March 27, 2005

• My Sexual History: Chapter 2

  Now That I've Got Your Attention Dept.

  "My Sexual History"
  A Personal Journey through the pleasures of the flesh
  An "essay" by Michael F. Nyiri
  (begun in December 2004)

  (NOTE: I am presenting this latest series of "essays" in serial form here on WhenWordsCollide. I am currently penning the fourth chapter of this latest "reminiscence" and I am posting the "second" chapter of that "essay" here for your enjoyment. Last week I dealt with childhood, and this week I am in junior high school, and experience my "very first kiss". The first chapter is supplied as a link for those who might have missed it the first time around. MFN)

  
  1. "Then the boy pees into the girl."
  2. "The Very First Kiss"

  I began to write poetry at age 14, while in middle school, or junior high. Socially, sometimes and to some of the neighborhood children, usually those without a lot of supervision, compared to the constant supervision and punishment at our house, I was sometimes made to feel a misfit and iconoclast. During elementary school I had always been somewhat a loner, simply because I had learned to read earlier than most of the other children, thanks to Mother's having taught me prior to going to school. I always had a book in my hand, and spent most of the recesses sitting under a tree deep at the edge of the schoolyard, immeresed in some fantasy kingdom or space opera. I did have friends, but I also made my own time. And in the seventh grade, in a different school, exposed to new children, I was also exposed to writing by my English teacher.  However, I made friends easily, and in the seventh grade I was part of a clique of friends that included both young boys and girls.

  My gang included Steve, Ryan, and John, but also was rounded out with Susan, Criss, and Judy on the distaff side. Over the years I had developed crushes on girls, in a romantic and non sexual way. I immediately developed a crush on Criss. I fell in love with another Susan, who at 14 would have turned the head of almost any red blooded male. But she belonged to a different clique. Susan was unattainable. Criss was accessible. My carnal lust was untapped, and I still attended church and still planned to preach someday. I felt blessed and pure. My grades at school were excellent. I usually made straight A's. Mr. Gardner, the English teacher, introduced me to the thesaurus, and gave essay writing assignments. If I had a passion in the seventh grade, it was to write, as well as to preach. Mother encouraged all forms of artistic expression, and while my little brother polished his visual art  and drawing skills, I changed from an artist to a writer. My poems at first were comical, and then told stories, and some were even somewhat political, then finally they started reflecting my inner thoughts, dreams, and wishes. My teachers and parents proclaimed me a little genius, and I seemed destined to please all my elders, and this made me proud. The day Criss and I kissed took me to a completely different place in my sexual history. It was so special it had to be planned.

  Having a "girlfriend" was a social necessity in middle school. In our school, boys gave their steady girls their St. Christopher medal. I had to borrow one of these from a Catholic friend of mine, and I presented this to Criss one evening at one of the school dances, which were held every Friday night. She accepted immediately. I didn't initiate the idea that we kiss, however. I was still too innocent of mind and heart to do that. She passed me one of those "quizzes" that kids pass around in school one day in class, which had the "reward" of "a kiss". I remember reading the quiz "prize" and feeling that I was about to step over one of the "boundries" of life, and that this was going to be a special event. I told Criss we would plan this event. It took place almost two weeks later, at a party for another girl, and lasted for a long time. I would now claim that this was a life affirming and changing event for me, awash with memory's thrall. Our lips met, and we breathed each other deeply, probing and sampling the slick taste of our saliva in each other's mouths. I didn't like to be touched. The feeling of kissing a girl of whom I was especially fond, was a feeling of overpowering emotion. The fear of touching abated somewhat. I was in a lovestruck daze for days. I had not yet "made out" although another girl in our group attempted to get me to make out with her on more than one occasion. Criss and I never kissed again, and after eighth grade, I was with a group of students who lived far enough away they had to attend a different high school. Criss wasn't in that group.  Sex didn't really come back into my personal history until after high school ended, with rare exceptions.

