Meeting Funk, The Third Four Months. April 1978
Mid-April 1978. It was a huge culture shock to meet Funk’s parents, especially his mother. One weekend morning Funk and I drove 50 miles from Salem College to Funk’s parent’s home in New Martinsville, West Virginia. Their town is on the Ohio River, and the closer we got, the less mountainous the area became. Pulling into their driveway, since no one came out to greet us, I wondered if Funk hadn’t told his parents he was bringing his girlfriend home to meet them.
When we walked in the front door, his dad gave me a hearty hello and I instantly fell in love with him. Not so much Funk’s mom. She barely greeted me, and she seemed taken aback that Funk’s dad was excited to meet me and that he’d given me a big hug.
After the hellos were behind us, we sat at the kitchen table to chat. But unlike my parents did with Funk, not one question was asked of me. No “Where are you from?” or “What is your major?” The conversation was all insider stuff. Once I’d spent a respectful amount of time with them, I found a comfortable chair adjacent to the kitchen and half listened as I tackled my college homework. Before long, Funk’s mother placed a sandwich in front of him, and I was offered oogots.
Oogots is Italian for absolutely F’ing nothing.
Worse, Funk didn’t notice that he was being fed and I wasn’t, which threw me into a tailspin. I mean, what kind of hicks were these people, including my supposed boyfriend? Instead of studying, I started questioning if I was wrong to be upset or if these people really were as strange as they seemed. And because I still hadn’t found my voice by that time, I didn’t discuss the matter with Funk on our way back to Salem.
May 1978. All too soon, my freshman year of college was coming to a close. I’d had the most wonderful time! Even though I was in school, I still went to Brushy Fork some weekends, staying in the same vacant cabin that I loved so well, which was just up the hill from my brother Steve’s place. Steve is seven years older than me and was part of the back-to-the-land movement. I loved being in that community of like-minded people. Having attended four different high schools, I didn’t have a chance to get to know the kids I went to school with. One of the blessings of college was that I’d made deep friendships with the people in my co-ed dorm, so I didn’t mind staying in town when I wasn’t at Brushy. Actually, it was nice to have the choice.
In early May, Funk asked if I’d move in with him.
This was the hippie era—the beginning of people just shacking up instead of getting married and then shacking up. I couldn’t make up my mind what to do: rent a house with college friends who were staying in Salem for the summer, live in that cabin near my brother, or move to Funk’s place. I was only 19, and I didn’t want to get serious with anyone that young. That said, before meeting him, I had broken things off with other boyfriends, and with some of them, I eventually regretted it. I didn’t want to make the same mistake with Funk of not knowing what I had until after it was gone. For some reason that was not clear to me, I chose to move into Funk’s cabin on the lake.
I should have run the other way while I still had the chance.
Funk helped pack up my dorm and we drove our separate trucks to his house. He had cleared out the top two drawers of his dresser for me, which worked out fine, since I literally only had two sets of clothes. One pair of jeans with patches that I’d sewn over the holes, and another pair just like them.
The next morning, I opened the top drawer of Funk’s dresser and found a mouse staring at me while chewing on my underwear. I screamed like a banshee! By the time Funk walked the 10 feet from his living room into his bedroom, the mouse, likely just as afraid as me, had run to only God knew where.
For a second-generation Italian American, this was not a good sign.
None of it. Funk taking his sweet time to handle a problem. Me seeing my first mouse. Oh. And I forgot to tell you. but prior to all this going down, Funk had made himself a salami and provolone sandwich and didn’t make anything for me, nor did he offer that I make one for myself.
School was now officially over for both of us, me attending as a student, and Funk as a professor and also the head of his department. He was 28 years old. And while he’d had ample time to develop interests, all I’d had time to do so far was to ruminate on my weird-ass childhood and try to make sense of it.
As such, my only hobbies at this point were hanging with people.
Funk’s interests focused on reading. Eating. Doing the nasty. Walking around his ugly man-made lake. Doing more of the nasty. Talking all-things intellectual while drinking beer with his colleagues. And living inside his head. Since he didn’t do much in the way of making conversation, I was not only hungry, I was also bored out of my mind.
