Of Rabbit Fur Coats And Bad Choices

This happened many years ago when I was a pilot living in Tulsa. I think of it from time to time and it’s one of many things in life I wish I had done differently.

A female friend from school and I used to go once every month or two to these land developments that were popular at the time around the Tulsa area…they gave great gifts for going and looking over properties they had for sale and we posed as a couple shopping for a new home. We got a couple sets of cookware, a set of quality dishes and on separate occasions two very nice rabbit fur jackets. Margarita kept one of them; I kept the other with no real idea who I was going to give it too.

At that time I was dating two girls. Stacey was a black girl who had had a tough life growing up. She had been badly beaten by her first husband several times before she left him. She had been raped and she had had to sell herself on the streets a few times to get by but she had gone back to school, got some training and had a pretty good job by the time I met her. She had a nice apartment and was doing her best to make a good life for herself and her 11 year old son. The one thing about her I had a problem with was she did sometimes use drugs. Most of our dates were spent at various bars or clubs around Tulsa. There was a run down Country And Western Place on 11^th Street called Jay’s Place that we always went to on Sunday nights for their jam session and I remember a place called Barristers in a big hotel near down town that we frequented.  One time in particular I remember going there and sitting on a love seat in an area behind the bar with Stacey. Not long after we arrived three more couples walked in and sat together at the bar near us. They kept turning around and looking at us and I finally asked Stacey if she knew them. She said she did not, and that the reason they kept staring was because I was white, she was black…some of them rednecks in Oklahoma still didn’t like that sort of thing. After I found that out, she and I got much, much “friendlier” on that love seat and the redneck couples finally left in a huff, throwing a few dirty looks our way as they stalked out.

Elaine was a white girl who I met when she started taking flying lessons and I ended up being her flight instructor. She came from a small town in South Dakota and grew up on a farm. When I met her she was a MD in her 2^nd year of residency and rotated between two of the Tulsa hospitals and also moonlighted at a Minor Emergency Center in town. Always a straight A student, she was a perfect example of an over achiever. We hadn’t been dating too long at the time this event happened and most of our “dates” were either flying lessons with a quick lunch or dinner after, or I’d go up to the hospital and have dinner with her in the cafeteria when she was on call. As a 2^nd year resident she didn’t have much free time, in fact most of her nights were spent at the hospital.

As time passed, I started seeing less of Stacey, mainly because of her occasional drug use and spending more time with Elaine. One night Stacy was at my apartment and for some reason she went in the closet where that rabbit fur coat was hanging. I still remember the look on her face…it was a combination of excitement, want, need and I think almost lust. She asked where I’d gotten it and I told her about the land developments, which I think she already knew I had been going to. She kind of hinted she’d like it, I think even asked if she could have it, but I lied and said Margarita had decided she wanted it and would be picking it up soon. As you might guess, I ended up giving that jacket to Elaine a few days later. She made a big fuss over it…said how much she loved it and how nice it was…but in the following two or three years we continued to date, I never saw it again. She never wore it and she probably ended up giving it to one of the thrift stores in town.

The gift of that jacket would have meant so much to Stacey, and I don’t doubt that she’d still have it today, 25 years later, but to Elaine it meant nothing at all.

Even today when I think about that I wonder how I could have been so stupid…so blind to the fact a simple gift of something that cost me nothing would have meant so much to someone.