  Moviegoing, and watching films on television has always been a special experience for me. I gobbled up books at school, and was terribly fond of reading, but watching movies at the drive in with my parents always became a special event. These were times when we could stay up a little longer than usual, and movie trips to the drive in, packed into the family station wagon, happened on Friday nights when we didn't have to go to school. In the late sixties, drive in theaters offered a full slate of programming, with cartoons, shorts, and two films. My younger brother and sister usually conked out midway through the second feature, but I always stayed up, entranced by the stories and the images projected on a hundred foot screen in front of our car windshield.

  The first "sex stars" I acknowledged were Sandra Dee, Elizabeth Taylor, Yvonne Craig, and Yvetter Mimieux. But I had developed a lasting love for Hayley Mills, when watching the film "The Moon Spinners" on Disney's Wonderful World of Color. With each succeeding film of hers, as the actress grew up and so did I, my love deepend . There was no sex involved. I probably didn't even get erections that I remember while watching any movies involving actresss with whom I was "in love" but I do remember feeling good as the beast within me certainly stirred my juices somewhat.

  Even though the morality of people like my parents caused them to attempt to "hide" or "filter" as much of the secular world with it's sins and temptations from us, nobody who lives in a place like America, where pop culture and advertising spill right into the home through the television screen, can really hide much from their children. It's even worse now, of course. Mother couldn't really stop us from watching movies, but the "sexual" connotations inherent in a lot of films like "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" or "The Carpetbaggers" which aired on television when I was young, soared right over my head. I knew Liz Taylor and Carroll Baker were beautiful, but I didn't want to immediately bed them. The thought of intercourse, as described by Mother after the schoolyard "explanation" still horrified me. On television, I think, besides falling in love with Hayley Mills, I found Julie Newmar in an old comedy series called "My Living Doll" to be delicious looking, and when she appeared "in living color" in the Batman television series, which also featured Yvonne Craig later in the series' run, I began to differentiate between the feelings of puritanical "love" and "sex".

  By the end of my junior high experience, I was ready if not programmed for the sexual revolution. I wonder now in retrospect if my parents "worried" at all about me or my siblings ever "getting in trouble" I rarely remember talking to my parents, my mother especially, about their past. Both parents always "told stories" and I can remember the same "stories" being told many times throughout my childhood. My parents were both in second, and in the case of my mother, third marriages. Mother was 30 when I was born. She had left home after she found her favorite brother's body after his suicide. She hitchiked around the country and had been a singer in a country band. Dad had been a boxer and a railroad man before joining the army in World War II. While growing up, I never knew my parents weren't "always" together. One of the drawbacks to my mother's prison like "nest" shielding her children from the "big, bad, world" was that in time, she finally told them about the real events in her life, and this served to break our trust in what we perceived as "truth".

  I used to get real upset when Mother would relate something which altered what I had been "taught" or thought I knew. After a while, I began to lose trust in the veracity of anything my Mother said. As I got more involved in school and with school friends as I grew up, however, this didn't really bother me, as it probably would have in elementary school two years earlier. We found out that Dad had not only been married, but the mysterious boy shown on the horse in the photograph album was a half brother who was in his early 20s. Mother used to scare us with the story of finding a two headed chicken, but nothing prepared us for the story of her finding Uncle Donald's body. He had taken a shotgun to his head. Mother being involved with at least two other men, her previous husbands, was quite a shock. I became a bit skeptical of what authority figures would tell me after hearing these revelations.

  I didn't make any connotations with sexual longing and love. The fact that my parents had not always been together disgusted me greatly. I did still believe deep in my heart that true love meant you chose your life mate and you "lived happily ever after." Love is what mattered to me as a youngster, not sex, and if sex is what caused my parents to have so many previous relationships, then something must be wrong.

  To Be Continued as it is written. Chapter Three: "High School Daze" to be presented next Sunday, April 3rd.

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