Girls, Guitars, and Typewriters/ Kiss Me, Kate/ How I Lost My Virginity

[Rich Engle]

This is another set of pieces I'm playing around with. Wear goggles and hip-waders.

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“Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.”-Mark Twain

Girls, Guitars, and Typewriters

It was Star Trek, of all goddamn things, that turned me into a writer.

Granted, the year before the showed aired in 1966, I had been fitted for my first pair of glasses. I had fallen behind in school because, it was discovered, I could not read the board (something that escaped my attention, mainly because I wasn’t paying much attention in the first place). It was caused because I read incessantly, often up too close, or at night with a flashlight, or both. But for all those books, I remember virtually none of them. When Star Trek aired in 1966, it was around the time that prices on color televisions had finally dropped, and for that reason, my father finally caved in and bought a set. Oddly enough, at this proud celebration of technological upgrade, that magnificent moment where the “on” switch was first pulled, there it was, in all its galactic, flaring fury: I was intellectually unaware that it was my first visceral metaphysical experience. I was equally unaware that it would be the catalyst to a life that would definitely take me “…where no man has gone before.” Hell, yeah!

A few episodes later, I found myself half-dozing through another elementary school English class. I had terrible allergies, allergies requiring antihistamine, and the effect was exquisitely dulling. And then it came: trial by fire. We were told we had 15 minutes to produce a “creative writing” piece, which I figured to mean write as much as you could about anything you wanted. Do it now. Go. Do it with your pencil on yonder double-spaced kid paper (this was my first experience with “writer’s block”). Five minutes in, the anxiety set to work. What to do? The process seemed medieval to me. What else? I was wearing what I considered to be a fair replica Trek outfit: blue Banlon shirt, black chinos, black boots (one of the first dorks was I). Out of pure survival instinct I managed to scratch some schmarm, maybe two paragraphs, ending with “the last and best frontier.” What a shit embellishment; a shit embellishment that gave me the top grade in the class and put me into accelerated English programs for the rest of my school years. Ah, if only all positive reviews came so easily.

That went on for years and was no more remarkable than anything else along such lines. By then we had moved from Jersey back to the land of my birth, that being Cleveland, Ohio. What I learned from that was useful: fond childhood memories are great, but it doesn’t have much to do with revisiting them in the real. That was the case with Cleveland, plus interest. I was used to driving into Manhattan, feeling that hot buzz that you can’t get anywhere else. We drove into Cleveland on a Sunday, and to me it looked like the aftermath of a mass genocide. Dark, dirty, empty. Perplexing, man.

And that was that. Provincial, Midwest horror. Enough said.

I don’t care what anyone says to the contrary, because I know better: the real reason 99% of all males want to play guitar is because they are convinced it will help them to get girls. Period. For one thing, electric guitars are the ultimate high-tech phallic symbol. They are huge, thrusting penis-weapons sporting cool electronica and other appealing doo-dads. The amplifiers are like muscle cars with loud exhausts. I’m not saying that there isn’t more to it than that, I’m just pointing out the true raison d’être. Consider Jimi Hendrix—granddaddy of psychedelic rock guitar, innovator, conduit to the cosmos—and major cockhound. Guitars and girls will forever be entwined.

I had taken note of this phenomenon very early on. It seemed like anytime I saw guys playing guitars, there were girls around—essentially, it was a constant. The Beatles, and even the fucking Monkees, for Chrissake! Granted, these were all high-profile pretty boys, but the fact remained that guitars were squarely in the picture. And that was just on the macro level! The micro level was even more disturbing: grotesque, greasy trolls of my own age were enabled with Svengali-like powers over chicks I found unattainable, all by virtue of this magical instrument! On a certain level, it angered me, what with the fact that I had been ever-so-studiously playing the piano since I was nine years old, and could find no such correlation between it and my Primary Goal<tm>, with the exceptions of certain concert pianists and swarthy jazz musicians. Common sense dictated, it seemed, that if I was already putting in that sort of sweat in the first place, the possibility of achieving a second purpose (scarcely to mention my Primary Goal<tm>) while doing so required swift, corrective action: I needed to get a guitar, stat. Following this colossal display of brain power, it also occurred to me that I would probably have to learn how to play the damn thing, too. But meanwhile, there was work to be done. This would begin, of course, in the form of haranguing my parents, where I found myself being stonewalled.

