Photo credit: atsealevel, flickr.
In seventh grade, my peer group began to play kissing games at parties. Spin the Bottle, Seven Minutes in Heaven—tame stuff, in retrospect, but to me it seemed intimidating and immoral and I wanted no part of it. As a late bloomer who entered adolescence shortly after my father died, I had no adult male hand to guide me. (I did have an older friend who breathlessly explained that babies resulted when the boy peed into a little hole in the girl, but I knew that couldn’t be right. Such was the state of information transmission in the pre-sex ed, pre-Internet era.)
Not that I wasn’t interested in girls; I was desperately interested, and spent many nights agonizing over how to get them to like me.
Not that I wasn’t interested in girls; I was desperately interested, and spent many nights agonizing over how to get them to like me. No, it was sex I wasn’t interested in, even when I got the story straight. I had absorbed a strict moral code from my mother and was convinced that sex before marriage was wrong. I was after girls’ admiration and love, and I believed I would win that by respecting them.
I didn’t leave the parties when the games began; I would simply not partake. For a while, my best friend felt the same way, and we would watch awkwardly from the edge of the circle. But soon, he succumbed too, and I was left to uphold my moral code alone.
(Years later, I asked my mother what she thought of the way I abstained from those games. “I thought you were dumb,” she told me bluntly. Thanks a lot, Mom. Now you tell me. All I needed was someone to explain that girls were sexual beings too, and that they were just as curious about exploring those feelings as I was, if not quite so driven or tormented.)
By the time I started dating in tenth grade, I had decided that kissing, at least, was permissible. My dates and I spent hours necking, in my car or in their living room, at summer camp or youth group retreats. One girl was strangely unresponsive. Her previous boyfriend had a serious disease, she explained, that had pushed them into early intimacy. Kissing was no longer enough for her. Despite her clear invitation, I was unable to push myself further, immobilized by impending guilt.
And so the task was left to Wendy, my girlfriend at the beginning of senior year. Exasperated after yet another marathon make-out session, she took my hand and placed it gently on her breast. That act of mercy opened the floodgates, and for that, Wendy, my wife and I are forever grateful.
Reginald
How sad that you didn’t play the kissing games, and that your mother didn’t tell you what she thought back then. I enjoyed reading a male perspective on that incredibly complicated time of life. Really takes me back….
Thanks, Suzy. I too regret that I felt it necessary to deprive myself of those assuredly normal growing-up experiences. But I’m certainly not the only teenager who had to piece the rules together as he went.
Wow, Reg…what strong convictions. Can’t believe you avoided spin the bottle and every other temptation of that sort for SO long. Glad Wendy finally broke the log-jam (I’m sure you and Wendy are glad too).
A great take on adolescence and what the passages are for boys who are almost men. I find it fascinating that you thought your mother was so adamant about her moral code and then didn’t expect you to follow it.
Marian, thanks for your kind words. To this day I’m not sure how strict my mother’s moral code actually was, vs how much she exaggerated it (in the absence of my father) in order to raise sons who would respect women, vs how much I read into it. And of course in those days I couldn’t really talk to her about it — or at least thought I couldn’t.
Sweet story Reginald!
Did you hear about the incredulous boy who, on learning the facts of life, said,
My father, maybe. My mother, never!
Thanks, Dana. Sounds about right to me!
I think we just had to go at our own pace, figure it out as we went along. My mother hinted that I was a tease for just making out and not going further, and much later she confessed that she thought something was wrong with me when I was still a virgin at 16. We were just different, and I don’t know if anything she had said at the time would have made any difference.
I remember those basement games so well. Like you, I was uncomfortable with them and hoped the bottle would never point to me. When my mother finally got around to explaining “the facts of life,” I didn’t believe her. Her response was to say it was a nice thing to do if you were married.
I found this really engrossing! Most of us males are taught very successfully to pretend to be “experienced” even when we’re not; and even many years later, it’s unusual for a man to publicly acknowledge that he was behind or “delayed” in exploring sex. So, Reginald, I will tell you that not only did I not engage in any of those games: I am pretty sure I was never even invited to any place where they were happening! (Or I was upstairs with the pretzels and the corn chips.). I look forward to more of your well crafted recollections.