Women, Marriage, and Me

Somehow, I’m not sure how, I got through the 60s, the Summer of Love, the open marriage Bob and Ted and Carol and Alice sexual revolution still a virgin. I smoked pot. I protested against the Vietnam War and for Civil Rights, I grew my hair long, had as much facial hair as an 18 year old can grow, I thought bell bottoms were cool, and I bought my first new car, a Big Bad Blue Gremlin. I was very much a child of the 60s except when it came to sex.

Oh, I wanted to have sex. I was totally preoccupied with sex. People having lots of sex could not hope to experience the kind of intense all consuming obsession I was having 40 times a day. Under the right circumstances I might have had sex, but the right circumstances just never happened. While I had some doubts about the black belt fundamentalist church I was drug up in, I still had that idea in the back of my mind that sex outside of marriage was sin, and it was possibly the UNFORGIVABLE SIN.

In high school I can remember reading Utopia by Thomas More, and there was a recommendation that every citizens of Utopia must follow before they could be married. The passage is as follows:

Before marriage some grave matron presents the bride naked, whether she is a virgin or a widow, to the bridegroom; and after that some grave man presents the bridegroom naked to the bride.

I was shocked when I first read this. This writer is purported to be pretty religious, yet as he wrote about this imaginary country he is recommending that women and men reveal themselves totally to their potential spouse, that couples get a preview of one another before they get married. It is similar to what we do when we buy a car, we take it for a test drive. The Utopia passage continues with an explanation for this radical idea:

We indeed both laughed at this, and condemned it as
very indecent. But they, on the other hand, wondered at the folly of the men of all other nations,who, if they are but to buy a horse of a small value, are so cautious that they will see every part of him, and take off both his saddle and all his other tackle, that there may be no secret ulcer hid under any of them; and that yet in the choice of a wife, on which depends the happiness or unhappiness of the rest of his life, a man should venture upon trust, and only see about a hand's-breadth of the face, all the rest of the body being covered, under which there may lie hid what may be contagious, as well as loathsome.

I made decisions in order to begin a sex life. I complied with the religious tenet and the social mores with which I had been raise. I’d had some experience with heavy breathing make-out sessions, but no sex. On my got married I was still a virgin. I’ve heard men say the first time they had sex it was a disappointment, because nothing real can be as good as what one imagines. For me, my first sexual experience was the most traumatic experience I have ever had. It was scary, filled with panic, regret, and was the greatest disappointment I’ve endured so far.