I had, long before, come to grips with the fact that I was a skinny, snot-nosed geek. Mainly, this acceptance had come as the result of a number of beatings, lovingly administered by the prototypical dysfunctional, oversized, self-esteem-challenged mutants that inhabit most schoolyards and suburban neighborhoods. This environmental condition does not require probing, because of its obsequiousness. More sadly, awareness of my geek status often came in the form of the traditional verbal blood sports; I found the ones launched from females particularly debilitating. At age eleven, my first day back in Ohio, I took yet another beating when I rode to the end of my new street, wasting no time getting acquainted with the locals. This, however, tore it for my parents. They knew I had in interest in what was then only called either judo or karate (which was true, but truer that I like Bruce Lee’s television character Kato in “The Green Hornet” series). I was placed into mandatory training with a very large Korean. By the time I was looking for a guitar (ever mindful of my Primary Goal<tm>), I had acquired considerable expertise in the combative arts, and had, to my great joy, eliminated the problem of beatings, mostly through similar, but more effective actions. The point here is that I was able to barter the anti-beating skills to a new friend who, he said, could teach me guitar. This accomplished a good part of my goal, but no electric guitar was to be had—instead, his old, warped folk guitar, which I purchased for eighteen dollars. It was horrifically ugly, and when you played it, it felt like your fingers were scraping barbed wire—not exactly a babe magnet. And, like in all the now-classic rock history movies, of course the bitch wouldn’t play in tune, ever. More mundane—the first lesson was how to play “Gloria.” Actually, this was no worse than anything else, at least you get to learn three chords, which is two more than one needs to feel the excruciating pain that is associated with beginning to play on a git-whanger (ED: one of many hundreds of slang terms for a guitar, in this case a hillbilly one). The work began—it would be three more years before I owned an electric guitar, and, at least so it appeared at the time, I would not need one to achieve my Primary Goal<tm>. Soon, I found that any old guitar would do, just like any old typewriter will do when you’re pounding out prose. And so, then, arrives this girl, to complete the sonorous, ringing triad chord that was about to not just blow out my ears, but my mind and my heart along with them.

Kiss Me, Kate

At sixteen, I had acknowledged the utter import, the sacredness, of many things. The sums of these things represented my desire, my aesthetic, and without doubt my unbridled naïveté, which will never (and I know this) completely exit my soul.

Man, that sounds Romantic as Hell, doesn’t it? Well, in any event it’s not—what it is, is some pretty fucked up shit, at least if you’re me, looking at that misplaced, and utterly pointless sense of purity, thirty-five years later. I have always been a Romantic; the only difference now is that I have accepted it as a kind of bittersweet liability.

But in those early days, the Romantic sentiment obfuscated any sensible thoughts towards protection of heart and psyche: I was innocent and exposed: I was shark bait. I was ready to risk all, even if it meant being crushed. Having never actually been crushed, I viewed that possibility in a melancholy, noble sort of fashion; to have felt love at all being still elevated, even after love was lost. This sweet, longing sadness plays well in the great literature, the great films, but in life it is the equivalent of a point-blank gut wound: and speaking on behalf of the gut wound, those often can heal, where the other will remain with you for life, in some form or another.

Being a young Romantic was thoroughly enabled by the education system—it was encouraged in those of us with a literary bent, because it meant we would read more classics, and write better papers. To read Shelly, say, for the first time, mind dead-sharp and hormones flowing like oil through a transcontinental pipeline, you are physiologically altered. The Romantics had a way of turning off everything in the world but for the beauties, the intensities, and the overwhelming draw of one lover to another. Although I was writing many papers, and swimming in the sweet waters of love, so to say, I found it ponderous that I could produce no Romantic work of my own. I later discovered why: I had not yet had my ass handed to me.

Young intellectuals are inevitably a tight-knit subculture in high schools: there is an intermingling of art, literature, music, and theater. Eventually, you are all together, in one fashion or another. My first year of high school had followed a long, longing summer, a summer spent greatly in aloneness, wherever I actually was. I had been doing a lot of sailing, and one day met a beautiful girl who was sailing alone as well. We sailed that summer through, side-by-side. The problem was that I had no personal skills, at least not in the areas required, and the only time I ever saw her was on the water. Romantic? Yes. Excruciating? Without a doubt. But, fancying myself a Romantic, I converted it into a sort of coming-of-age movie (the mood and visuals, but not the plot, reminding me of The Summer of ’42) and, after wallowing in that sweet memory, compartmentalized it like men do. I entered school, then, trailing this sweet sort of residue.