Day two of living together finally turned into evening. Since the freak I’d just moved in with was STILL reading, I went out to his screened-in porch, lit up a joint, and pondered what I’d just gotten myself into. I was confused about why I’d chosen to live with someone who was the complete opposite of me.
Back when I was living at Brushy full time and was too lazy to walk, I’d frequently ride the horse that I was deathly afraid of to explore the hills and valleys. That was the first and only time I stayed high all day, and with the exception of that horse, it was also the first time I’d ever spent any time alone.
Unfortunately, the pot didn’t have the same great effect when I was alone on Funk’s front porch.
It was still the same homegrown weed that I’d been puffing for the past year, but on this occasion, I had an anxiety attack. If I was too shy to ask Funk for something to eat, I was certainly too shy to ask him to talk me down. So I just sat there scared out of my mind, wondering what would happen to me.
Hours later, the only reason Funk came outside was to take care of his third and fifth interests listed above: doing the nasty—this time, on his porch, with me sitting right where he’d found me.
June 1978. Funk’s parents came to Salem to visit him. Turns out, the visit was to buy him a house. This was only the second time that I’d met them and yet his mother wanted me to help pick it out. Since she had ignored me during the first meeting, I started asking myself why she’d want my input on something as important as a house. That said, now that I’d been living with her son for a month and had witnessed how socially inept he was, I wondered if the woman was trying to pawn him off on me. In those days, most people were long since married by the time they were Funk’s age.
We looked at two houses.
The gorgeous yellow and white Victorian shining brightly on a hill, with the equally sunny kitchen, and the most horrific one-story shack, which backed up to the train tracks. I told his mother that, hands down, the yellow one was the best. She plunked down the deposit for the one with the fake-brick kitchen and the train whistle blowing in the backyard.
On moving day, since I was the shortest of Funk’s friends who were helping us move, I hunkered low inside the bed of his truck trying not to bump my head on the camper top when carrying things out to the tailgate. I was so strong back then. I walked 40-pound cement blocks, one in each hand, from one end of the truck to the other, handing them to whomever was waiting for the next load to bring inside.
Early the next morning, Funk left for a week to help one of his college minister-buddies take a group of kids hiking on the Appalachian Trail, and I was left to unpack alone.
Did I mention how I should have run the other way while I still had the chance?
Neither of us had much in the way of belongings. Before long, I had our boxes unpacked and everything put away. Nearing the end of this task, two things happened. As I was lifting record albums out from a box, I noticed the boxes that had been set down on the carpet were soaking wet, as were the album covers. Turns out, the previous owner had let their dogs piss in the spare bedroom.
Luckily for Funk, his box of journals had been randomly placed on the kitchen counter, saved from ruin. They were the last boxes that needed unpacked.
Without a thought in my head to do otherwise, I took his journals outside, sat down on the porch swing and proceeded to read them straight though, one after the other, dozens of them. His entries were as heady as he was—nothing like what you’d expect in a typical diary. His musings and poems told me a lot about him and his values.
When I finished, because my favorite college friends had returned to their parents’ home for summer break, and I was out of gas money to drive to Brushy, I spent my remaining days alone tilling the entire backyard and planting a vegetable garden. Oh, and reading the book that Funk had gifted me before he left. It was about feminism—something I’d never heard of before. It included instructions on how to do the nasty alone, which I became a master at in no time at all.
Funk came home and was shocked by the garden.
However, he figured that I’d read his journals while he was away. I don’t know how he knew me so well, when, before reading his journals, I felt I barely knew a thing about him. More, it almost seemed like he hoped I’d read them.
After I showed him everything I’d done inside the house, we sat on the porch swing where he told me about his epiphany. He’d read Man’s Search for Meaning while he was away and decided that he no longer believed in open relationships. As such, he was going marry me. He didn’t ask. He just told me. How do you respond to that?
The next morning, I heard what sounded like puppy feet coming from the kitchen towards the living room. But it wasn’t puppies. It was a big-ass rat and her three fat little babies following behind, all of whom were just moseying across the living room right before our eyes, not a care in the world. I screamed. Funk went out and bought rat traps.
