Double Play

Bobby

Sex was shameful and corrupt. All of us knew it, especially the Catholic kids, who knew it was cause for eternal damnation. And those fires of hell were far more convincing to us than the joys of salvation. We knew that VD was lurking. We knew that pregnancy was nearly unavoidable. The girls knew that if they did it no one would marry them. I knew that my mother would never speak to me again.

These were dire consequences, and we all knew them. But the great unspoken certainty was that any of us, given the chance, would have risked everything for a moment’s penetration. We knew that dirty pictures endangered our souls. But if someone had one we would rush to look. We knew that masturbation was evil. But were not dissuaded. We knew people did it. The movies even hinted at it sometimes. “Howard Hughes presents Jane Russell in The Outlaw.” Every once in a while my parents, especially after cocktails, would be sort of huggy, as if they were more than friends who loved each other and had a son.

The culture presented premenopausal women to us as girls. In the movies married men and girls slept in separate beds. In the movies men would fight for these girls, die for their girls. In the movies girls would scream for their men, tremble for them, dress their wounds, cry for them, wait for them. Love was everywhere. Passion was everywhere. Devotion was everywhere. Self-sacrifice abounded. Sex was nowhere. Except that the girls were sexy. And they were everywhere, on the radio, in the movies, in the magazines, in the ads. The songs. “To spend one night with you, in our own rendezvous.” The lingerie ads, bathing suit ads, stocking ads, car ads, canned ham ads, beer ads, hair tonic ads, aftershave ads. All of them fresh and clean and sweet and perky and crucifyingly desirable.

In that time we were taught by women, managed by women, admonished by women, brought up by women, punished by women, all through our adolescence. Writhing in the great unacknowledged polarity between culture and biology. Yearning to get laid. Fearing for our souls.

Marriage was our hope. The happiest condition. Loving wife. Children. Contentment. Better to marry than burn.