MY LIFE AND TIMES... THE WORLD OF SEX - PART FOUR

I could never quite get past my first true love - Sue. My heart was literally broken. I hurt all over. Fortunately, although I disagreed with her decision, the separation was amiable. Still, or awhile I drove around in circles and by her apartment building. Sometimes I would stop and park - stalking in today's standards. And although I had a right to drive and park anywhere on a public road, not only are there better places to be where I didn't have a reminder of the end, but potential confrontations can be avoided.

Around that time I found two mentors at the college where I worked; both English professors in two separate buildings. There names were Virginia and Doug.

Doug worked on the third floor of the building I worked in and had an office on the floor I was responsible for. One day I was talking with an older student about something I had written, a short story. After describing the story to her she said she thought Doug would be very interested. One night Doug was in his office late, I knocked and introduced myself, told him about my story and mentioned the referral. He invited me in, "sit down, please", he said. It began a tutelage that lasted 3 years and it's from Doug I learned what I know about relationships, and what led me to Henry Miller, and several other excellent books.

Doug is the one who helped me get over Sue but offering me sound advice and knowledge.

Virginia on the other hand was also an English professor, in the Science building, corner basement room with lots of windows. A beautiful woman in her 30's, very smart and intelligent. I found her based on my interest in religion, all religions, God and gods and goddesses, magic, sorcery, the meaning of life, the devil, reincarnation, mythology, evil, good, and a basis for morality in society.

However it was Doug who answered that urgent question. The "Thou Shalt Not..." It was Doug who said, "Thou shalt not hurt." He challenged me to find a reason why having that one moral wasn't sufficient. I could not.

Having solved my moral dilemma I moved on.

I was still writing like crazy. A typical day would begin getting dressed and heading for the college cafeteria. I brought books, and my 9"x6" notebook and pens. I chose a table, sat, wrote and over a period of a few hours chat with students. I was also a student, so I had classes to attend. Sometimes I would go visit the library or other times I would walk and fantasise about the Lord of the Rings or other esoteric ideas I came up with. I also began to study, learn and locate medicinal plants out in the forest and fields. I remember always being alone and always smoking a joint. Sometimes I would sit along a brook and write.

For a year or so while all this was happening, I was single. One night a woman named Mary was coming towards me in the hall and stopped to talk with me. I saw her again and asked her out. She said "yes".

Thus began what's essentially turned out to be a life-long friendship. Back then she was girlfriend #3. I was too arrogant with her though. Now I know that but I didn't back then. We had what could only be called a very cool relationship. I saw other women, and she saw other men. But we always made time for each other, and that meant plenty of times overnight, and fucking like rabbits anywhere and everywhere. I fucked her often when she dropped by a classroom I was cleaning. That lasted for several years then she met a guy and got married, and I moved to a distant county and enrolled at a university to get my BA degree.

I've left out one very important part of my experience. As the school custodian I pretty much knew a lot about the people, professors and staff that worked there. The one, most popular activity was wife-swapping as it's called, but husbands swap too. And from there it spread out... finding sex was like finding pot, either completely dry or swamped - rained on if you prefer. Certain women loved sex and ordinarily they found me. Whether I complied was pretty much my choice, though because they liked me I agreed. What a nice guy. Me.

You're maybe forgetting one big fact... my upbringing and the fact I still had my mother calling every 3 days to put me in my place. I experienced a girlfriend one night receive a phone call at 1AM, from her mother, and from where I laid in bed half-hard I could hear her mother call her a slut! The call went on 15 minutes until Maria, that was her name, hung-up. After we curled up tightly together and went to sleep. She was crying and I understood why.

The World of Sex is far beyond what science or the human mind can imagine. The World of Sex involves morals, mores and etiquette.  The World of Sex varies constantly and although parts of it can be identified and documented, it does little good. That's not to say however that general principles don't apply and that men and women don't have a common language they can rely on. They do. It's called talk. Plain and simply talking to one another.

MY LIFE AND TIMES... THE WORLD OF SEX - PART THREE

That was then...

Heck, I was still living at home with my parents.I had dutifully enrolled in the local community college and was pursuing a AS in Electrical technology. I passed two semester of physics, that was not easy stuff. But in my final semester, I would have to take calculus. I had put it off until last.

Around twenty, nearing it, several things changed. It all began with the use of marijuana and my sudden awareness that I needed to move away from home; that I didn't want a BS degree; that since age 8 I'd realized a dream, and I saw a way to make it a reality. At age 8 my aunt gave me Ray Bradbury's "R Is For Rocket". The short story it included called "Frost and Fire" had planted a seed in my mind that suddenly bloomed.