Right there on day one is when it started up on me. I was standing in a hallway, looking at a bulletin board, when Eileen made her first stage entrance into my life. She was clearly Irish (a trend that would stay with me for more than thirty years, and I still do not know why): pale-skinned, long, flowing chestnut hair, beautiful, incredibly long, muscular legs. She was not an overtly beautiful girl, exuding more of a natural and sometimes almost boyish presence. Eileen had purity about her, and she did not jibe well with most of the other girls, though she did have a couple of friends. She seemed very much from another era, in her appearance and words. She was wearing a light linen spring dress, as opposed to the more provocative styles of the ‘70’s high school girl. She moved differently—she strode very aggressively, quick long strides, making it hard to keep up with her. I don’t remember exactly what we talked about; it was brief, and I was pretty mesmerized. She wasn’t mesmerizing me in the classic sexual sense; it was more of a general presence that I couldn’t fully define. I am sure that she did not experience anything on the level I had, because she moved so fast. But this chance meeting, this unique female presence, it took residence deep inside of me. The last class of the day was an English literature one, and I was pleased to discover that she was in it as well. But we did not even speak, being occupied with our respective study groups. At that point, though, the hook was set and, for the first time, I felt the fire: nothing else mattered, all roads led to Eileen; my mind was infundibuliform, distilling every thought down to this strange new essence.

The next morning, I desperately constructed an ad hoc plan. My assumption was that she passed by that same bulletin board daily at around the same time on the way to a class, so the thing to do would be park myself there and try for a repeat performance. I noticed that before leaving home for classes, I had engaged in an extremely detailed series of lavish grooming rituals, which, I felt, had achieved no considerable improvements. I arrived at said location, feeling trepidation of course, but generally I was nonplussed, which is a fairly helpless state, if you think about it. But, she did arrive, as I suspected she might. Again, I do not remember the small talk to any great extent, other than one thing I threw against the wall that worked: I told her I played guitar, and she told me she did, too; that she sang, played, and occasionally toyed around with an autoharp. This was an encouraging gap, and I lightly exploited it, mentioning that I enjoyed folk music, and would love to have a play with her (yes, I said that, and thinking back on it, it was a blatant Freudian slip). She said that she would be interested in such a possibility. That meant to me that my initial theory about guitars and girls was truly valid, because had I not possessed that card, there would have been no way in. In respect to this, and many times to follow, down the road of life, I continue to find the theory to be functional; the problem is that the results are highly variable, unstable, unpredictable, and often flat-out deadly to the heart. But it definitely creates new possibilities—just like playing Russian roulette will, I guess. In any case, I had achieved an alternative to diffidence, which was ever-hovering about in the background, waiting to create that zombie-like state of non-thought that all thinking men fear when attempting contact with the female species.

From there, it sort of flowed on. I think that it was more of a commonality all around, all of us that were advanced literature students. The big thing, so to speak, was that some of us were studying both literature (American and British), and journalism. Journalism was extremely unique, in the form of a teacher named Jan Denman. Jan looked sort of like Marty Feldman; in fact he looked a lot like Marty Feldman, replete with buggy eyes. Jan had a proactive approach: he had us writing, doing newspaper paste-ups, and reading the Watergate book (Nixon) called All the President’s Men. This was extremely progressive teaching, at the time, and it affected me deeply. Eileen, on the other hand, was not studying journalism; she was high-jumping and doing theater. Theater would later become a driving theme in my life, after I married a costume designer. Maybe it already was off the rip. I did not understand the theatrical world, at least on a personal level, because I was basically introverted (even though I played music in front of people, I kept my head down and “felt” the music, rather than projected its presence).

High school in the Midwest always has had many variants, flavors, colors, and ours bore no exception to that. To qualify, it is not, actually that flavorful; rather, an explored range of the mundane, with occasional exceptions that, at least to one there, represent brightness. “Balanced” life in twentieth- and twenty-first century America does have a certain type of stability to it, to be sure; but it trades off to culture. And I applaud the difference, at least to a point. The opposite can be seen in Euro-culture, where the aesthetic takes over the reality. I find this curious, because, at least early on, there was a farmland culture there that should have instilled some sticking qualities that you see resident in American culture (at least in the pure form, moving past all the blatant “Ugly American” stupidity, running rampant as it does). To me, polarizing this, all I see is being obliviously fucked, just in different fashions. But for us, we were privy enough to the arts, and writing, and it was on. At the time, the high-school newspaper had become defunct, due to lack of interest and talent. Jan, to his credit, wanted to resurrect the paper (it would be a working model for teaching journalism). A core group evolved, which included (to my great delight) Eileen and I. This would involve extensive, face-to-face work, and the territory was wide open. We ended up having side-by-side columns. I don’t remember much about her first one, I think it was rather friendly and engaging, as opposed to mine, which was an attack on general apathy in the student population, and the deteriorated state of the restrooms, replete with pictures. As important as this journalistic endeavor was, the real motivator, for me, was potential face time with Eileen. Ah, to meet on the artistic playing field (this is how I viewed such a small thing)! It did, in fact turn out that way, because of the nature of publishing small newspapers during that time, which involved staying up late and doing manual paste-ups. Pathetic, really, but it should have showed me even then the expedient to which a man will resort to engage the presence of a woman.

