Ah the beautiful mysteries of sex. Of all the possible permutations of human interactions, none has been so little understood, and yet so utterly compelling. We are compelled to embark on a journey of understanding, yet the paths we take are dictated by a kaleidoscope of nature, nurture, circumstance and chance. For some the paths are short, narrow, flat and paved and yet for others they are long winding and forked at every damn blind turn. I must confess that I myself fall into the latter camp.
As evidence of this, I offer my very first step on the path to personal sexual self discovery, which, like many, was masturbation. I was about twelve, laying in my bed, absentmindedly scratching a primal itch when something magical happened – my penis erupted with a mystery substance, which I only noticed after the waves of seretonin and dopamine had cleared my shuddering brain. Amazing, this. And being twelve, and largely ignorant, I came to the only conclusion one could – that this phenomena could only happen at nine o’clock at night. I had stumbled upon the magic hour, and oh how I could not wait for bed time the following night! Of course, at nine the following night, it worked again and thus my theory was proven. And so I was born as a sexual being, taking my first steps in a bizarrely misguided yet harmless direction. And so it went.
I was fourteen and her name was Cathy Page. She was a 16 year old half phillapina catholic school girl who lived in the neighborhood, and oh man… oh MAN did she get my motor running. In hind sight, red flags were everywhere, but the lust of a 14 year old boy can blind one such that it could make Ray Charles look like a sharpshooter. Her mother was a Philapina woman who had married an white Army guy, who had then promptly left her in single motherhood. This lead to a catholic post traumatic race and garment based over protection of her daughter that bordered on pathological. I, being a young punk rocker, always wore a bunch of surplus army stuff that I had modified to flaunt my budding ideology. This attire, and my courtship of her daughter developed in her a nervous tic, as if she were holding back some sort of PTSD infused venom that could explode at any minute. Still she was polite enough, though, and I returned the favor out of pure fear.
Being both from single mothers who worked 9-5, me and cathy always had a couple hours afterschool in which we were semi unattended. I say semi unattended because there dwelt at Cathy’s house an individual named “auntie”. Auntie was a severely mentally disabled woman who would wander the house in her muumuu making strange guttural noises and obsessing over the availability of breakfast cereal. It was fairly easy to lock auntie out of Cathy’s room, though the noises were somewhat distracting. We would be making out on Cathy’s bed when from behind the wall would come a ‘Muaaaaah! Cheerios! Cheerios!” Small obstacle though, cause I was making out with Cathy Page. Auntie could have set off a bomb and I wouldn’t have blinked.
It was Cathy’s idea to “go all the way”. I believed she had done so already, but I sure as hell hadn’t. I found the idea compelling, in an “oh jesus christ I am the luckiest kid alive” type manner. We planned to do it just as soon as I could get some condoms. Ah., but my friends, this was the time before the plague, before condoms were in bowls at restaurants and in classrooms and every damn place imaginable. No, no. One had to go to the drug store and ask the pharmacist! Oh yes. I lurked in many a Walgreens the next couple days, looking for a non judgmental looking male pharmacist who had at the moment not a customer in sight. My moment came, and I made the deal. It was on!
So it was time, and as we lay naked in her bed in the afternoon, I suddenly came… to the realization that I had no idea what I was doing. Like so many other times in my life though, I took a deep breath and took the plunge. I could go on to describe that first feeling that has come to define some of my best and worst decisions in life, but it is not germane, and I only have seven minutes, which as it turns out was longer than I lasted that dafternoon. Succinctly, I came. As it turns out Cathy, like so many of you mysterious humans of the female persuasion, had only one way that she could come. Seriously, what is it with you folk and your special secret techniques? Jesus. She would extricate my semi hard wet penis and gyrate upon it. I knowing nothing, assumed this was normal protocol for intercourse, (and carry that misconception all the way to college) and seeing a the sensation was not entirely unpleasant, I lay back and enjoyed Cathy’s moans and groans as they mingled with the far away cries requesting Captain Crunch. Life was weird, but good.
Well, good, that is until I heard a new sound, a scary sound – the sound of the big deadbolt on the front door clicking over. This could only mean one thing, Momma was home early. General panic ensued. I was trapped, and was forced to slip into Action Hero mode. I did the only sensible thing and leapt, stark naked out the back second story window into the back yard. It was a good five minutes before Cathy was able to sneak back to her room and throw me out my clothes… well most of them anyway. She had neglected to toss me my shoes and socks.
Without a way to contact her I found my self on the horns of a dilemma. I got dressed, snuck out the alley between the houses, across the street to the laundromat and called her house on the pay phone. It was my intention to call and ask if she could toss my shoes out the window, which she did. What I hadn’t considered though was that the door to the alley had locked behind me. Now my shoes were in the back yard, I was unshod in a cheesy laundromat, and cathy was inside trying to explain why she was taking a nap in the middle of the afternoon. Ah young love!
My friends, I had no choice but to steel my resolve, summon my most powerful jedi powers, and march straight up to her door shoeless. I knocked and was greeted by Momma. “Hello Mrs. Page, is Cathy home?” I said trying with all my might to create the most magnetic eye contact ever conceived, anything, anything to keep her from looking down. Fortunately for me, either the powers of fate, or perhaps my freshly died pink and black hair, allowed me to pull this off, and I was granted access without a hitch. I subtly retained my shoes and spent the rest of the afternoon being the polite innocent young suitor that any Momma would like.
I have since read many books on human sexuality, and to this day I have never found a chapter on “Naked and Airborne”. If you have any suggestions, just let me know.
