Ah high school…the final four (years) and an enchanting land of cheerleaders, pom-pom girls, and well…just girls (older). Evidently the interest in the opposite sex from 1st grade was just smoldering during the middle ages, but came into full bloom as a lowly freshman.
I was weird in school, no big surprise there. I loved math and science and took every class that my little farm town school had to offer. This put me in the classroom with the honor rollers and the prep-college types, which translated into kids that came from families with money so they dressed accordingly (keeping in vogue with what the current style was). Style translated into mini-skirts and tight sweaters; I can’t even pretend to remember how many pencils “I dropped.” I was Jekyll & Hyde in high school, scholar by day and obnoxious teenage drunk at night. In honesty, the drinking didn’t start until I was 15, reefer madness occurred a year later. I ran with the boys that dressed in jean jackets, engineer boots, and bell-bottomed jeans with the leg hems frayed.
So you’d think with all of that good book learning that I also became a honor roll student; not hardly. My mom worked nights at a restaurant and was gone by the time I got out of school. Being a small town, I could ride the entire width of our berg in a couple of hours so transportation was never an issue. Being that Mr. Bunghole was a construction worker, he showed up on Friday evening and was gone by Sunday night – thankfully. Obviously I had a lot of time on my hands in the evening and I had better things to do than study. Homework did get done and I floated through high school with an occasional A, but mostly Bs & Cs. I was definitely not college bound.
Around 10th grade was my first step into the abyss. The step-father and my mom used to play cards with another couple and they had a couple/few kids. One was a son about a year older than I and a daughter about 2-3 years older. One day he & I were goofing around in a pup tent in the backyard of the house and he introduced me to masturbation. I’ll spare you the graphic description. Needless to say at my sage age I thought it was better than sliced bread and had no problem taking matters into my own hand. Not to say that I never had a pleasurable experience in mishandling my appendage; I just naively didn’t know that it was like a loaded gun; i.e., play with it too much and it would go off in your hand. Some weeks later after the pup tent experience, we [the kids] were playing some bizarre game of hide-n-seek. I found myself hiding under the covers with the daughter and she had me put my hand where it didn’t belong. I was never more glad to hear the call to come wash our hands cause it was time for dinner.
Yin & Yang does exist and as such, a good thing also happened during the 10th grade – my mother divorced the Nimrod; of course she already had a boy friend lined up on the side. He was a good guy – from my perspective anyway. He was my father figure for as long as I was home; taught me to drive, work on my car, and he always had an easy laugh. The layout of my ma’s new rental provided the setup for an embarrassing moment. I had to walk through her bedroom from the garage to my bedroom. One late night (out past curfew no doubt), I sauntered through in my normal inebriated state and caught the two of them making tricycle motors, or at least really practicing, really hard. I think he was more embarrassed than I since my mother couldn’t resist in gleefully telling me later that his rigid member went to something less than al dente.
I can’t pin this on my new father figure, but it just seemed unnatural for my mom to have what I found one day. Now of course, what was I doing snooping in my mother’s drawers? I have no idea what inspired me to do so, but I did find 3 books of pornography. Of all of things that I can’t remember, I can recall 2 of the 3 titles. Needless to say I had read each book more than once, and had ‘favorite passages’ that I could turn to for a quick bout of self passion. The combination of ogling the senior ladies and porn just set the baseline for my addiction to come.
Dragging main street, burning rubber, being escorted out of town by the local cops, and listening to the rock music of the day – that was a glimpse of how I spent my evenings on school nights. To keep the record straight, I did work; otherwise I would have never earned enough money to buy my first car off the show room floor (around $3k – good old days). I mowed lawns, worked in restaurants, hauled garbage, pumped gas, and spent lots of hours as a farm hand. Oh, and one 8-10 hour stint as a severely hung over oil rig worker; good money, but too much like really hard work.
