Miss America Lost Her Crown

OCTOBER 12, 2009

As you probably know, my wife Deborah was adopted by Pentecostal parents and raised in the hinterlands of western PA, where she was dragged to church to see people speak in tongues and witness the power of baby Jesus make people walk. A melodramatic and paranoid world where everything unknown is evil and anything fun is a sin.

Her parents wanted her to be a school teacher and marry a preacher, but Deborah had other plans. Well, maybe not plans, exactly — she only knew she wanted to get as far away from the confines of her parents’ fundamentalist world as possible. As soon as she was old enough, she left home and began to drift further and further away until, eventually, she found she’d stopped speaking to her parents altogether.

It took a while for Deborah to make peace with them again, but slowly, over time, she managed to do so. That’s not to say that things don’t flare up now and then, but generally, the relationship is on steady ground. They even talk on the phone once a week, at five o’clock every Sunday.

It was disconcerting then that certain other relatives felt inspired to undo all the hard work Deborah had put into building a new relationship.

“You have no idea what they’re up to,” one of Deborah’s busybody relatives spat into the receiver during a heated phone conversation with Deborah’s parents. “Jamie takes pornographic pictures of Deborah and posts them on the Internet!”

“I don’t believe you,” said Deborah’s father.

“Oh no? Well, we’re going to print them out and send them to you. Then you’ll see!”

(Deborah’s parents don’t own a computer.)

In addition to squealing about the photos, there was also speculation about how Deborah and I manage to live — “I don’t know how they afford to live in New York City,” they said. In other words, who knows what else the deviants are up to! Topless photographs can only be the tip of the iceberg.

All things considered, when Deborah’s parents called to confront her about the accusations, they were surprisingly understanding. Not thrilled, of course, but not entirely heartbroken, either.

“They aren’t pornographic,” Deborah assured them. “It’s no different from what I did when I was modeling.”

“Miss America lost her crown because of racy photos,” warned Deborah’s mom.

A weak argument, to be sure, though Deborah countered with what might be an even weaker one: “Jamie went to art school.”

I’m not sure why, but that makes me squirm.

“Do you want me to take any of them down?” I asked Deborah when she got off the phone.

“Fuck, no,” she said.