I became the evening custodian and the building I was assigned to was the Fine Arts Center. It was part of my plan based on "Frost and Fire". The Fine Arts building housed ceramics, photography, Painting, Drawing, English and Humanities. From 3 - 11 evenings, I kept the build going with one companion, a half and half Italian and Native American good-guy, joker, hard-worker, and watch-out! We split the building between us, where I had the top of three floors and half the basement - one and a half of the building.

Simultaneously I had moved in an apartment building just off-campus, the land-lord was an undertaker.I had my own apartment, shared the kitchen and bathroom per floor, all of two. My first plan was a woman named Debbie that I'd become close to. I remember bringing her there and then she was gone.

There was plenty of beer around as the drinking age was 18, and plenty of pot. So I was doing very well. Those were my times... as in my title.

Soon after I was at a party and I met this woman. It was a loud party and she was quite popular with the guys. In a few brief sentences we were friends and she said would give me a ride home. She did, dropped me off and drove away.

Once inside my apartment, it dawned on me, I knew her name and approximately where she lived, but I could have asked her for her phone number. Although today it might be considered "stalking", just as it was okay to drink at 18, it was okay to pick up the phone book and start calling. And eventually i got her number, and then I stopped. A week or more had passed, she wouldn't remember me, she didn't even know me, she just gave me a drive home.

And that's it... love doesn't happen (at least very successfully unless you're loaded) easily, but then it does, actually. We call it fate.

A friend, Kevin stopped over. A very good friend. I told him about how agonized I was - that I really felt something for her. But I couldn't do it.

He changed my mind with eight words, "if you don't call her, someone else will".

I called her. She invited me up for dinner with her parents. It was twenty miles and I didn't have a car. I had sold it, gave up driving, bought a ten-speed bike. Kevin said he could pick me up later but would not be able to bring me up there. So I walked.

I didn't hitch-hike, I walked the whole twenty miles, while a storm let loose overhead. It's a walk I'll never forget, around a lake. Rural and dark except with passing cars and headlights. I was twenty, walking twenty plus miles was nothing. Occasionally, that is.

I got there, we had dinner and that was our first date. Our second date we went out to dinner...

Sue was very good-looking, buxom, 5' 2', medium- long black hair, freckles and personality. She took courses at the college so was studying for a AA of Arts. She liked to paint, was great with ceramics, but she talked about Anthropology, and most interesting, she loved to fuck.

The rest is a blur - lovers in love... She lived at home so she had to be staying with me, but I don't remember. I could make something up but hey, it's true. Things didn't come into focus until we moved in together, rented our own house on a quiet street. We did our thing, I was working and as a benefit of the custodial job, tuition free. I ended up amassing 93 credits in those three years; to get an AA, AS I think it was around 50 credits. Most of the credits transferred when I got my BA, saved me a whole semester, done in a year and a half instead of two.

But back to Sue and me. We were in bliss for two really great years living there. Looking back, which I am, I'm 60, for the first time in my life (note to parents - not putting growing up with you down, it's simply just now I am in control) I felt happy, successful. For two years we fucked like rabbits. We were inseparable.

We had two problems. My mother and guys loved her, hit on her a lot. That's a lot of temptation. Regarding my mother, I can only be puzzled why I was never taught in school to stand on my own. My mother still had dominion over me and what I was doing to her was "playing house". Sue by the way is the only woman until then I'd brought home as a guest. It didn't go well. My mother was being abusive and it was affecting me; calls every 2 or three days. Guilt trips. Grow up!

It all fell apart... and pretty much that ends chapter one; something I've never been able to get past before now. That's hardly the end.

MY LIFE AND TIMES... THE WORLD OF SEX - PART TWO

To me, human sexuality, mating, and the games people play are interesting. I was raised having to attend church, and sex certainly wasn't a subject being taught or preached, except in the Puritanical sense. I caught on rather fast; sex was taboo.

In high school where in the late 1960's we were taught about sex in health class, for one semester, the sex act was described in the showing of drawing of male and female genitalia. And from there it was all downhill, about pregnancy, STD's, and other harms. Although I suspect half my senior class had been fucking like rabbits since the 7th grade, I was a virgin, and I thought I was proud of it.

I should say this is not going to be an X-rated post, R, yes. Actually NR.

Yes I was still a virgin graduating HS, having had one girlfriend for a whole week, in 8th grade.