Where would such a pursuit be without complications? You prefer to do without them, of course, but the reality of romance rarely comes without surprises and annoying developments. She was, after all, a theater person, and a very strong competitive singer. She was also universally recognized as the biggest bitch-on-wheels in the whole school. I found this assessment to be a bit overrated, but I understood. When it was announced that the senior play would be the musical “Kiss Me Kate” (based on Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew”) there was no questioning who would play Kate, aka “The Shrew.” I was, of course, very happy for her, but also conscious of the fact that it would mean hanging out with the high school theater crowd, which ranged from already good friends to catty, self-consumed gay boys, most of whom weren’t yet aware that they were gay. It was the uber-clique of cliques, and but for a few exceptions, I did not jibe well with most of them; my social circles were interesting, but not high-profile—I was the founder of the karate club, I played on the chess team, and so on. I was still deep in the pure geek category any way you cut it, but for being exempt from beatings, of course. Being paired with Eileen provided a certain freakish notoriety as well. But, your friends are your friends, provided you have any of those in the first place. Socially, things became dicey, putting some pressure on our relationship, a relationship which was already bizarre in the first place.

When I first met her, she was dating an older guy from another school, an Italian Stallion named (of course) Tony. I could never figure out why she was going out with Tony, in that they truly had nothing in common, and he was not at all her type, being your standard chunky curly hair swarthy Tony model. I think it was because he took her to dinner once, and gave her a cashmere sweater. But, to my great triumph, she decommissioned him almost immediately. Ah, to feel that first man-kill upon entering the blood sports. I thought so, anyway, but sometime after this sweet victory, I found out that I was not the entire reason—she would be with me for a year, and during that whole year she would be obsessively in love with a good friend and classmate of mine. He, on the other hand, loathed her.

But what, you might now wonder, of my Primary Goal<tm>? Given all this socio-density, had I managed to move closer to it? Indeed so, just everything but the brass ring. This did not displease me at all, since I assumed arriving at the final destination was only a matter of patience; in fact, she had promised that to me as a birthday present. She was a passionate kisser (even though she wore braces), which is always the most important thing. She had tiny, beautiful breasts. Her upper body was short, because she was all long legs and muscle below. This was my first introduction to a woman’s body, and my relentless home-studies served me surprisingly well.

When I say “home studies,” I am referring to the (hopefully) vast archive of sexual knowledge, artifacts, and literature that any man has available both in his mind, and at his fingertips, at any given moment. In my case, I had been working on mine since about the age of eight, when I accidentally gave myself an orgasm. Whatever it was, I thought, the important thing was to figure out how to make more of them, as regularly as possible. Many great discoveries are accidental, and this one was clearly a find. At almost the same time, I found out that if you took certain books out of the library about, say, Ancient Greece, you could find many interesting illustrations. My sexual identity would be well-formed, by me, before anyone close to me had a chance to form it, and for that I am grateful. As I grew up, I found more things of interest, in the oddest places. I discovered my parents had a “back massager” that had attachments for purposes clearly unrelated to backs, and this became one of the Great Tools. Mind you, I had virtually no knowledge of how intercourse actually worked between people, but I was deeply aware of how arousal operated, and that was better, far better, than where I had been before. In the case of the back massager, obsession took over (it had a very strong motor, unlike many modern products)—I couldn’t get enough of it! It turned into a mandatory ritual, to be performed as soon as I got home from school. One day, this procedure was interrupted by my mother, who opened my bedroom door to see me there, 10 years old, having fun with the power tools. To her credit, she gave me a rather nervous talk about how sex is natural, etc. (I really do not remember the rest of it, being shocked at her presence), but that I should really lay off the vibrator. I considered this all a save, until I discovered that my mother thought the encounter a “cute” enough anecdote to share at a great number of dinners and cocktail parties, often in my presence: “Oh, you should’ve seen his cute little thing, standing straight up!” My mother was open, natural, and honest, but to my mind lacked discretion. There were few dry spells as far as my research went, as it was relentless. Thanks to a trip to Barnegat Bay I took with my friends, I found a treasure trove of 1960’s Playboy magazines, including the Jane Mansfield issue—I left for home from that vacation with regret in my heart, thinking of that trunk sitting in the cottage attic. But there were always sources, if you looked carefully—the backs of detective magazines, lingerie catalogs, whatever you could run into. At one point my mother gave me copies of two books: “Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex but Were Afraid to Ask,” and Philip Roth’s “Portnoy’s Complaint.” Mom was always an open-minded reader, having little age discretions. These books were, to me, the equivalent of a college degree, not only answering lingering questions, but bringing important, cutting-edge data to the forefront—my conceptual tool bag had been greatly expanded. By the time we were back in Ohio, it wasn’t long before I became a part of a loose cadre’ of freethinkers such as myself, and to my delight, they all stole porn from their fathers. This porn was kept in a sort of underground lending library, which they had craftily constructed in the backwoods of an old cemetery. After a number of years of this, things tapered down but never stopped completely—we were on to stag films, and relentless acquisitions of the mainstreams such as Playboy and Penthouse, whenever and wherever possible. It is bizarre and taboo how such knowledge is acquired, but make no mistake: it has breadth, and depth. One has only to be intelligent, observant, and discriminating.

