RITE OF PASSAGE - Part Three - NO CEREMONY

SEX!!!

Most of what I remember revolved around sex. It came on for me around age 15... but I didn't begin to "feel" it until around 16. By 18 I was entering my fevered stage... what is commonly called blue balls. It's no joke. It's real.

Meantime, I'm at that age where I've lived with my parents in what we call "home" for 18 years. I graduated High School. In 1972 I could legally drink alcohol and that's what I did. I had a job, was to start college in the fall, even had a girlfriend. And a car. Ideas, hidden dreams, germinating mind-plants sown by thousands of books, and running free as a child exploring everything and everywhere.

I'd survived! I was an adult. Now what???

At age 18 I can honestly say there was absolutely nothing concrete within my grasp - there were only memories of having done most of what was expected of me. I didn't question the "Grand Scheme" of things. I would go to college, get a professional job, get married, buy a house, have kids, be successful. Simple.

So why did I feel nothing?

The reality was I didn't fit... I had no future; I was at a nexus, the past an image of learning, struggling, being bullied. I hadn't even gone to graduation. The whole idea of the event made me anxious... I felt little connection to anyone in my graduating class, and the rehearsal was something from a horror show, the black guy on stage describing how marijuana led him to heroin, and in a stand-off with police he'd swallowed a dozen hypodermic needles used to inject the drug. Then they had Elmo (real name), our school custodian come on-stage, I think simply to thank him for his years of work, and my classmates booed him off the stage - a freakin' janitor, afterall.

Boo, hiss, asshole...

Too much to take... it seemed wrong, the whole show.

I did my college, 1 and 1/2 years of it... worked my job, did what I could to party on the weekends. But it was a no go...

College didn't inspire me. My girlfriend, when I saw her it was at her parents house, always on her couch, fully clothed, making out with closed lips, able to feel her breasts beneath her multiple sweaters... And that was it.Conditions at home worsened as my mother tried harder to impose rules and regulations. Despite their rule that if it was legal I could do it, I had to hide my beer in my room. I liked one beer after work nights. Legal to buy it, had to sneak it in the house, shut myself in my room at night to drink it.

Around age 19 my friends and I, 4 of us, went camping in a state park... we all shared renting a cabin. It was a popular park, lots of people camping. The idea for my friend Bill, and I was to lose our virginity. My other two friends already had. They found it easy to pick-up women in the park. Bill and I not so easy. And it had looked liked we'd failed once again as we walked back to our cabin around 9PM.

A small dog suddenly ran up the into the road, followed by her owner, a reasonably attractive women wearing a halter top. Another woman followed. My friend and i started talking to them... to the one in the halter top I could only think to ask, "I have Oreo cookies at the cabin, would you like some?" She smiled and said "yes"... my friend went off with the other woman. I took my friend to our cabin... remember the strong scent of whiskey on her breath, how her full breast fell out from under the halter top as she laid in my cot. And afterwards... she walked home on her own, because although I'd worn a condom, HS had filled me with gross fears of VD and I was outside washing myself in lots of cold water and soap.

Afterwards I returned home to the same old, to my girlfriend who laid under me on her couch like a cold, closed clam... and in my mind the seeds of discontent were growing...

To be continued...