| | Well... you see... I was given an copy of Anthem late in the 11th grade (1966) by one of my buddies in YAF. So, I read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged in high school and gave Rand's books to girls and the ones who liked them went out with me. I took one girl to an NBI lecture. My steady girlfriend could not get out for something like that -- too late at night and downtown besides.
Late in that year, we moved to Cleveland's "Gold Coast" in Lakewood, Ohio, and I had a 10th floor bedroom. My girlfriend and I used to go down by the Lake to neck (when we were not in the bedroom) and look at downtown spread out like jewels or else take Lakeshore Blvd out to Western Reserve ("Patrick Henry")University and hang out there. We had a couple of dinners at excellent restaurants (Stouffer's) overlooking the Lake and the skyline. We would go to parties where kids were casual, but we would be dressed up and no one knew why or understood that they were looking at Slug and Frisco at Rearden's anniversary party or Hank and Dagny at Jim's wedding reception.
Over the years, I have had sex with a few others who did not read Ayn Rand, but they were occasional incidents. The ones who stayed -- both wives -- were more or less Objectivists. My current wife (of 28 years) is a "sense of life" Objectivist. She probably could not pass the test in the back of Leonard Peikoff's study guide -- heck, I am not sure that I could -- but when I met her (1977), she had read The Fountainhead because she wanted to be an architect. In 2004, I spoke at a numismatic convention in Pittsburgh, and we visited Falling Water together.
My first wife probably could pass the test. She is more "new age" now, but only because -- like me -- she has added many new perceptions to a solid foundation of reality and reason. We still socialize, and even work on projects once in a great while. She is in business (www.avatardps.com) and has been president of the QuarkXPress user group. (I still hit on her, I confess, but she turns me down both for her own good and mine.) Anyway, there was one time, long ago, when we were just married, I was 22 and she was 18, and someone asked her if she was Catholic, to which she laughed, "I don't believe in anything I can't see." And there was another time maybe six months later, when we were having a party (it was the early 70s, so you can let your imagination run wild -- we did) and the phone rang. We all froze. She answered. She listened. She said, seriously (way more seriously than we could have imagined possible all things considered), "Yes, tell him that I am in business and I mean business. Good-bye." At that moment, in my eyes, she was Dagny Taggart.
At that time, all of our so-called friends were Objectivists of one stripe or another. So, there was some extra activity for both us us. She maintained one of those relationships, still does, after all these years... We separated and divorced and after I got married again, I stayed about 99% monogamous. The only exception was with another "sense of lifer." Great rationalist, and she read Atlas, but no, she could not pass the Peikoff Test.
So, here I am -- in case any woman in the audience is looking to overly complicate three lives.
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