Listening To No More Auction Block by Bob Dylan

You know...I certainly talk a lot about romance in this thing. Right now I am hurtling through space on a train, approaching what I now consider to be my home - New York City - and contemplating the place that lust occupies in all of this conjecture. You would think that a heady discussion of lust and animalistic desire would be like oil and water. That I might be unable to really talk about what sex feels like when detached from any romantic inclination.
Well...you’re wrong. I have been through some shady interactions with women, had my fair share of partners, and been both flattered and humiliated when it came to sex. I have approached women on pure chemistry, on an intellectual basis, and on looks alone.
Why am I bringing this up? Well - it has more to do with a woman sitting across the aisle from me on the train. She isn’t especially pretty, not outwardly magnetic, or even sending any signals. But the idea of sexuality, of the sexual act, is still present. Does that happen with women? I mean we all know that stupid “Men think about sex every 7 seconds thing,” but do women? Some women claim that they do. Right now, I am imagining what it would be like to drop a note on the woman’s seat - something non-specific - “Meet me in bathroom. 2 minutes.” waiting with the ‘vacant’ sign undone in some shoddy amtrak toilet while she may or may not ever show up. I won’ t do it of course, but the idea is there.
Do I remember feeling this way when I was with someone? Well....yes. Because when I would be with someone I would simply write them the note. But being single...well...why not. And what is it that I am looking for? Maybe a simple tryst during a 3 hour train ride. No names, no words, a complete fantasy fulfilled. There is a short story by Italo Calvino - ‘The Soldier’ I think. It’s about a widow and a soldier who haphazardly sit together on a train and during a period when the train passes through a tunnel many things happen in the dark. Things that would tarnish the honor of a recent widow and undo the integrity of a soldier. They still occur. And each person is better for it.
I think we all have someone in our past. Maybe we were in middle school, maybe in high school, but someone that represented sexuality to us. Maybe they were a little older, maybe our first kiss, maybe it was someone younger. Somebody ‘experienced’ at the time. Maybe it was a movie or a magazine. But there is a token or a totem...something that represents our earliest ideas of sexuality. Hopefully, for many of us, it didn’t involve the terrible power play that can result in molestation or any mental damage.
But in a way, I think we all become mentally damaged. For instance - If I ever smell Pert Plus combined with Trident gum I almost always get an erection. Now these smells are associated with one of the first times I ever became intimate with a woman. We didn’t have sex -I was maybe 13 - in fact, we hardly did anything. But that heavy petting that so many of us participated in...wow. And now, what do we do? Many of us rush right to the sex. And is there anything wrong with that? Maybe, maybe not. There’s something to be said for the quickie every now and again. But the quickie is always more exciting when it is with somebody you know very intimately or someone you don’t know hardly at all.
What I propose is that there is a balance to the heightened experience of a sexual act. Either you don’t know the person and the sexual circumstances are such that playing hide the Chorizo is extremely satisfying. Or you know the person intimately, you are perhaps in love, and the act is elevated because of the emotional connectivity of the entire endeavor. Then, logically, it would follow that an emotional connection dealing with extraordinary circumstances would yield the greatest sexual feelings ever.
For example - the best blow-job I ever had was on a beach in the Caribbean during a one month archaeological dig by a girl I barely knew. She was from Michigan. That should say a lot. Do you know anyone from Michigan? All crazy. And she had a hyphenated first name. i won’t say it here, but it was pretty bad. So those are two strikes against her (come on - birthplace and first name are two definite factors against dating someone. Especially if they’re from Michigan and the first name is “Boy name HYPHEN Girl name). So there you have it - little emotional involvement but extreme circumstances
Now, my two semi long term girlfriends? Never had a problem sexually. In fact, there was something a lot more fulfilling about being with them than other partners. I can’t say that we were the most experimental group, but we certainly racked up some pretty high numbers. That is the emotional connection played over regular circumstances. It should be said that there was a fair amount of sexual desire included with both. God - that sounds really clinical, right?
For a counterpoint, let’s talk about women that I slept with under five times, in what we might call “regular circumstances” that I did not have an emotional connection with. We’ll call this....hmmm.....the ‘One Night Stand.’ Sounds familiar, right?