Days later, the doorbell rang and outside stood my dad and my brother Robert. They’d come up from Florida to help my brother Steve with a big roofing job that Steve had just landed. Apparently, Steve had sent them to Funk’s new home, figuring they’d be happier staying with us in town than in his place at Brushy given it lacked running water and had an outhouse for a bathroom. Funk and I didn’t have a phone, so I wasn’t aware of any of this until I opened the front door.
Of course, I hadn’t told my parents that I was living with someone. Since we only had two bedrooms, I stayed up late so my dad didn’t realize I was sleeping with my boyfriend.
My brother Robert had severe anxiety from my father’s abusive ways, which included terrible beatings when Robert was a child. Piled on top of that was more anxiety from his stint in the Vietnam War. All this to say, Robert slept with the TV on all night, something that made Funk furious, and he was already ill-tempered that my family had just assumed they could stay with us.
The next day, since it was raining and no roofing work could be done, I came out of my bedroom only to be greeted by my father’s angry face, a look that always instilled deep fear in me. I think he felt betrayed that I was involved with a man, and that I was living in “sin.”
And while I still don’t know his reasoning, the outcome was that my father gave me the cold shoulder the entire week he stayed with us. He wouldn’t look at me, nor would he let me tend to the hot-tar burn he’d incurred on his forearm. Fun times living with men who behaved like colicky babies!
July 1978. When the president of the college learned that Funk and I were living together he gave Funk a choice: get rid of me or forfeit his job. Shortly after that ultimatum, Funk and I drove to Nashville to visit yet more of his college friends. Like Funk, they were also a decade older than me, but surprisingly, Funk’s best friend, Crutch, was someone I instantly connected with. I mean, what woman doesn’t love a guy who can carry on a conversation as well as one of her girlfriends?
Funk told his buddies about his work dilemma and one of them offered him a job in the Tennessee State Auditor’s office. Funk immediately accepted it. Within 30 days, as instructed, he’d trimmed his beard down to a goatee and cut his hair and we were both moving to Nashville even though Funk had just purchased a home in Salem.
Moving to Nashville was so not my plan.
My plan was to buy acreage near my brother’s place at Brushy. But having grown up in the state, Funk said that once he could afford shoes, he would never live in West Virginia long term, especially not in a back-to-the-land lifestyle.
I was still not sure of this guy, for all the reasons I’ve already mentioned.
First, and most importantly, Funk was not what I was looking for. Two. I felt way too young to be settling down; I worried that I’d be forever regretful if I didn’t take more time to sow my wild oats. Three. He lacked social etiquette.
Yet there I was, leaving the college I loved. Forsaking my new friends. And giving up my dream of living at Brushy full time. I couldn’t imagine what was driving me, only that I kept going along with it.
Again, I hadn’t yet found my voice. But boy, did I ever find it shortly after we moved to Nashville!
I’ll be back with more tales of meeting Funk. I’m sure you’ll dislike him as much as I do!
Here’s to you! if intuition also drives you, even if you don’t know exactly what it means in the moment. The college was shocked that Funk chose me over his job. But get this. We visited the area thirty years later and bumped into the man who’d given Funk the ultimatum. The president was thrilled to see us! In his mind, it was if we were long lost buds. In my mind, I was still pissed that I didn’t get to live out a big dream of mine, and all because of him.
The Photo. Me, 18 years old, at Brushy Fork, learning how to ride Bird. Most everyone was terrified of that horse because she was known for throwing people off her back. I was probably the most terrified, still, I rode her most days and without a saddle. That’s how lazy I was back then! Too lazy to even saddle her up. Bird gave me fits at first. She nosed me off the barrel that I’d climbed up on in order to throw my leg over her back. And she constantly stopped to chew grass. When I’d make her continue on, she’d fling half chewed grass over her head, the disgusting gunky mess landing on my arms. But just like you do with a misbehaving child, I ignored her antics and after a while she stopped tormenting me. Likely, because she loved the change of scenery as much as me.