Well there was that one time, but we didn't have sex. My sister, a year and a half younger than myself, had a male friend named Mack, who was a big guy, toned, who lived with his uncle in a mobile home outside of town. Through my sister I found Mack to be a good friend.

One night I stopped by, a senior in HS, to have a few beers. There was a woman present, sitting on the couch. A little older than me, long dark hair and brown eyes. She wasn't overweight nor slender.

Mack, said, "she's yours, if you're interested".

I fought back my panic and my hormones kicked in. I looked at her and I asked, like I remember, hell, all I know is the next thing I'm naked next to her in a bedroom, and I think, no I know it was the most memorable one nighter I've ever had. We kissed and fondled each other, at one point Mack stuck his arm through the door and while handing me a condom, said, "thought you might need a first aid kit".

But I didn't use it... sex was taboo. All I remember other than kissing her was when I got home my lips were still sizzling. How ironic I could have been the poster child for Abstinence Education back then but nobody had thought of the idea or otherwise asked.

From there I went to flirting with the attractive older women at the department store I worked at. I flirted with some my age too, in fact, story of my life,  one of my childhood friends had already had sex with one of the cutest babes that worked at the store - yes, I believe him, and he said she loves sex, she's easy.

I asked her out and she said yes. We went out for dinner, which according to my friend had been unnecessary, but we did, and then we drove out of town to park off the road, on the dirt, at a college park. At first I felt we had to talk... until she said, "isn't there something you'd rather be doing than talking?"

After a long pause, the crickets telling me something, I finally leaned over and kissed her. Within seconds we were undressing each other. I had her shirt off. bra off and I was in the act of sucking her nipples when there was a loud knock on the car's window. "Police!"

Busted, but not really, we got dressed and had to drive away and I was so embarrassed and clueless I didn't think to go elsewhere. We never talked again.

I did however find a girlfriend, which will end this part of the post.

At the same job a co-worker gave me his sister's number. Said she'd love to find a guy and he already fixed it up, I just have to call.

I did. Her name was Denise. We met and it was love at first sight... long brown hair, slender, brown eyes... we did all manner of things, and always returned to her house, ended up on her couch where we kissed and I could feel her breasts outside her shirt. She kissed closed lip. I wanted to french kiss, nope, won't happen she implied. Apparently the guy just prior to me, let's say they french kissed and he dumped her, so she wouldn't let me french kiss her.

Now I'm somewhere between 17 and 20 years old then. A virgin. Not a sworn to abstinence. No such thing back then anyways. And we were in love and so far what frustrated me was french kissing and feeling her breasts under her shirt.

It never happened and she's unmarried as am I to this day.

Tear!

No, I lost my virginity in a state park. With 5 childhood friends we rented a large cabin and settled in for a few days. Now to understand the dynamics there were those of my friends who had no problem talking to the girls and going off with them. They could also drink, alcohol and a lot of it. One friend, William, was as naive as I was. That first night we left the party happening and wandered back to the cabin. Up came a dog, and a woman followed...

Then another woman. We all looked at each other, the dog came back, one of the women picked it up. William started talking first to the woman closet to him, I to the woman closet to me who wasn't holding the dog. I said, "we have a cabin up the road, would you like some Orial cookies?"

She said, "sure". The other woman lured William back down to the house as I walked up the road holding hands with the woman whom I don't even know if I ever asked her her name.

She was quite drunk, on Black Velvet, and often fell into me. The cabin was empty when we got to it - fortunate. She wore a tank top and jeans, and as we got into bed her breasts rolled from the tank top. We had the best sex ever, considering I didn't even know who she was.

When we finished I didn't walk her home... we kissed good-night and when she left I washed my penis in the community spigot. I had worn a condom, but I really believed what I was taught. Sex was taboo.

The lasting memory is the feel of her body, her breasts and the smell of Black Velvet.

"Wow, sure", I said, more quietly than I felt at the moment, and suddenly in two seconds I was surging with arousal. "Come in", I said.

"Why do men need sex?" she asked. I didn't know how to answer her. So I didn't. I offered her a beer. She said she had some beers at her apartment, would I like to come over. I said, "sure, thanks".

We had a beer, talked and gradually removed our clothes until we were in our underwear - it was Winter so we had had layers on. From there it was on to her bedroom where we got totally naked and had totally great sex - I had asked her prior to the sex, "are you using birth-control?"

She said, "yes".

They didn't have college degrees for abstinence back then or for sex education either... this was college in the 1970's and the only good course being taught was "Human Sexuality, by a psychology professor which I had taken and found very interesting and useful. Otherwise having sex was something I learned right out from the box, from experience.