Now, to be fair, I have not had a whole lot of them. But the experiences I have had with them almost always yield the same result. The first couple times, when we are almost always drunk, are satisfying and exciting. Then the time or two after that is always lackluster and I sometimes lack interest. Then it is almost always over by this point. it should also be said that I have had some of the most ‘Ripley’s Believe It Or Not’ one night stands in the history of mankind. I have had a woman ask me to punch her in the face, a woman alternate between pleasure and hysterical fits of crying during the sex act and orgasm, I have had a woman goes cross-eyed and speak in Greek, a woman who fell asleep, a mousy girl that made my back bleed with her fingernails and teeth, two women, not at the same time mind you, who (in perhaps the eeriest acts of sexual congress I have had) remain absolutely silent, another woman who had to have my stomach touching hers for her to have an orgasm, a girl who was on so much cocaine that she fucked me for 2 hours straight and neither of us ever came and that’s not even half of it. I had a woman chase me out of her room calling me a faggot because I refused to fuck her. I have had sex in bedrooms, bathrooms, pool furniture, hammocks (awkward), couches, floors, lounge chairs, stairwells, closets, trailers, and campgrounds.
It’s a little crazy to think about. I am positive that I have had more partners then my two older brothers put together. At least, I hope I have. One brother has been married for over 10 years and the other is practically a monk. I don’t bring it up much with them. Sometimes I think that I masturbate regularly to suppress most of my sexual urges. I think that if I didn’t do it then I would become some kind of sex-crazed fiend. Maybe not. The longest I ever went without, after starting that is, was for a single month. I was 18 years old. That’s willpower. Do you know what that first time was like after a month? Heaven. Absolute heaven. Sigh.
But I am still interested in this idea of a sexual totem. I know that in my past it was a person. A girl, actually, who in middle school was simply more sexually adventurous then the rest of us. It turns out later that she was actually molested by a cousin earlier in her life. This girl was persecuted throughout middle school and even some of high school for her behavior. That whole ‘slut’ label that is so unfair gender-wise. We were a mixed school of Jewish and Catholic kids. So while we were all enthralled with the idea of sexuality and sex and touching/holding/squeezing we were also deathly afraid of any penance we would have to pay at the hands of our teachers, parents, God, etc. Guilt is a powerful thing. Here is the fucked up thing. I still think about that girl. Well....to be exact....I think about how I felt then. I don’t necessarily think about her as a 12 year old. God no. Rather, I guess I think about myself as a 12 or 13 year old. How I felt then.
Does sex get old? Do we ever stop liking it? Why are men and women’s sexual peaks so maladjusted?
I think about vaginas a lot. I think about the fact that I can be shy when asking for the sexual act. Well...that’s not entirely true...but I do think that I might objectify/deify the vagina. There is certainly a dash of the conquest/notch in the belt mentality. But a lot of time there is simply the reverence for it as this enigmatic object.
But as time goes by, that enigma becomes less and less mysterious. As an adolescent boy, and my close friends and I have talked about this, we had no idea what a vagina was like. We had NO IDEA. I mean, we had seen pictures in ‘Health’ class (Why the fuck was it called health class?) and had seen magazines, but we really truly had no idea what it really looked like. I think that more than half of us actually believed that the first time we came inside someone we would actually see fireworks. That actual fireworks would erupt before our eyes and our penis would simply explode in this agony of pleasure and uncontrollable sensation. A chiaroscuro of life and death and pain and pleasure and love and hate and dry and wet and fear and comfort and mother and father and anything else our little psyches could grasp onto.
Do you want to know what I remember about my first time? Hahahaha. I can’t tell you that. I can tell you it was clumsy and wonderful. I remember sunlight streaming in through a window. I remember being nervous. I remember her eyes and her hair. And I remember not feeling anything like the above passage (pun intended). In fact, I lasted a rather long time I think. It was the time or two after that. Those were the times where I was like “Whoops. Sorry. Done.”
I guess it was the way it was supposed to happen. At least, the best way it could have happened for me. When I think about love and lust and the marriage of the two I think of that time. I think how I felt then and the desire I felt for her. I think about the excitement being with her and the act that we were going to perform. It’s funny - we waited a long time. I mean, 6 months or so. She wasn’t a virgin - I was. Back then 6 months seemed like an eternity. But I didn’t mind waiting. Today? Well, six months still feels like an eternity. Except I would mind waiting. Kinda fucked up, right?