Well, let me see……when I was a young teen, sex was fairly new and not a lot of people knew about it. When I found out what it was all about, I realized then, that the reason I had never heard anyone talk about it was because they were afraid people would think they were insane. Seems it made you babble and slur the English language, made you feel like you were drowning in marshmallows and the ‘event’ was so intense, that it made you forget your mother’s face. Sex was the only thing, next to a mule’s kick in the head, that could stop your brain from making brain waves. In my case the waves were more like “flutters”.

    I digress…..this great mystery was unfolded to me in the backseat of my 56 Ford, on the night of June 14th, 1964 at approximately 10:15 pm with a girl named Susan. I was to remember her face for decades to come, but not her last name or anything about her prior to June 14^th, 1964. There was a light misting rain and I remember the car windows were fogged up.  Under The Boardwalk by the Drifters was playing on the radio as I clumsily explored Susan’s nether regions. It was not long before the mule kicked me in the head and I was grunting like some Paleolithic cave dweller. The event was soon over.

    I was totally embarrassed over my behavior. Shaking, babbling, eyes crossed and confused as what to say next. It had been an intense 20 seconds……I was a mess!  I remember very little of Susan’s predicament, except for her shouting OUCH! several times, but I’m sure it was awkward for her as well. From this experience I now knew why sex was only whispered about behind the school gym in shadowed corners and then only among bonded friends. It was humiliating! I was all-city on our football team, Honor Roll and president of the school’s glee club and as a maturing young man, I was a walking fountain of testosterones. But, in the backseat of that Ford….I was a sniveling little runt of a teen on the verge of wailing in anguish over this bizarre epiphany.

    In time, like all calamities of life, the magnitude of what I had experienced finally flourished into a plethora of emotions. The backseat of that Ford soon became an alter of love where I took a number ‘vessel virgins’ to be sacrificed. More vessel than virgin in most cases but none the less, it became sacred. Years later, when I sold the car, it was almost like the dying of a good friend mixed with the confusion of a divorce. A mixture of good memories, shame, selfishness, bewilderment and absolute ecstasy. It was not until my thirties that I discovered sex was a tool used by women to enslave and punish men. It had come a long ways from the backseat of my 56 Ford.