LOOKING BEHIND, LOOKING AHEAD

Anyone who takes a moment to look at the shear volume of posts and topics on this blog can reasonably assume I think a lot about sex. True. I have physical, aging and emotional things I'm working through, and this is part of my therapy. In its own way, the blog is kind of my time on the couch.

One of the fundamental things on my mind as I review and talk about my sexual issues is the question of how I got to the place I am now. What formed my personal attitudes and sexual appetites, and how does/did my my physical health inform them both?

In short, to spare the reader some time, I'm an overweight middle-aged man who's entire current sex life is essentially masturbation. I'm very happily married to a wonderful woman, who happens to be experiencing some significant traumas medically, leaving her unable to have vaginal intercourse. She doesn't like oral sex, and neither of us is into anal. Her difficulties aren't the focus of the blog, but help frame my current celibate circumstances.

But as I examine who I am, I need to recognize my sexuality dates back to my childhood.

My cousin, who is a year older than I am, taught me the fine art of masturbation. I was around ten. We continued to jack off around each other until he entered puberty. I can recall being fascinated by the comparatively large size of his penis once that started, even though he hadn't yet sprouted hair. At the time he was quite proud of the small bead of cum he was able to produce. That was, maybe luckily, the last time we did anything. I moved across the country shortly thereafter.

I was a boy scout. Looking back I have to wonder if our scoutmaster was a little off. We often swam nude in his backyard pool or in mountain streams and lakes, and he insisted, when we were in the mountains hiking overnight, that one particular boy share his tent. I was prepubescent, but that boy was an early developer and had begun sprouting pubes. Certainly the tent-sharing would get the scoutmaster into trouble in today's puritanical climate, if not the overall approach to body freedom. I never experienced anything untoward, but looking back there were other clues...

(In one particular incident we were hiking in the mountains - maybe ten boys including his two sons - and ran across a stream. We stripped off and played in the water for a while, then settled down for lunch. He remained naked but most of the boys pulled their underwear back on. I didn't. One kid dropped a sandwich into the water, and it floated across the stream and wedged itself against the far side. The stream was maybe six feet wide and three or so feet deep. The scoutmaster insisted the kid get the sandwich, which caused the kid, a year younger than me, to start to cry. I stood up and waded over, crawling up onto the far shore and making my way the ten feet or so to grab the sandwich. On getting back to the near side with the soggy sandwich in my hand I realized one of the other boys had the scoutmaster's camera and had apparently been told to take pictures. Again I was just a boy and absolutely nothing sexual happened, but it creeped me out in later years.)

Swim Naked

Around the same time, on a different occasion, I fell into a friend's pool while completely dressed. We were messing around on the deck and I lost my footing while trying to throw HIM into the pool. I was soaked, and his mom told me to take off my clothes so she could dry them. I went into the bathroom and took everything off, squeezing out the excess water into the sink. His mom took the clothes and threw them into the dryer. I wrapped myself with a towel to walk down to my friend's bedroom. I finished drying off with the towel, tossed it aside and my friend and I played for the next hour, him dressed, me naked, while we waited for the clothes to dry. I ended up walking home barefooted and had to explain to MY mother why my new tennis shoes were soaked. But the casual way my friend and I played while I was completely naked made an impression on me.

I liked it.

Even prior to that I was raised in a more relaxed environment. If one of my parents happened to be caught naked - exiting the bathroom in the bedroom (we often watched tv in there) or changing for the pool - it wasn't a big deal. And I went with my dad to both the YMCA and to his military gym. At the time both places allowed men to swim naked, and boys simply followed suit (pun intended). I was far more concerned about the chlorine burning my eyes than swimming naked.

It did get me into trouble a few times. Not Trouble trouble, but a gentle correction. Once, at my aunt and uncle's house my mother had forgotten to pack a bathing suit. I was five or six at the time. For some reason it was agreed I could just go in wearing my underwear. After a few minutes if this I apparently grew tired of the wet, clammy fabric and pulled them off, tossing them onto the deck. Didn't go over as casually as I was thinking it might, I guess.

A second time was after I'd entered puberty. Before the New Years party, so I was still a virgin. I slept nude. My younger sister, who had a room next to mine, had a friend sleeping over, and I left the door to my room slightly ajar when I went to bed. It was a hot night and I'd kicked the sheet off in my sleep. Her friend got up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, looked through the crack in the door and got quite an eyeful. The next morning I was taken aside by my father and told to make sure I shut my door completely or start to wear pajamas. I was mortified, but at the same time aroused that a girl had seen me naked.

Let me show you

In high school and college I was sexually active and in athletic shape. I lost my virginity at fifteen, to a stranger at a New Years party, and at sixteen had some basics of my early sexual education filled in by a college girl who worked as a lifeguard at a hotel's swimming pool where we had swimming privileges.

As I was approaching my eighteenth birthday one girl I knew made a rather public comment that she'd "better take care of me before it was illegal." I didn't tell her she was a few years too late, nor the fact I was, at the time, having sex with a very promiscuous girl up the street from my house. My friend never followed through.

Liar...

(As an aside, I never advertised that I'd lost my virginity. I thought the guys who bragged about it were kind of assholes,and I didn't want to be one of them. High school lockerroom talk was pretty repulsive, and the majority of the guys were lying through their teeth.)

And I will admit that, even as a boy I was also fascinated by the male body. I enjoyed the times with my cousin, and being naked around the other scouts was a lot of fun. Puberty accelerated my interest, though I thought at the time it was strictly from a comparative standpoint. Only later, in college, did I discover it was a sexual attraction as well.

All of which frames my eventual promiscuity and sexually free attitudes at a time, in the early eighties, when society was beginning to shut down that sort of thing. 

I've discussed some of my college adventures previously, and how they led me to my eventual and relatively mild "adulthood." I was used as a nude model by a girlfriend, at first in the privacy of our dorm rooms and later, very publicly, in the art department of our university.

My exhibitionist side was very happy during this time.

In the last month I've posted on my relationship with a couple of guys in the dorms (and later, in apartments), with intimate touch being part of our friendships
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All of which I look back upon with thirty years of a more chaste existence with the acknowledgement that I thoroughly enjoyed myself and created fond memories, some of which are freely available to me as masturbatory fodder. Settling down in my mid-twenties, and now looking back with thirty plus more years under my belt, I consider myself amazingly fortunate I never ended up with a disease or as a parent. I had sex with men as well as women, and sometimes both at the same time. I was frequently naked in my dorm room, or "Donald Ducking" it as it has come to be known. (Donald wears nothing from the waist down, a fashion sense I continue to this day whenever possible.)

Donald Ducking

I need to come to grips - no pun intended - with the fact I'll never experience anything like that again. But understanding that, and accepting it, may allow me to finally overcome the emotional and mental issues which I believe may have led to my physical decline.

Sex is fundamentally important to me, and is a part of the way I define myself. Getting fat and allowing my health to fall is, as I look back, all part of a  way for me to justify why I'm no longer a sexual being. A defense mechanism.

And knowing that, maybe I can reframe my thinking, get back some of my health, and move myself forward by falling a little bit backward into my hedonistic youth.


Stay tuned.

The Future Awaits