Chronologically in my life story, this is where I should discuss this, unless I were to later on do a backtrack.
This isn't easy or a pleasant thing to talk about, because I'm ashamed of it. It regards my relationships with men.
I dated a fair amount in high school, a little, but not a lot in undergraduate school and on and off a little after that. Up through my late 20s I thought I might get married, but approached my studies as one serious about a career. In one sense, though, even though I was set on mission work in Eastern Europe I was still open to sharing that work with someone else if the right person came along. Two or three times in there, in my 20s I struggled with strong interest in this or that guy, all of which were Christians and I worked or traveled with them so got to know them, but none of these ever became more than "just friends". In fact, in my twenties I had more male "friends" than boyfriends, some of whom were very good platonic friends.
The guys that I dated I had various levels of romantic friendship with. Ironically, one boy from work (my senior year of high school & freshman year of college at KMart) was very respectful and I could talk to him very easily, which combination I found very attractive. But in the end I don't think he was a Christian, so I broke it off. He was more of a gentleman that some Christians I dated.
I always held a very strict line at having sex, so I was a virgin still when I got married, and my ex-husband is still the only person I ever had sex with. But I you can still have a lot of physical contact without having sex, and I'm afraid I wasn't always very good at maintaining as strict of boundaries in that regard as I should have.
There were a few times that I think this affected my reputation. One time, when I was working at KMart was totally ludicrous and wrong: I worked in the back part of the store in the garden shop, home improvement, and the like, and he was the head of the building materials department. If our lunches fell at the same time we occasionally had lunch together at the sandwich shop next door. But it wasn't a date or anything, and he was married and I knew his wife. But one of the store managers called us together to tell us that people were saying we were having an affair and selling drugs! That was wild and we were both shocked. It just goes to show that you should avoid the appearance of evil I guess.
Also, years after I had graduated from high school I was in town, in the Seattle area, and visited an old friend from school. I don't know how it came up, but she thought that I'd had sex in high school. I felt really badly about that, and I must say, though, that even though I hadn't had sex, I can see how she'd think that... although otherwise I was involved in a lot of Christian and healthy school activities, as well as church.
Well, the whole reason I'm going into all this is that I had a romantic relationship with one of the Russian emigrants and a relative of his told me that he was telling everyone he had sex with me. I don't know why he was telling people that; maybe it was one of those male conquest things or something, like locker-room boasting or something. It wasn't true that we'd had sex, but after that our relationship cooled quite a bit. Maybe it was a blessing in disguise that my housing situation went the way it did that year.
The reason why this is so important for me to share with you is that, as I believe I mentioned earlier, the full-time staff working with the Soviet emigrants had told me that there were KGB among the emigrants and they knew some of them and the other emigrants knew who they were too. I never know and it didn't particularly interest me either. For some years I wondered if that Russian I had a relationship with KGB, just because of later events, but now I think that his telling people, may have reached someone who was KGB. I think it was during my time in Chicago that the Soviets began to be aware of me. It doesn't help having an unusual last name and if they checked on the people working with the emigrants, they might have found out I was from Seattle and all the Capalinis in Seattle are related to me. Later on - just after the Galina Grischenko incident (something else happened that summer too) my dad told me that sometimes the Soviets obtain lists of names of the people working in his type of work. So before you know it, they've pegged me as his daughter.
But the Soviet intelligence aren't the only ones who might have known about this "affair" we'll call it - the other missionaries might have also heard of it. I didn't get any indication of this at that time, but a couple things in Vienna made me wonder.
And regarding my relations with men now? I've dated a few guys. There was one about 4 years ago who was very nice, and he was a strong Mennonite, but it just wasn't a good fit. More often than not, guys are just a pain to me. I think I look younger than I am and I'm reasonably attractive, especially when my weight is down, but I tend to think of men as more of a problem and pain. I wanted all my life to have a good career and I don't want some man to just come into my life, as if that's what I was missing all along. Now my health isn't good and my prospects for working aren't very good. The summer of 2007 I hadn't been diagnosed with anything yet, but I was bad off enough that I often had to walk with a cane. I was walking along the sidewalk of a strip mall and some older man made a cat call as I walked by. I was feeling so crumby and that I just sort of as a knee jerk reaction pivoted around and whacked him a good one behind the knees with my cane. He didn't say anything. I remember even when I was about 20 or so on the public bus in Seattle as I was entering or leaving (I don't remember now) the bus driver asked me if it's true that blonds have more fun. I must admit that I was mad at that question, but I had enough presence of mind to answer "I don't know, I've never been anything else." I don't know if these responses are necessarily very Christian-like, but it's hard to deal with these things sometimes. I don't get it all the time though. Now I mostly think men are just after one thing and I'm not really interested in a relationship.
So there you have it, the ugly confession and why I had to tell you.
~ Meg