Music became a refuge, just as sci-fi books were an escape. There was always a song to be played to match the moment of my mood. Whether it be just simple head banging rock, acid rock for the chemical days, or boo-hoo nobody loves me (let’s go eat worms), I could lose myself in the lyrics as I sang along. Just keep in mind that these were the days of the 8-track tapes, and I had 5 cases that held about 30 each – yes, I did love music and still do today.
Restaurant work had an interesting ‘side benefit,’ just depends on your personal perspective and glimpse into history. As mentioned before, this was the era of the mini-skirts and the waitresses behaved as if the kitchen area was a ‘safe zone’ to talk raunchy and adjust their uniforms. Replete with views of garters, pantyhose, and low cut tops with everything spilling out. Just the fuel any self-pleasuring adolescent needs in his formative years.
With the masturbation education, the genie was out of the bottle and for some reason I struck out 90% of the time when I asked girls out for a date (I’m pretty sure that hair was growing on my palms). But I lived in a target rich environment and there was no shortage of visual stimulation to fuel the imagination for ardent vegetable polishing. After getting my driver’s license I was literally hell on wheels. A car gave me the ability to increase my roaming range for work and play. It was also instrumental in my losing my virginity to an older woman. So if masturbation was the genie, sex was the opening of Pandora’s Box (no pun intended). Weekends were made for finding keg parties, aka ‘keggers.’ And here is where I showed no shame in preying on drunk girls for sex. I had no remorse. The youngest was 15 and the oldest was 24. I betrayed the trust of a man that mentored me at the gas station by seducing his niece that was engaged to a guy in the air force. If you couldn’t tell it before – I like music, and after writing this certain song lyrics by Casting Crowns come to mind from the song – Does Anybody Hear Her?
“She is searching
For a hero to ride in
To ride in and save the day
And in walks her prince charming
And he knows just what to say
Momentary lapse of reason
And she gives herself away”
More times than I want to admit, I was that ‘prince’, or that ‘prince of expletive’, or let’s just call a spade, a spade. I was a garden variety asshole.
Somewhere amidst all of this drunken debauchery, I had the presence of mind to see a glimpse of my potential future if I stayed in my home town after graduation. This glimpse came in the form of seeing my buddy’s older brothers coming to our keggers and hitting on our female classmates. Of course my vision was not 20-20, otherwise I would have done better in school to work for that scholarship. My options were either stay in Stupidville or research the military since there was no way that my mother could have afforded to put me through a semester of college. Luckily I still had enough active brain cells to score high enough for a critical job in the Navy. With the pre-papers signed, it was just a matter of getting through graduation and the summer following to make it to boot camp.
With the deadline looming of leaving home I felt it only fitting that I had to have sex with 10 girls before going to the navy. Luckily I didn’t start from scratch and to make it easier, I counted previous engagements. I used to be pretty proud of that ‘accomplishment.’ However now it remains one of the many things that I am so utterly ashamed of. How could I treat girls or young women in such a fashion?
A prenaval adventure occurred on a fine fall night while my friend and I were out-and-about doing the usual which equated to drinking and burning rubber in front of his current girl friend’s house. There was intermittent racial tension in our metropolis and it manifested itself that night in the form of eggs being mashed into my friend’s face while he was stopped at an intersection. Long story short, we got my shotgun, found our ‘new friends,’ I became possessed by the spirit of John Wayne and it resulted in me shooting my friend in the foot and one of the instigators in his shoulder (but I aimed for someone else – I was drunk). In hindsight, I’m beginning to believe that God’s hand nudged that barrel just a little that night. Enough for it to become a learning experience versus a vacation in the cross bar hotel just 2 months before going to boot camp.
As evidenced by my previous ramblings, a lot of teenage experiences have shaped my behavior as I entered adulthood. Some good, some bad, but we are all a collage of what we’ve seen, heard, and done. Done to ourselves and done to others. Years later I regret so deeply what I have done and although scripture tells you that there’s no condemnation in Christ, and I certainly didn’t kill anyone (came close) – I still have an issue with feeling forgiven.
On to Anchors Aweigh.
Or back to the previous blog Formative Years – Getting Schooled
babychristian55 