DEVIL ON MY SHOULDER
…and in my pants, I might add. In the movie “Animal House,” Larry’s evil conscience extorts him to “F@#$ her, F@#$ her brains out!” Larry’s good conscience counters with “For shame! Lawrence, I’m surprised at you!” As the scene plays in my head, the evil conscience takes on the voices of every male friend that I had in a kind of “choir from hell” while the good conscience takes on the angelic voice of my mother. Although the movie doesn’t come out until almost ten years later, it characterizes the period of my teenage years that ended with the loss of innocence on January 4, 1969. Rest in Peace, Virginity. You are gone forever but like the song said, “gone but not forgotten, dreadful sorry”…and it was not lost without putting up a fight. It also reminds me of my Mother’s admonishment, also delivered in an angelic voice that may or may not have been hers, “Your virginity is a gift from God and once you give it away you can’t get it back; so, make sure you give it to someone worthy of it.” According to my Mother that gift should only be given on my wedding night. Sorry, Mom, Christmas came early. After the fifteen seconds it took to lose it, I had to wonder, “What’s the big deal and why would I want it back?” Well, I guess it was a big deal for me but a brief deal for my partner. I did better the second time…I think.

Male-female sexual dynamics have always been confusing to me and I refuse to take all of the blame for my confusion. I also don’t claim to be the only person afflicted with this conundrum. At least, I hope I’m not. When it came to the subject of sex, I paid rapt attention like most adolescent boys…and I guess adolescent girls. I aspired to be an honor student. The problem was a lack of information. What little available information there was tended to be conflicting and often quite useless. There was no handbook for us, unless you count the Bible, and our “education” was either delivered at church or by our parents, best buddies or bragging upper-classmen. You shouldn’t be surprised to learn that we found the latter two sources to be the most interesting. Premarital sex was a sin punishable by “hellfire and damnation” which did not sound like fun. Pretty much any fun was deemed a sin by the Methodist Church of my youth. At a summer revival I found myself gazing longingly at the visiting preacher’s drop-dead gorgeous older daughter while day dreaming about…. The minister, of course, was delivering a loud and lively message on the evils of the modern world, including but not limited to, premarital and extramarital sex. Why would you put something like that on the front row and then try to convince me to stay away from it? Later as I looked across the aisle at Elizabeth, another object of my confusion, I thought “Oh how I wish….” Suddenly, I could almost smell sulfur being given off by brimstone burning in hell. Okay, maybe if I do that other thing until I just need glasses. I know that’s a sin, tooooooo!

The rest of this story and others may be purchased in FLOPPY PARTS through Amazon at the following link: http://goo.gl/GIssEq