I had expected to be much more nervous with Eileen; surely I was, but it dissolved into the pure bliss of intimacy. We would engage when and wherever we could. I, of course, perfunctorily got her into deep trouble, keeping her on my den sofa while my parents slept until deep into the night; so late that her father called my house, ensuing a great deal of trouble for all. But there was no stopping me, I was ravenous, and gave no consideration to anyone, even her, when it came to this. I would lay with her in a giant, empty study room after teaching a karate class (she now studied with me), and untie her uniform, slowly, and dip into her under the harsh fluorescent lights: I did this once even knowing she had a hundred-and-three temperature and needed to go home. I was a madman, a fiend.

Complications (at least minor or medium ones, as I considered mine to be) never stop a true fiend, though, and that included dealing with her family. These were New Englanders, transplanted to Ohio. I was (at least the vibe was such) outclassed, what with my family being from the South. All it meant to me was that they had a baby grand piano in their living room, and stiffer décor. Her mother had clearly once been a raging beauty. Her father was a prototypical Irishman: short, stout, and white-haired. They were fairly cordial, acceptant of me, but always there was the feeling of being looked down upon, or simply tolerated as a temporary situation. Later I found out that her father was a ladies’ man, having seen him several times with other women. Their house was small—things were very audible from floor to floor, and I enjoyed the risk of fouling his daughter in the den, on his favorite easy chair. It just seemed like the right thing to do; a sort of underclass revenge for their pointless snootiness. I was particularly impressed the second time this happened, as it was by request; a late night call from Eileen saying to get over there now as she couldn’t stand how randy she was. Honestly, though, I think that one came about because she was getting back at her father over some argument—it just had that feel to it. But we should never question true opportunity, least of all those involving The Primary Goal<tm>

Sometimes I think that in the end I just wore her out. But there were many other factors at hand, some of them visible to me, others not, being either hidden, or blind to my naïve eyes. I did notice things, though, although denial was clearly present in a number of if not most cases. There was the emerging social problem of the theater folks going against me, as well as her now-fully-confessed pining away for my friend (still to no avail). But somehow, we persisted. I upped the ante, taking her to dinners I could not afford- even to the Cleveland Athletic Club, an elite joint my father belonged to. I invited her, of course to the prom. One day, near the end of it all, I came upon her in the hallway; she was sitting there in a deep funk. I asked her what was wrong, and she told me wasn’t sure but she was having issues and needed to see a psychologist. And, of course that we needed to “take a break,” which is always more than that phrase suggests. This was a real spear in me, and I tried, weakly, to argue, but there was nothing there. But I knew two things: prom was off, and, more importantly my Primary Goal<tm> effort (completion date having been, ostensibly, July 28, my birthday) was in shreds.

“Kiss Me Kate” went on, and I was there each night. The first night, I pointed out to her that if you sat on stage left, you could see her behind the flat when she was doing costume changes. I was still invited to the cast party at her house, where I moped around for awhile and then left early.

