Talk Thursday: Self-Deprivation

Restraint has limited meaning in my life’s vocabulary.  I like to think restraint has limited meaning in my life, considering my archetype of gluttony and penchant for exuberance, but the reality is that I’ve aged and learned and grown and know that sometimes a lot is way too much.  God, that hurt to write, but I digress, and I’m also writing stream of consciousness and memory.  You have been warned.

Growing up, I was lucky that my family was not devoutly Mormon, because the extended family really got into the monthly fasts.  None of the platitudes or homilies or stern eyebrows made a difference to me – the expectation to willingly deprive oneself of food seemed obscene.  Add another few years and the development of hormones and a changing body, and God himself was going to have to take away the gift of masturbation after I’d unwrapped THAT lovely present.  As early as a teen, I was actively pursuing sex and sexuality and not even bothering with the lip service to virtue and restraint and self-deprivation that was Mormondom’s heritage, because I could see the future of that path before me and it was a barren waste of self-hatred.  I had tasted some of life’s forbidden apples, which I freely ate because I was told not to, just like Eve – nothing in this world would convince me of waiting or saving myself for invisible and intangible rewards, not when you compared them to the immediacy of sharing, connecting, and sweat.  The difference was that I wasn’t kicked out, I wasn’t banished, I wasn’t escorted from Heaven.  No angels from heaven, no fiery swords, not even bad dreams.  After me and “Hamlin” and the incident in the tent (and the hot tub, and downstairs at my house, and also in his room – all summer long), I knew that liturgy and exhortations and threats of eternal darkness didn’t add up to the glory that was life.  Rebel, me – I wanted divine intervention, but heaven stayed quiet.  Thank you, heaven.

About the same time, I hung out with a Mormon guy, “Conner,” who was trying so hard to be a rebel but couldn’t quite figure out or vocalize that Mormondom had him firmly under its thumb.  He wanted me to introduce him to a female student that I knew really well, and I did – but they didn’t click.  He was socially awkward and I tended to make friends with most everyone, but he was savvy enough to figure out that through me he could make other friends.  We were quite a pair, considering that the more he paid attention to me the more I ignored him, which only egged him on and sparked some inner need of his to be acknowledged.

One night we were alone at my house.  He and I listened to the stereo and he steered the conversation to sex and who was or wasn’t do-able, and if I had any condoms since he’d never seen one before.  I stifled a laugh and threw a few Trojans at him, but then my phone rang and I turned around to sit at my desk and answer it.  I don’t remember who was on the line, but we chatted for a few moments and I hung up and turned around in the swivel chair to find Conner standing there with his pants down and a condom stretched over his enormous, erect penis.  I laughed in surprise and for one instant he looked terrified and sad and ashamed, but I recovered and said “Impressive.”

He looked relieved and he hefted himself with one hand and I laughed again and I was pure evil:  I told him he’d better put that away before he lost his testimony.  He went pale and then put on a brave face.  He didn’t move, so I asked him when he last masturbated and he looked at me like I was insane. I was stunned.

“You don’t jerk off?”  He shook his head.

“That’s fucking nuts,” I said.  He cringed but he kept his hand at his crotch, and I became aware that I was painfully hard in my jeans.  He eyed the bulge in my pants and I eyed his monster.

The garage door slammed and we were a frenzy of hiding condoms and a condom wrapper and Conner zipping himself up and the two of us assuming a ‘relaxed’ and settled look, knowing someone in my family was now home.

I hope he came to know himself and his body, and that’s my prayer to him (and pardon my pillaging of Enigma), that the path of excess led him to the tower of wisdom.