Five Days Have Passed, And I Haven't Blogged??? Or, What Up With That, Pt. II

First, I left town Friday at early afternoon and didn't get back until this morning. I have this hobby which I give a lot of my time to, primarily because fantasy tends to be a lot more fun to deal with than reality. So I did that for many many consecutive hours this weekend. I haven't discussed much about my gaming communities because I used to put my blog address in my e-mail signature and I didn't want my gaming buddies to follow the link, read up on my behind-the-scenes content, then ban me from their presence because I said too much about them. We bloggers know the deal. Also, there are some distinctly seperate social groups in my life with whom I want to limit information from the other, so I don't spill it all.

Which leads me to;
In reading another particular blog, I discovered that I've left out a huge aspect of life because I didn't want all the other people I know to be privy to stuff that I usually don't even speak about with them face-to-face. But, you know, I think I will. Why not? If they get uncomfortable with it, they'll stop reading. If they really want to know more, they'll ask me face to face.

So.

Let's talk about sex.

Adding to the relationship hurdles that I try to jump, something else is there in the mix. (At times, I get a sense from some of my closest friends that they are waiting for me to finally drop the Big Announcement about myself. I'm here to tell you----there is no big announcement. I'm not gay. HOWEVER...) I live outside of sex.

See, I have this big religious background, which I'm trying to make my foreground again. I even went to the Brooklyn Tab today, early, but turned away when I saw the crowds flooding in, all done up in their Sunday finest to see Donnie McClurkin. I was going for church, but they seemed to be going for a religious concert. In fact this one girl, dressed in Sunday attire who had just come from the subway station went, "DAMMMNN..." when she saw the numbers going into the Tab. Yeah, and she said it twice, all loud, like it was funny. But she was supposed to be going to church! Could she at least TRY to be holy?

Whoops. Some of my background slipped out. All judgmental and whatnot. But this illustrates--I was a strict, Holiness Christian back in the day. I had these things called standards. These weren't your average "standards" like , "You never hit a woman", or, "You always give your seat up to a older person". This word "standard" seemed to be used the way the King James Version used it in Isaiah 62. That is, like a banner--a war symbol you wave over your army as you trample into the enemy camps. Our standard was a dress code, a pious countenance, and a word of righteousness. Looking back now at that population, it often looks like sour self-righteousness.

But it was what I needed when I was entering teenhood and, face it, puberty. Where I grew up, it was very much like a prison colony. One had to do things to survive or get eaten up by the crazy inmates. No I mean literally. I once had two brothers and a little sister kicking the snot out of me at the same time because I had no one to back me up. I don't know if this was unique on my side of Spring Valley, or if all unsupervised children groups go 'Lord of The Flies' at the slightest provocation. But me and my contemporaries were being raised by single working parents so the playgrounds and parks were free-for-alls.

So trying to be "one of the guys" in Spring Valley meant that I had to 'do' a girl back when I was about 11.

...Fumbling in an abandonded utility room that one of us got a key for from their superintendent grandfather (we all called him 'Grandpa' and he used to take us out to McDonald's in his station wagon, back when the apple pies used to be deep fried). Going into the utility room's closet couple by couple with the rest of us outside waiting for evidence that the deed was done. Getting my first insanely obsessive girlfriend as a result, and not knowing what to do with her after those surreal little 2-1/2 minutes were done.

...Never knowing what to do with all the "hers" that followed.

...Entering Jr. High school and getting the maddest crush on a girl named Desiree.

Yes, in the years to follow she did find out, but up until then I'd find myself at her lunch table with her girlfriends, who accepted me. They treated me MUCH better than the boys did, so I stayed with them through Jr. High and High School. (Once for my own good, they tried to shoo me away and get me to play with the other boys, but I wouldn't have it.) So I watched DeeDee get boyfriend after boyfriend because I could never open my mouth and say anything. It was my best friend Sonya (who introduced me to the group) who later told her that I was there because I was in love with her. DeeDee then revealed upon finding out,

"Alan, why didn't you TELL me? I'd have gone out with you!"

By that time, I'd learned very well how to silently pine for women and enjoy the residuals without actually risking anything personally. So I let her go on to more guys, while I sought out a great excuse for avoiding sex. Didn't take long. I found it at church.

I got saved.

I became a Bible-thumping, Holy-roller. I loved my friends too much to abandon them, although I had tried once or twice, but I remained with the excuse that I'd convert them with my holiness lifestyle. I did remove myself form the parties, the drinking, the drugging, the smooching, but never from them.

Carnal knowledge of a girlfriend is a big no-no in Holiness. People have been brought before the church and publicly outed for having carnal knowledge of one another before marriage, as a preventive measure against further indiscretion. How safe and wonderful for me. I could fall in love and adore my lady, and feel no pressure to 'do' her until we were married.

Well, folks, I've never been married. I don't have to say more on that.

But what I will say is, I've not even learned to get comfortable kissing anyone. (Oh, but I was learning though, with my last relationship. Unfortunately, I wasn't learning fast enough for her. I had explained almost everything to her about my reasons for being awkward at it, but ultimately I felt like a freak. Not only was I Almost Forty, but she was 13 years younger than me). I could never find a comfortable base of operations to launch into these territories. Kissing, to me, appeared--okay, every woman reading, get ready to turn on me--it looked unsanitary. I had an emotional disconnect when I saw it for two reasons;

1) Aaron Loves Angela. When Kevin Hooks and Irene Cara started getting it on, my mother slapped me. We were watching it together on some Saturday or one of her days off, or something, and it was the mid 70's, so I may have been very close to the First Girlfriend event. Single moms--let your sons get horny in peace.

2) A boy named Joe in Elementary School. I just get up from the water fountain and he's standing over me, making stupid googly eyes at me. Too close to me. We poke our tongues at each other at the same time. It felt like sandpaper. I spat for an hour solid. Like a cat with a hairball.

Make that three reasons--
3) One day in Jr. High (my) DeeDee was greeted by her boyfriend at the locker while I stood there talking and laughing with her. gads i loved her so She made a little protest noise because he had taken her by surprise. When she could breathe again, she said, "Robert, I was eating a cookie!"
He responded, "Well so am I now."

To this day, kissing looks like something aliens do. Up until only maybe a year ago, I hadn't done it since I was 11, and I didn't miss it.

And there's one bad thing about not being commonly experienced at something--your imagination blows the importance of it phenomenally out of proportion. That's torturous. That's why I blog. Gotta work out this stuff and find my center of gravity. Gotta get to the point where I'm living in reality and not on some Martian colony as some kind of sexless laboratory experiment.

Gosh, I sure have a lot of goals.

Me at 2/22/2004 07:44:00 PM

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