Prom was unremarkable, other than one thing: her date was the aforementioned flaming gay fellow. I attended with an old female friend from martial arts. It was, to me, no more than an exercise and an expense.

Eileen sang at our graduation ceremony—as a matter of fact I strung her 12-string guitar for her and set up her sound for her. After it was all over, my friend Gates and I repaired to my house, and drank heavily for several hours; he having also just lost his girlfriend as well. It was 1976, and, despite the class motto and song, we did not consider it the fucking “Glory Days.” And for that matter, I hated that song anyway. It was all cheese to me—1976 was the bicentennial year, which also meant we graduated in red, white, and blue caps and gowns, something most of us found gaudy, preferring basic black. We sunk into a long, lonely summer: it was time to start drinking and doing drugs.

The bottom line of this first experience was simple: I was a miserable wreck, on and off, for years. She went off to college to study theater. We continued to correspond back and forth, and she even visited me once. I think it was the break after that when I went over to visit her, and she came to the door holding hands with a girl. Basically, she left me for another woman, even before she found her. To this day she remains gay, as far as I have seen. Demoralizing? No, not really. It is more to the idea (and I vehemently hold to this) that there is, with little possible exception, absolutely never, ever any time when I will feel totally secure with a woman. Experience and observation simply prohibit it. But of course, it never stops me.

How I Lost My Virginity

I think that that summer Eileen tried, in her own way, to do me a favor as far as girls go. I went over there (pathetically) to visit her one day, and she was sitting on the floor with Sarah, a classmate of ours that I knew, but not well. All I did know about her was that she had been occasionally involved in the theatre program, that I had been in English class with her in 9th grade, and there were rumors from the local male population that she was a slut (this last always being suspect, considering the sources). I had not realized that the two were acquainted, but they seemed like they knew each other quite well (thinking back, perhaps more than quite well). Eileen was very engaging, saying that since she was leaving for college, and Sarah and I were both going to Cleveland State University, perhaps we should get to know each other, if only for the purposes of having a college friend, rideshares, those sorts of things. I didn’t stay very long—there was oddness to it all. Sarah struck me as being hard-edged, unattractive in all the areas where I found Eileen attractive.

Sarah didn’t waste any time calling me. She had a few things of interest to me, at that point: she liked to sing, and she had really good pot. There wasn’t much else going on, so I had her over. I was still fiddling around with a small folk group, but it was in shreds. Oh, I did play music with Sarah, but I found her voice too low, just not what I needed. And Sarah had different pursuits in mind. I had only started smoking dope at the very end of my senior year, so I didn’t know many of the local heads, outside of some of the ones who played music. She introduced me to the freak side of things in town, and I was a willing participant, what with being emotionally demolished, and dealing with my mother, who was moving into oblivion and trying to take her family with her.

We quickly developed a large network, by combining her friends with a number of mine—it grew very rapidly. I had had enough of going away with my parents for the weekends at the lake, so I persuaded them to let me stay. This allowed for a smoking hot party venue, and it all began. This was my first real foray into conscious, enthusiastic debauchery. It was a crash course in music, drinking, and psychedelics. I can’t remember ever eating anything other than pizzas. These things are always going on everywhere, but when you first tear into it, it can be liberating, even though in the end it is mostly useless—that’s mainly why they call it debauchery.

It happened at one of these, a rather extreme round of buffet-style drugs and drinking. Eventually people trickled out, and I passed out on a sofa. I was pulled out of this coma by aroma, motion, wetness, and other odd sensations. I opened my eyes, and saw that she was on top of me, I was inside her, and I had fucking finished, all while asleep. It took awhile to deal with this particular combination of loss, and horror swirling through my mind while I was semi-politely hustling her out the door. And I have always wondered what it is like to lose your virginity—I will never really know, though I have come close to replicating it. I often wonder if Eileen had given this mission to Sarah as some kind of moral imperative. It sure seemed that way. The worst part of it was that I never felt any attraction to this woman, try though I did. Her parents were certainly courting me, and given what a hellion Sarah was, I can see why they would work at it. They would take me to expensive dinners, and such—insisting I go. The husband, Hugh, was a mousey little guy—a city building inspector, and his wife was a dominating, man-eating thundercunt of a woman. The youngest, a boy, was a shrinking violet, like his father. The women were dominant, boisterous—the men were mice. The family was eccentric, often tense when together… A year or so after all this I read a newspaper article reporting that Hugh had been caught in the Cleveland Metroparks, using his lunch hour to masturbate near one of the playgrounds. Given his wife, I kind of felt sorry for him, even after this.