the long table and I'd been introduced, I stood and I smiled and, in my softest toen range, made my presentation. Every so often, I stopped speaking, smiled and said, "Excuse me," then took out the flask, unscrewed the top, and took a ladylike sip of the contents. Cough medicine, if I had to swear on the Bible, but it never crossed the minds of those gentlemen that the flask contained other than good bourbon, I'm sure. What they saw--I hoped--was a woman matching their idea of a woman in business who had not forgotten her sex. Believe me, I had not. (No man on earth--"Mad Men" to the contrary--would have, could have, pulled off what I did.) They sat in the palm of my hand, those men, as I sold them my ad campaign. I think that when I finished, they were disappointed not to be able to do more for me than sign off on the campaign. Thank God, it was a good one, or I'd have that day's wiles on my conscience still. Oh the memories of when I was young and brave. Oh, dear dear God, Whom I love truly. Did I flirt until I was on the cusp of the no-turning-back border? Yes, there was such a border back then. And, yes, I did, more than two or three times--practically wore through my skirt sitting on that fence. I did virtuous things, too, that I'd forgotten till I began to write my memoir about God. But, not wanting to mix milk with meat, U will save thinking and writing here about those till another time.