We both climaxed together, me naked inside of her, and as we laid closely together, that's when she leaned out from the bed, fished around underneath her bed, then she found and pulled her diaphragm  out from under her bed, with it's anti-sperm gel. She said, "we need to insert this".

I don't know why... but this upset me. I didn't want to blame her, but I didn't want to blame myself either. Instead I did nothing. I dressed and walked back to my apartment and never saw her again. Just another potentially good relationship that didn't happen because I was bull-headed and confused. Seemed to happen a lot for many sorts of reasons.

The fact is I do really love women. It goes way back to my early childhood. I was the first-born, my sister came into the world a year and a half later. She was 3 and a half when I was five. By age four to five she had grown a lot. So when I was 7, and she five an a half... she had friends... actually we all did in that quaint, small town neighborhood that reminds me of "Leave It To Beaver". From early on all I seemed to do make acquaintances. I knew nothing about making friends, other than I began to hang out more with my sister and two other girls in the neighborhood.

No this story does not spiral out of control in an epilog about cross-dressing and playing doctor - though the latter we may have tried once, or twice.

Childhood really does last forever. Which is why adults need to ensure it is a very good childhood.

MY LIFE AND TIMES... THE WORLD OF SEX - PART ONE

I've actually wanted to write about this topic for years; a confessional of sorts about myself. Though we writers have a name for this, called, "Autobiographical Fiction", it's fiction as real as if it really did happen, but written in a way that it didn't.

The question some people might have is why? Why would we feel the need to do that? Why not just tell it like it is? Good question, but I didn't invent this genre. It's almost always written in first person mode, The author as the main character, living or re-living their fictional existence, telling their story.

When a famous person writes a biography, that's great. We expect the truth, a non-fictional truth. However, an author or writer wanting to tell their own story, that's tricky. It's one thing to have a world leader tell about his victories, conquests and his harem of women slaves, it's yet another for a guy to write a book admitting to sleeping with his brother's wife for the past 10 years, having been the father to two of his brother's four children. So the writer, rather than destroy himself writing the truth, sets the affair in another place and time, under different circumstances.

Part of the reason is that the story inherits the magic of fiction. The writer is still bound by telling their story, however with license to iclude fiction the story can take on a bigger than life existence. To label something non-fiction is to endorse it as the truth and who wants to write something that's akin to a legal document; that "...on the night of such and such at 9:01 PM exactly", this happened?

Writers are people too. We don't always keep exact notes and proof of such and such. Without proof how do we prove that something sworn as true in a book is actually true, and who the hell cares really, unless we're reading a First Lady's Biography.

Myself? I know and have memories of life events, but to put them into a form that makes the timing and exact details legally binding as non-fiction is fantasy. I can't do it. So writers devised this method of writing about the truth, making it believable, without having to proclaim it's the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Also, there is often more to the truth than what non-fiction allows. There are the writers perceptions, hopes, fears, dreams.

I met a young woman today, we talked and she told me about how she climbs mountains, hikes in Alaska and other remote territories, para-glides, and yet she's afraid of flying, riding a bike or motorcycle. She's actually witnessed several tragic deaths, a plane crash, hikers falling off from mountains - "...all so quietly they died", she said.

My life, your life - it happens. There's no stopping it until death; we alone are the only person aware of it while it, our life happens. That's the key part to understanding what's called the Human Condition. It's inescapable. As Jim Morrison of The Doors said, "No one gets out of here alive". Scary stuff! But fortunately there is a lot to occupy our lives during our time here on earth.

Like books...

Of the many authors, books I've read in my life, I've been the most influenced by those written by Henry Miller, 1891 - 1980. When it comes to relationships and sex between a man and woman, life in the 1920 and 30's, life in general, perseverance, love, agony, survival and controversy, although his personality was admittedly machismo, he possessed a very kind-heart and a very humane side, a sensitive side.

Henry Valentine Miller - Author

The idea of being an author always fascinated me and motivated me. Yes, I am a writer, but to be an author one must write a short-story or novel. Journalists, for example, are writers, until they publish a book and then they too become authors. To be an author is a victory, an achievement, though much easier to come by than being, a famous painter or sculptor, in my opinion

Most of us really wants to be somebody. To be loved, to love. To have companionship, and a partner, and friends. My recent topic about Dabrowski's Theory highlights to me that it is possible, to be yourself in a relationship and in life. That is also what Henry Miller presents, the real world and a hero that lives it all himself, accepting everything that comes his way.